Building in Public helps with credibility, but not with the North-Star metric of getting the sale.

Hello IH'ers,

Before proceeding, let me tell you that I am a huge believer in building in public. Love the concept and makers who are already doing it.

But there's a small flaw in this concept of building in public.

& I realized this flaw when I saw makers on my Twitter feed doing this.

Building in public helps with credibility, your followers get to know what you are working on, what features you are building, what tech stack you are using, and 100s of other things.

Do you see? This is a flaw.

Your actual customers don't bother which tech stack you are using or which programming language you are building with.

I have seen many indiehackers sharing about the product 80-90% of the time and just 5-10% sharing about how it actually solves the problem.

So to tackle, this is what you should ideally do:

Build in Public + Content Marketing

I am not telling building in public doesn't work, but if you just combine content marketing with your strategy, the entire game changes.

Let me share with you 2 prolific makers who are already achieving tremendous success with this.

1. Simon Høiberg

He talks every now and then about Javascript, shares interesting visuals, provides value, and also builds in public.

He has 3 eBooks in Javascript priced at $29. He does a great job at Content Marketing + Building in Public.

2. Arvid Kahl

This man doesn't need an introduction. Biggest advocate of building in public, but what he does with content marketing stands out from the rest.

He shares Twitter Growth Idea Small Video Snippets in under 5 minutes each day.

& guess what, under every such video snippet, you can find a link to his course.

This way not only he is providing value, discussing the pain points but also making money. Because that is what everyone aims for, right?

What you should ideally do

Yes, build in public, but don't forget content marketing.

Talking about how your product solves the problem >> Talking about your product

Eg:- If you have a Twitter Analytics tool, then don't talk about the product at all. Why would anyone want to buy a Twitter analytics tool? To get insights and increase the following right?

So talk about that. How do you increase your following, what is stopping the growth, etc? Just talking about the product won't cut it out.

This is what content marketing is all about. Talking about the pain points, adding value.

This particular strategy helped me get to $6000+ in pre-sales for Affiliate Corner. The power of directly adding value to your end user by sharing content which is helpful.

Let me know what do you think about this strategy?

Are you just talking about your product or sharing content that is actually solving the problem?