Most information about startup marketing is focused on how to make existing marketing practices more effective and how to make existing sites more viral. My question is what have people found to be the most effective ways at getting those first 50-100 users to a website? I recently (yesterday) launched a very simple web application (http://www.runtly.com) which is designed to be used for sharing content that is too big for Twitter. Its functionality lies somewhere in the void between Tumblr and TinyPaste and is geared toward people who dont have their own blog or who just want to share text (including linked photos and embedded videos) without writing a formal "blog post" about it.
My question is what are some inbound marketing techniques to getting those first few users to a brand new site (after arm twisting a dozen or so of your friends)? I have plently of plans about how to make content on the site more viral/shareable but most of those thoughts are irrelevant unless i can get those first visitors. I understand inbound marketing to focus on getting found by people who are actively looking for your product or service. I think that concept is very powerful for enterprise services, but not as immediately useful for consumer applications, due to the fact consumers are generally not as active in solveing their own problems and because consumer problems are typically more "latent" than enteprise problems.
I mean, no one was searhing Google for "micro-blogging platform that limit you to 140 characters" when Twitter came along. Or "crowdpowered news ranking site" before Digg was started or "location based gaming" (Foursquare).
How do you atract the first 100 or so users to your site, espcially if your service is one that they are not actively looking for yet?
