We started nugget over a year ago to improve the world through compressed knowledge.

We failed.

We did manage to build a great app and get a decent number of people to download it, but we failed at something fundamental to a business: retaining and monetizing those users.

If you don't make (decent) money from your project, it's not a business, it's a hobby. Click To Tweet

Why did nugget fail?

People kept emailing us, and telling us they LOVE nugget, that it is such a great idea! Tinder for quotes from books. We, or at least I, felt like a genius.

But with a few exceptions, we did not see the same love in our data. It was like having a girlfriend who says she loves you but does not have time to meet.

You might think that your productivity app, game, or reading app does not compete with Facebook; that it’s not even in the same category as Instagram; or has nothing to do with Whatsapp. But you’re wrong.

Every app is fighting for the same limited and valuable resource: attention. Click To Tweet

The more someone uses Facebook, iMessage, or any other app out there, the less time they have to use yours.

And if your app does not have a clear utility, or does not manage to quickly create some sort of addiction, it’s doomed to fail. It will be one of the countless other apps downloaded at one point, maybe even opened at another, but since forgotten, that keep cluttering your phone.

In order to survive, your app must be a pain killer, and not a vitamin. Click To Tweet

In the same vein, nugget was a nice to have, not a must-have.

Why not fix nugget?

We might have fixed the leaky bucket problem. But it would have been a constant uphill battle and then it would have still been hard to monetize. Plus, Blinkist is doing a great job at bringing big ideas in small packages already.

We quickly realized that any extra hour we spend on nugget, brings negative returns. While any hour we spend on SocialBee, has a clear, positive ROI.

Plus we love helping other businesses start and grow, so it’s a great mission to have.

What’s gonna happen to nugget?

We have a few options, but we’re not sure yet. We’re open to suggestions.

What worked in growing nugget?

While marketing nugget, we did stumble upon an incredibly effective tactic.

A social media strategy that drove relevant traffic and new users.

And in order to streamline this, we started building some internal tools.

At one point we realized that the tools we built, and the tactics behind them, are extremely valuable, so we decided to turn them into a product.

But we did not want to make the same mistakes we did with nugget, so that we don’t end up with another hobby. Fool me once, and all.

So we flipped the traditional pyramid on its head, and we started out selling the product that was not fully built.

We reached out to our network and pitched the new product – SocialBee.io. And it worked. We quickly got paying customers.They were impressed how fast they received greater visibility and traffic using our product.

Our users LOVED us, again, but this time, they were using us on a daily basis, and even more important for a company – they were also paying us.

This time we had a business, not just a hobby.

So what’s SocialBee.io?

Sweet of you to ask.

SocialBee.io is a combination of tools & services to help you get more leads from social media.

It’s built on 3 pillars: content, grow and engage.

SocialBee.io makes it easy to post, and re-post evergreen content on social media.

This ensures that your blog posts, videos, and other types of content you spent quite some time crafting or curating, receive the right audience. It also ensures it’s easy for you to mix in some promotional content as well. Jab, jab, jab, right hook style.

But what good does having content if you don’t have an audience for it?

Good question. So with the growth part, we make sure your audience keeps growing with real, relevant, targeted followers. We do this through SocialBee.io, by manually following lots of relevant users on Twitter, give them 3 to 7 days for them to follow back, and unfollow the ones that don’t.

This is a tried and tested technique to grow your following.

The engage part then makes it easy for you to start engaging with your audience, by sending them an automated @mention and/or a direct message. You can create as many variants of these messages as you’d like, so there’s more variety and so that over time you hone in the perfect engagement messages.

This will turn those followers into leads that you can then nurture and convert to customers. Ka-ching!

Aren’t there tools that already do this?

Yes and no.

Yes, there are tools out there that do take care of each of the stages I told you about – content, grow, and engage. But these are stages that are closely linked together, so the tools that help with these problems should also be linked and integrated.

This is why we decided to build SocialBee.io, as an all in one, robust, well integrated social media tool.

And this is just the beginning.

So if you want a private demo (not sure how long I’ll keep doing these), and a chance to meet/catch up, do schedule a call with me here.