Building in public without an audience

It depends on your goals.

If you want to build in public for marketing and to attract customers, it might work. But it is not as easy as it seems.

You can’t just share your features and expect to attract customers. There should be something more in tweets than just your product.

I would recommend traversing the tweets of @danielnguyen. He is a rising star (next @tonydinh if you wish). Daniel does it with the right proportion between value and promotion of the product.

And it depends if you can find your target audience by building in public.

But if you want to have fun, make new friends, and train your marketing muscle, it is worth it. But don’t expect a lot.

I have a relatively small following on Twitter, so my question goes out to those who started in a similar position: Is it worth it?

I see you have at about 300 followers. The question is: do you know at least 10 of them? Have you built a relationship on a personal basis with them? Like, have you talked with them about other things except product building or software development?

I think we are mistaking the audience for large followers count.

Is it worth it? Yes! I can share 3 Twitter profiles with 300 followers that make more than 10k MRR. Is it harder without an audience? Definitely. But the audience is the folks you interact with. It won't make it easier to build a product if you have 30k followers and you have no idea who they are.

Loud 10 followers that know what you do is more important than 30k numb and mute followers.

It’s absolutely worth it! Think first of engagement with others in the community. Show people you’re a strong participant and contribute with useful insights. The followers will come!

I thought BIP would be a good way to keep myself accountable but it just felt like extra work and I was paralyzed by indecision about what to share.

I would love to know what you are considering in terms of approach: Is it every day, like a standup with just you, yourself, and your followers? Is it weekly milestones / learnings?

I like the product that you are building, best of luck!;)

I think building in public is cool, however it becomes a bit boring for people to follow a person if all he/she shares is progress update and 'marketing threads' to attract more followers. If you could add a 'pinch of soul' to your Twitter, like what you do before or after coding, what song you are on, or even what type of coffee you drink while coding - that will make it more interesting imho.

Have fun!

Think of building in public as something to share with ppl, but also to keep track of your own progress and to hold yourself accountable.

@yongfook on Twitter is a great example of how this can go well!

Just make sure you have a compelling story (which will give people incentive to follow you)!

Just keep building and promoting. You'll never know which piece of content will go viral

Hey! I have been doing the same thing: building in public and started with almost literally 0 audience.

I think the two most important things are:

1. Consistency in how you are posting updates
2. Embrace the sharing and be honest/emotional about what's going on

For me personally, I've decided to post a VERY detailed video every Friday on YouTube going over everything I did during the week. And a week or two ago I started using TikTok to share bite-sized updates.

It's still a slow process of growing the audience, but it is working. I would do it just for the accountability alone (though I am a solo founder so I think it helps more in that case), but I'm finally starting to get some audience interaction through people reaching out to me or commenting, etc.

Good luck!!

Interesting topic. I think transparency is a very important engine of gaining interest. Transparency only works when you're consistent, not only with development but your communication, as well.

There's a certain threshold when it'll make a noticeable difference but first you have to start the journey and commit to it. There's no halfway transparency.

Kind of random but related: while I'm an investor myself, I personally believe crypto is very overhyped and most of the projects aren't worth anything. There's still one example, Cardano that's been developed transparently for years now. The result is a mixed reception: there are people who believe Cardano will change everything, and there are doubters who believe Cardano is vaporware. It's because Cardano's communication is very upfront and straightforward about their progress and failure. So when you decide to build in front of the public eye, be ready for a mixed reaction and hard criticism.

But beware: transparency has to shape realistic expectations. Most of the time when people turn away from a product, tool or service is that their expectations aren't fulfilled. Expectations have to be treated as the first phase of interaction with your product because that's when you create the frames your product has to perform within. Make expectations work and count for you!

At first I thought "Building in Public" meant people can actually see what you're doing. Because that's exactly what I've been doing daily, for myself or various companies in the past twenty years. See... I develop Free Software and whenever I write a patch, it is pushed in public place and everybody can see it. And then sometimes I discuss it with other people, in public forums and public chats.

The notion of telling people about the code you're working on without actually showing them the lines would not be something that I find appealing. And it looks like a lot of work in addition to writing the code itself. What if someone asks you questions they could trivially answer by reading the code? What if, to explain how you're doing something the best way is to point to lines of code?

So... my advice would be to "Build in Public" by publishing the code from day one under a Free Software license. That won't solve your marketing problem though.