tl;dr Engineer discovers that sales & marketing are real jobs. Calling it “content creation” or “influencers” are just another way of minimizing a side of business development that scares you. Thanks for the story, it was an enjoyable read!
I’ve been working on promoting my seating chart app for teachers, Shuffle Buddy, on social media. I had a 1M view pop on TikTok when I first launched and have now been clawing along to try for continued engagement.
It’s reassuring to know that social media posts are hard for everyone and that it isn’t supposed to be easy. I keep looking for ways to create content that is genuinely beneficial to teachers and also convinces them to try my app, but it’s hard.
I’m surprised the owner of Lagree didn’t sue you for the name of the app, he’s notorious for that. I also recommend hiring smaller creators, they can be amazing if it’s the right person
I recently made a small game for iOS/macOS and basically every non-development part of the process between setting up the App Store stuff and trying to promote it have been a lot more work than I expected. Not even including the game design, which is really separate from the actual game development.
As a solo/indie dev who's currently early in building a product, I've been keeping a journal of "ideas" for content in a txt file in the codebase as I hate context switching and want to build this up before I get to it.
Here's what I've done:
- At the top of the file I've listed my audience, 3 personas
- My content has to be useful to one of those
- If I see an interesting post/take on social media I hold the link and write an idea for my own spin/take (takes 30 seconds) - log it
- If I have a problem/issue that I resolve that would be useful to my audience - log it
- If I have a key product/design/UX choice that took some time to think through - log it
- If something takes me much longer than I thought because there's more to it (iceberge effect) - log it
I've been doing this for about 6 weeks now and I've got 100 ideas for pieces of content.
One of the best pieces of advice I read is that when you're solo, many times people/community rally around you. You are the product too so you have to share what you're doing, it's interesting to many, not just your customers. They care about the advice you give, the input you have, the way you build things. You are a subject matter expert in this domain, so you should structure your content with this in mind.
"You escape competition through authenticity." - @naval
People who code for mobile development, like OP, is IOS development their full time job? Because as someone who does web development, to learn the in and out of Swift programming language and using XCode feel major vendor lockin and prefer say React Native due to its interoperability.
I didn't know about Sebastian Lagree and Lagree Fitness, but looking him up does not leave a good impression. The press covers on is homepage look incredibly fake, e.g. a "digital cover" from cosmopolitan.ro which is clearly designed to look like he was on the cover of the real cosmopolitan. Same thing for Forbes.
His "thing" seems to be a kind of modern pilates and he sues everyone who criticises him. Seems like a real wholesome person and a community I'd really like to join /s
They create a fake story about a new feature to promote the app. And then they work out how to create fake text messages. I don't like the approach they used. Get real users to provide a real testimonials instead.
No trying to minimize the efforts of people who do this as real jobs or influencing - you do you. However, generating fake message screenshot, sending unsolicited messages etc? And the winner is the one who gets the biggest rise from the consumer, authentic or not.
Distribution is hard, I get it. But isn't this the equivalent of everyone just rocking up to the village square in the most outrageous costumes and screaming into the megaphone?
I have been doing something similar for years. My website helps immigrants settle in Berlin. Recently, I've been writing a lot about health insurance.
For the last few months, I've been monitoring all health insurance topics in some communities, and actively answering questions. It gave me a much better sense of what confuses people, down to tiny details like "I was given two documents by my insurer, and there is only one upload field in the visa application system". Another couldn't buy the insurance I recommended them because the options in a dropdown did not match his situation 1:1. No one addresses these blockers; they only cover things at a high level.
Every time I couldn't answer a question with a link to my insurance guide, I updated the guide. I rewrote some guides 2-3 times this year.
On the other end, I was in constant contact with the health insurance broker who answers questions from my readers. That's 5-6 questions per day. Again, I tried to learn from each of those.
I think you have to stay close to your users. You might notice tiny details that make a bigger difference than the superfeature you're thinking of building.
highly recommend focusing on just tiktoks/reels rather than stories that expire every 24 hours. They will pick up more views beyond your audience, especially if you "warm up" your account by engaging with content just on your niche. Look forward to the next experiment!
Enjoy this - I really really struggle marketing as someone that sits a lot in the creative technology space, it always feels quite dirty, so it's nice to read someone's perspective from it
24 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 44.8 ms ] threadIt’s reassuring to know that social media posts are hard for everyone and that it isn’t supposed to be easy. I keep looking for ways to create content that is genuinely beneficial to teachers and also convinces them to try my app, but it’s hard.
> Build it and they will come is a fallacy. You have to tell people about the damn thing.
Great lesson for engineering types
Here's what I've done:
- At the top of the file I've listed my audience, 3 personas
- My content has to be useful to one of those
- If I see an interesting post/take on social media I hold the link and write an idea for my own spin/take (takes 30 seconds) - log it
- If I have a problem/issue that I resolve that would be useful to my audience - log it
- If I have a key product/design/UX choice that took some time to think through - log it
- If something takes me much longer than I thought because there's more to it (iceberge effect) - log it
I've been doing this for about 6 weeks now and I've got 100 ideas for pieces of content.
One of the best pieces of advice I read is that when you're solo, many times people/community rally around you. You are the product too so you have to share what you're doing, it's interesting to many, not just your customers. They care about the advice you give, the input you have, the way you build things. You are a subject matter expert in this domain, so you should structure your content with this in mind.
"You escape competition through authenticity." - @naval
But to each their own.
However, recently I decided to try something I'm calling the SaaS Schedule Sandwich.
Each month is split into four weeks:
- Week 1: Build
- Week 2: Market
- Week 3: Build
- Week 4: Video Journal
And so far it's kept me honest and not made me go live in a cave and code for a year.
I actually released the first video journal last week for our new product:
https://youtu.be/cSY-C8oiUU8
> Build it and they will come is a fallacy.
This is true. But is this the alternative?
No trying to minimize the efforts of people who do this as real jobs or influencing - you do you. However, generating fake message screenshot, sending unsolicited messages etc? And the winner is the one who gets the biggest rise from the consumer, authentic or not.
Distribution is hard, I get it. But isn't this the equivalent of everyone just rocking up to the village square in the most outrageous costumes and screaming into the megaphone?
For the last few months, I've been monitoring all health insurance topics in some communities, and actively answering questions. It gave me a much better sense of what confuses people, down to tiny details like "I was given two documents by my insurer, and there is only one upload field in the visa application system". Another couldn't buy the insurance I recommended them because the options in a dropdown did not match his situation 1:1. No one addresses these blockers; they only cover things at a high level.
Every time I couldn't answer a question with a link to my insurance guide, I updated the guide. I rewrote some guides 2-3 times this year.
On the other end, I was in constant contact with the health insurance broker who answers questions from my readers. That's 5-6 questions per day. Again, I tried to learn from each of those.
I think you have to stay close to your users. You might notice tiny details that make a bigger difference than the superfeature you're thinking of building.