Plan Your Product Launch Content in Phases

Most launch content is written in the week of the launch, which is why so much of it looks alike: an announcement post and a request to upvote. It gets a spike of attention from people who already follow you, and a week later the traffic is back where it started.

A launch that keeps working is planned in phases, and each phase has its own job. The warm up gets an audience curious before the date, launch week turns that attention into signups, and the follow through gives the people who missed it more reasons to look. Because the jobs differ, the content in each phase differs too.

Start from the goal and the dates

Before writing anything, pick the one number the launch is supposed to move, whether that is paid signups or booked demo calls. Every post in the plan should connect back to that number. A plan without one fills up with posts that are pleasant to read and move nothing.

Then set the dates. A reasonable default for a small team is three to four weeks of warm up, one launch week, and three to four weeks of follow through. A shorter warm up works if you already have an engaged audience, and a longer one helps when you are starting from nothing.

Phase one: warm up, 3 to 4 weeks before

The warm up exists so that launch day feels like news to the people who see it. The content that does this best is about the problem and the build, with the product mostly in the background.

• Posts about the problem you solve, with specific stories from customers or from your own work.
• Build-in-public updates, such as a decision you made, a screenshot or a number from the beta.
• Opinions on how your category usually handles the problem and where you disagree.
• A waitlist or early access link, mentioned once or twice a week. Most posts should stand on their own without it.
• Daily replies and comments on other people's posts about the problem. For most new people, this is where they first see your name.

Two or three posts a week per network is plenty. The replies are what need to start now. If you only appear in other people's conversations during launch week, it reads as promotion, whereas after a month of useful replies you are someone they recognise.

Plan a couple of visual pieces in this phase as well, like a chart of a problem you measured or a diagram of where the product fits in a workflow. A behind-the-scenes Instagram story works well here too. You will reuse them in launch week.

Phase two: launch week

Launch week concentrates everything. The announcement sits at the centre, but it should be one piece among several, spread across the week so the launch does not depend on a single day going well.

• Day one: the announcement on each network where your audience is, written for that network. A LinkedIn post, an X thread, an Instagram story and an email to the waitlist can say the same thing in four different shapes.
• Day two: a demo. A short video or a set of screenshots that shows one real task from start to finish.
• Day three: the story behind it, including why you built it and what you got wrong on the way.
• Day four: proof, like early numbers or a quote from a beta customer.
• Day five: a post that answers the best questions people asked during the week.

Keep up the reply work all week. People will ask questions under your posts and in threads about your category, and fast, useful answers do more for the launch than an extra post. Draft the questions you expect, with answers, before the week starts, so you are editing when things get busy.

Write every launch week piece before launch day. That week has the least free time and the most interruptions of the whole campaign, and anything written in a hurry on the day tends to be the weakest thing you publish.

Phase three: follow through, 3 to 4 weeks after

Most launch plans end at launch week, and that is why most launches fade after it. The follow through reaches the people who were busy on launch day and turns your first users into material.

• Customer stories, each about one user, one problem and what changed for them.
• What you learned from launch week, with real numbers. These posts often do better than the announcement.
• Feature deep dives, one feature per post, each answering something people asked during the launch.
• Replies to people discussing the problem, where you can now mention the product when someone asks for a tool.
• A recap article or newsletter issue that ties the launch together.

Keep the posting rhythm close to what it was during the warm up. A sudden drop after launch week tells people the launch was the only reason you were posting, and the follow through should feel like the account carrying on.

Keeping the plan in one place

The practical problem with a phased plan is that it spreads across networks and weeks, and it is easy to lose track of what goes out when. A single calendar that shows every piece by phase, with its network and its status, makes gaps visible. You notice straight away when the warm up has twenty posts and the follow through has two.

I plan launches in Planboard now. I give it the goal and the dates, and its agents plan the campaign in phases and write each post from my own writing rules, including the Instagram story frames and chart images. Its radars keep finding conversations to reply to through all three phases, every week, and each morning the Today list shows what to post and reply to, with publishing one tap that copies the text and opens the network.