So I've been toiling away at creating a new social platform for TV (https://couchmate.com). I'm running into the classic chicken/egg problem at trying to get users simply aware that I exist. I'm looking for options from the HN crowd at things I might be overlooking.

(1) Paid Ads. I'm bootstrapping, so my budget is paltry. Ran ads on Facebook, Insta, Twitter and Reddit. Didn't really drive any traffic to the site/downloads. I'm also creating all the creatives myself (Photoshop, After Effects, etc) so this is a huge time sink.

(2) Social. I have social media accounts on every platform as well as a blog that I try to post to at a somewhat regular interval but again, that's a huge time sink to coordinate between all the services, post relevant things, etc.

(3) Word of Mouth. Obviously trying to work my network and spread the word that way. So far it's been the most lucrative but also very slow.

(4) Direct Contact. I've been trying to walk the line between spam and genuine contact with other people online. I haven't gone so far as to automate DM/PMs to people for feedback but I've posted on various subreddits (and Show HN) for feedback that hasn't born much fruit.

(5) Influencers. Been looking down this path on how to create a mutually beneficial relationship between influencers (specifically podcasters) and my platform. This is a work in progress but could work if they see benefit for their audience as well.

Again, budget is tiny and time is precious. I feel like I've been putting engineering principals to marketing and it's been not super successful. I'm an engineer by trade so there's a learning curve in how to take these on individually. Also I have tried to reach out to people to actually come on board and do marketing but haven't really found any takers yet.