I read something recently that gave me food for thought. An alternative has to be 10x better for people to switch; and the core experience is what convinces people, not cool extra features.
I don't know how universally applicable it is, but I wonder how Mastodon stacks up in that. Personally I think it's 10x better, but is it really? Or more importantly, are we communicating clearly that it is?
@Gargron This depends so heavily on what people want their 'better' to be, and I honestly think the problem is that most folk haven't given it any thought, so there's no way for anything _to be_ 10x better, since "better" was never defined.
@Gargron In my dayjob, one of our main products is phone sales service, and the thing that takes up the largest part of our sales calls is almost always simply getting the prospect to answer some variation of "why are you looking for a new solution?" You'd think people looking for a new SaaS - or microblog - would be able to tell you why they're shopping, but nooope.
@Gargron (2/n) So you're in this weird position where you have to somehow get folk to define (very solidly, in their own head) what a "better microblog" is, and then give them an answer to that problem they've spun up for themselves, all in one breath. It's one of the hardest things about sellings SaaSes, in my opinion, and I don't envy you the task.
@Gargron (3/n) If I were in your shoes, I'd see if you can't get together some testimonials (self-selection bias is going to be a real issue here) and see what common threads there are in their journeys to finding your product, and seeing what common triggers started them on the hunt. Among those with a common trigger, try and develop some other commonalities, and then write to that person; who's just waiting for the right thing to make them go "huh, what _do_ I want in a microblog?"
@Gargron (4/4) I forgot to end my numbering on that one so, uh, in closing, see what paths users take to signing up mastodon, look for shared starting points and then define common traits of people who start on there, and pretend you're writing content to get that fictional person, who's just about to start down the path to defining "better microblog"
@Gargron (1/n) And that's just the people who are actively shopping around. People who are open to a new service, but aren't actively looking, the sort who might hear about the product from a blog post about a tangential issue, are even less likely to have a keen idea of what they're looking for in alternatives. And of course, you could just _tell_ them what's better, but then... that's debatable, if you say it, you know, it's your opinion.