Build It And They Will Not Come

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d-announce]

I hate the movie "Field of Dreams" where they push the idiotic idea of "Build it 
and they will come." No, they won't. There's a blizzard of stuff competing for 
their attention out there, why should they invest the time looking at your 
stuff? You need to tell them why!

Here's the frustrating typical pattern I've seen here for years:

1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really cool
2. spend 2 minutes posting a link to the repository on D.announce
3. someone posts it to reddit. Ignore it
4. get frustrated that nobody looks at it
5. get bitter and quit

Here's the pattern that works a lot better:

1. spend hundreds if not thousands of hours developing something really cool
2. spend 10 minutes writing the announcement to D.announce. Be sure to include:
    who, what, where, when, why, and how
3. someone posts it to reddit
4. post the who, what, where, when, why and how on reddit AS SOON AS POSSIBLE 
after the reddit link appears. Stuff on reddit has a VERY SHORT shelf life. If 
it doesn't get action within a couple hours, it fades into oblivion. Identify 
yourself as the author, say AMA. The first one to post a comment tends to spark 
and set the tone for the discussion.
5. check back on reddit once an hour or so for the next day, answer questions
6. *****
7. profit!