How did you make it without social media?
A lot of fellow Indie Hackers - including myself - have been led to believe that you could not build a successful business without building an audience on social media.
Was it propaganda from well-known social media companies to increase the activity on their platforms, or an insidious brainwashing 🧠 from marketing gurus? Or both?
I recently sparked a discussion after I posted about why I left Twitter, Instagram & Product Hunt:
As Indie Hackers, and above all business owners, are we (really) missing something from not being active on social media?
Although I know that social media are a tool amongst others, I kept wondering if there were Indie Hackers who successfully managed to build profitable 💲 businesses/side projects without maintaining an active presence on big social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, ...
I am aware that this topic has already been raised a few times on IH, but I wanted to "refresh" it to learn about new experiences, strategies and stories.
So if you want to share your experience with fellow Indie Hackers, feel free to comment below 👇 to tell us how you promoted your products, what other networks you used, and how you keep potential users updated! 🦾
I built WP Buffs to ~$1.5M ARR without doing any meaningful social media work. We had a Twitter account, Instagram account, LinkedIn profile page, etc. But they never contributed to growth in any meaningful way.
Most of our growth came from hard marketing campaigns, mostly content marketing and affiliate marketing. They made up ~75% of our growth, with ~15% coming from word of mouth and ~10% coming from wherever.
I'm sure a few customers along the way wouldn't have worked with us because of the lost trust factor of not having social media, but I don't think it would have made a tangible difference in our growth trajectory.
I'm currently building Driftly (let me know if you want to chat about it for Yeah, Pics!, QR Memorial or NoCode 101!) and have no plans to put any meaningful time or resources towards social media. If anything, we plan to use communities like IH & MicroConf Connect as the "social media platform" where we spend time.
Being active on social media is only really important if your target market is really active there AND it's essential to build trust on that platform for your ideal buyers. If either of those aren't true, IMO there are tons of other ways to build an audience, get customers and grow a successful business without ever creating a social media account.
That pretty much nails it for me. I have the feeling that many people build a following of indiehackers. It's a bit like finishing school and wanting to become a teacher because school is what you know.
True 😂 but as you said, I think it's a reflex you got when you're still a beginner
💯
This is interesting Joe. How did you find your first 10 customers ?
All through content marketing. Wrote 10 pretty terrible blog posts but got lucky and ranked a few in Google search. Started driving traffic and got my first few customers that way. Reinvested profits from those customers into more, better content and scaled SEO from there.
This way ~5 years ago and Google has started to drive much more traffic to their ads, auto-answers, etc.
SEO is really underrated.
Probably because it can take a long time and people prefer quick results.
Yeah, probably haha.
It still amazing how much of a reliable channel, SEO turns out to be.
If you get it right!
Do you think same tactic would work today?
It could but it would certainly be harder!
The problem I have with writing blog posts is that it always feels unnatural to me, I feel like I'm spamming in Google Search with unnecessary content 😂
I felt like this for a long time. But you'll work your writing muscles and become better over time. You need to crawl before you can walk before you can run.
Don't have to be afraid to suck if you have the intention to write the best content you can at that time!
That's a good piece of advice, thanks!
Write a good blog post, quality.
I feel that way about developing my new products, but here we are anyway : )
Right? I feel seen.
Hey Joe,
Could you also explain how you went about validating that there was effective demand for WP Buffs?
Sure, MB!
This was my first real venture and I have to admit I did nothing to formally validate our productized service haha.
That being said, I did get motivation to build WP Buffs from other website management companies that existed at the time (Maintainn, WP Site Care, Valet, etc), and one big one that was sold to GoDaddy around that time (WPCurve).
In my mind, these maturing businesses (one of which experienced a significant sale) meant there was a market for this service and it was a place I could build a $1M+ business.
Interesting! I was just thinking of starting a discussion to know if there were Indie Hackers who managed to succeed with an "unvalidated" idea 🕳
I think basic validation of yes/no can be done fairly quickly and with a pretty high degree of accuracy with a bit of competitor research.
Theoretically if others have similar businesses in the space and those businesses seem semi successful, you can do that too. Obviously there are caveats and exceptions to this (what if every other business in the space has $100M of funding, etc) but in general, it's pretty easy to get a gut feeling on this.
The harder, more time-consuming part is figuring out which sub-market makes up your ideal buyers for your specific product. But if you can get the general yes, you have time to work on this.
Happy to join a discussion on this!
Sure! I'll let you know when I will have posted it!
Boom!
Thanks for the suggestion! Does this tool for offline solutions? It could be useful for my Windows projects, but these are .exe files 🤔
Hey there, Driftly in its current form doesn't work offline, but I would like to hear more about your Windows projects. Are you using Electron as your development framework for building out these programs or something else?
Hey Jacob, thanks for your answer! Those are solutions built with Claris Filemaker ⬆️
After looking into Claris FileMaker, it doesn’t seem like something Driftly can support at this stage.
Yes, I also had been looking for a translation service at a time, but integrations ate not very developed/possible for this infrastructure yet.
I don't believe Driftly would work for offline solutions but let me tag @jacobbeckerman (our technical co-founder) to double check with him.
I think he's off for a holiday today so stay tuned!
Thanks!
Thanks for sharing your experience @joehhoward! 🤙
Nice! What type of content marketing did you produce (blog posts, articles, infographics, ...)? Were they produced in-house or was the whole process outsourced?
I think there's two categories of people. The ones who check the social media pages of the company/product to check their content and confirm their "attraction", and the ones who check only to see if the company is active, and not a "dead horse". I must admit I sometimes belong to the second category of people, but only for services from which you'd be dependent in the future.
If you ever need an audience at all!
WordPress-related blog post that ranked in Google SERPs > discovery call > follow up email sequence > paying customer
Outsourced to freelance writers or a small content agency. Sometimes both.
I think you're missing 2 personas!
I'm personally usually one of these. In most cases, I don't give a shit if a company is on social media or active there. I want to know if they have a product that will solve my problem at a price that makes sense. And that they have good support when I eventually need it.
YES.
Thanks! That's quite reassuring for me since I have absolutely no talent in writing about my own projects! I think I'll go the same way 👉
True 😂 I forgot about those ones 😅
Right! However, I tend to do it when I need a content platform, for example a CMS. For example, if I create a SaaS with an infrastructure like Bubble, I like to know that there are still active, and the only way to check that for me is by visiting their socials.
Makes sense. Seeing if a company is active on social media is one way to assess their activity.
But there are plenty of other ways...
If somebody thinks your company is inactive because you're not on social media and they didn't try any of these other ways to assess your activity, they probably weren't going to be a very good customer anyway!
Man... would you believe me if I told you that I actually never thought about this? 😂😂😂😂
I couldn't agree more!
Don't sweat it haha. That's what hanging out here is all about. Hearing interesting new ideas, letting them marinate and becoming better indie makers. Has happened to me here 100x!
I think I'm thinking too much. Sometimes I can't even see the evidence that's in front of my eyes lol
Welcome to the club 😆
🤝
One thing I will add is it is helpful to be on social media platforms like Twitter so you can learn from both fellow creators and your ideal buyers. What are people talking about? What language are they using? What trends and what doesn't? What are people's sentiment around certain areas?
Social media is a good place to get a finger on the pulse if you can cut through the noise!
As a non-participant I've found that to be the most useful in the past. I follow a lot of marketing people on Twitter, so some of their threads have pretty big aha moments for me because it's something I might've not even considered.
Usually a breakdown on a process for some specific marketing task. Example thread from someone I follow: https://twitter.com/matt_lewis97/status/1503310493469007874
I saw another thread which did a really detailed breakdown on how to approach Tiktok influencer marketing and am currently trying to implement a version of their strategy.
Definitely good for discovery!
Thanks for all your precious tips! I created two lists for Indie Hackers (one for creators and one for businesses) so it would be easy to follow great minds!
IH Creators - https://twitter.com/i/lists/1506751491469500427
IH Businesses - https://twitter.com/i/lists/1503884519094464512
So cool! Thanks for posting. Just followed a few folks here.
That's true to a certain extent. My experience with Twitter was the total opposite; I was only seeing content I was not interested in, and it was very hars for me to find interesting and useful insights from other creators/potential leads.
Yeah, the algorithm does its best but usually just fucks things up haha.
With Twitter, you can use lists and manage who you follow to try to get your feed how you want it. When you see garbage in your timeline, take an action (unfollow, hide, etc) instead of scrolling past.
In general, you'll have to sift through a bit of hot garbage to enjoy the diamonds in the rough 💎
That's exactly what I did for months, and I kept seeing my feed filling itself with platitudes such as "A boss gives orders, a leader gives guidance." 😂
I feel like stuff like that became a lot more common after Hypefury became popular (ifykyk)
I didn't know that tool, but let me tell you that it's pure cancer lol
Yeahhhhh. Anything you do, the algorithm is strong enough to dominate.
Biggest problem with Twitter is everybody wants to personalize it to their needs but Twitter's business model is using their algo to force our feeds to change our thinking to be in line with the highest bidder.
Game over, man... 💀
Just by reading this, I'm happy to have left Twitter 😂
I found another hack around that by listing tweets as "latest" and only seeing those.
I also use blackmagic to keep certain people favourited and view their recent Tweets to engage.
But yeah if we're not careful social media will make us run the hedonic treadmill of increasing followers :)
The problem with this strategy is that you'll risk to see more garbage since the latest tweets are unfiltered by the likes 😅
"Latest tweets" does have that risk but I think tweets from favorited people has worked well in my case
Oh yeah, latest "tweets from favorited people" might do the trick!
My company JustSketchMe has social media channels, but they have not been a big contributor to our marketing efforts and have instead been a drain on our time (and resources, when we tried out paid adverts).
We've instead relied on:
And it's been working out pretty well for us :)
Hey Herman,
Without the use of social media or the typical audience-first approach, how did you go about validating that there was a need for your product?
I guess we used social media in the definitive way. I originally built it for myself and got the first users by asking for feedback on an artist subreddit (which is a form of social media). However we never got much traction on our own traditional SM channels (IG/FB/Twitter).
Thanks for the suggestions! I think I'll def have to read articles about SEO in the next weeks!
What kind of content marketing elements do you create? And do you outsource them?
I originally wrote them myself, but have since hired a full time content creator/marketing manager. You can check out our stuff here: https://justsketch.me/learn
Thanks! I like the website design and the music on the videos haha
Thanks :)
One problem I see is that IH is a social media platform. People who are active on social media are obviously more visible than those who aren't which biases the sample. It's the seen Vs. unseen.
That's true to a certain extent. I see more IH as a community because there is cohesiveness here. Most people - that I noticed - are just there to exchange on building/bootstrapping a business. I feel that self-promotion is less a thing here.
Do you have a different feeling? 🤔
I'm not decided honestly.
That's an evolution we have to follow, for sure!
I built a successful six-figure self-publishing company on Amazon. I never used any kind of social media to promote my books (for a period of time I had a rarely updated YouTube channel but it had no impact on book sales). I instead relied on:
Nice! Sounds a great strategy for your industry.
What is the name of your product?
It's not a product, I was simply an independent author publishing my own books.
Oh OK, I understood that this was a service for authors who wanted to self-publish their books
For Simfolio I've been doing a few emails. The app helps investors track their future net worth. So my go to strategy has been emailing YouTube creators and bloggers. I also tried ProductHunt, and that went relatively well!
Nice! Did you go through a network to reach to these creators or did you directly reach out to them?
I directly reached out to them! One of the latest Indie Hackers newsletters "A simple method for landing your first users" really motivated me on this.
Congrats on earning 20 points on the Indie Hackers social network with this heartfelt post! It may get you some followers, too 😄
Thanks! Yes it got me some additional points, I have been on this platform for more than a year now but haven't really participated until now, so I'm trying to contribute 😄 however my followers number hasn't really increased haaha, but that's not really a problem, I don't do it for recognition or self promotion anyway, I am just trying to raise interesting questions and gather information for my own projects as well!
I almost don't make any sales from social media. Social Media is noise and people forget in about 2 seconds what they just read.
Most my sales come through either
I would consider those also social media in a way, but people also use it to directly fins solutions to their problems.
And that's what will make you money. Delivering solutions to problems.
Social Media itself is the problem to be solved 😂
True! I feel like the whole concept of social media has to be rebuilt on new bases, sounder ones!
Do you create your content yourself or do you get help to produce them?
At the moment I produce everything myself. I think when I get to a point where I make enough to support myself I will think about outsourcing some of my work.
For example, I can't stand to post to Instagram. I feel it's like a void, it takes an image or a video... and if that video is not like within the first hour of posting, it is forever gone, so all the work I put in there feels meaningless. Whereas on Twitter I can at least retweet the same tweet at a later point in time.
True! Twitter has at least this advantage!
The time you spend on these social websites. Spend the same amount of time on your personal blog and you can achieve a lot more.
My apps have millions of downloads and not a single install from these social sites. In the early days I wrote about these apps on social sites just to get some social signals.
I don't have have them anymore 😂, that's what I'm telling in my post about why I left social media last week.
What is your app?
I manage marketing for b2b service company in IT space. I know it is not a SaaS but I still think the principles can sometimes be same.
For us, the answer was Google Ads with offline conversion optimization, static webpages that loads very fast, clean design and good copy. Apart from these, we had landing pages that is designed for a specific use case of the product or service - like Stripe or Intercom does, e.g. landing page for chat bot.
I am happy someone finally brings advertising to the table 😂. I am a big fan of ads! As a matter of fact, my current marketing strategy is direct mail; I send copies to potential leads I find on LinkedIn job pages!
When did you start advertising your product? Before or after getting your first customers?
Do you do cold email as well?
Not really... I feel that since it is the main strategy of many companies right now, I don't want to be another spam in my lead's mailbox. So I decided to go with another medium that is less used nowadays, direct mail!
I currently have 6 figure MRR, and haven’t really done anything on social media. I don’t have a Twitter, I post on Facebook and Instagram rarely.
All of my businesses have the usual accounts, but I rarely post on them. I do think social media is valuable, and I wish I could post more. But it’s just not something I’m good at. I’m hoping to hire someone this year, to manage all of that but I honestly don’t think it’ll have a big return.
For us the biggest drivers of growth have been industry specific channels, SEO, and direct sales.
Hey Shane,
Without the use of social media or an audience-driven approach, what is your typical methodology for validating the need for whatever product you are interested in building?
Thanks for sharing your experience! 💫
Indeed, if you haven't used social media actively until now and yet still managed to reach a 6 figure MRR, hiring someone to perform those tasks might not add a great value!
Nice! What is your product if I may ask? What tools do you use for your SEO?
I have always been busy in social and content networks, and did use this to get first users. PH effect has dropped hugely. IH effect is ZERO. In fact, I'm pretty down right now at having announced an AMA in here twice, and in Hackernoon, Twitter, FB, and in a large Discord Server (where I'm the owner) - but got not one soul to attend - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/ama-bootstrapped-a-10-year-company-as-a-non-technical-founder-march-16-10-a-m-jst-6-p-m-pdt-9949d06929
With social and content networks, places to post, etc., be prepared to be disappointed. Post an animated GIF of a dancing hamster and you'll get more likes and shares than the thing you truly need action on - the thing that puts bread on the table.
As for me, as a bootstrapped founder, I believe in picking up the boulders, the pebbles and the dust as well. Social media is the dust for most of us. Or grow tits. Lead with the tits and sell whatever you like. This is the world we live in, it's the way it is.
Hey Saul! Thanks for your comment!
For your AMA, I think the biggest problem is something that people have to attend. I think you would have had better success with it if you had directly posted it as a thread on Indie Hackers, I've seen plenty people doing it here, with great results!
I totally agree on your second post, when you apply it to Product Hunt! What I don't like with PH is that they set rules that they don't follow themselves.
They have said that no list products, no not-innovative products and countless other ones were not welcome on the platform; I've seen them all reaching the top 5 of the day - and even the top 5 of the weeks in some cases. I don't mean to be harsh, but what products like a list of countries without Trump, plugins to ban russian users and happy faces stickers have to do there?
Thanks for that. "Thread" - sorry, I don't understand this.
Product Hunt: it's an old-boys network; who they think you are means everything, not the significance of what you've built.
My favorite PH Hunt:
My 6-year-old daughter got a set of watercolors for her birthday. She's thinking about making a book of her watercolor masterpieces. Pre-order it here..
"Discussion" I meant 💬
True, and there's even something that reinforces that. Some say that you'll perform better on PH when you have an audience. But the point of such a platform for me - and for others as well, as seen on IH - is to help people who might not have a big audience to get some promotion and a spotlight for their product! That is nonsense to me.
Classic 😂
Of course you can - I used to run a blog that hit some decent revenue numbers without putting much effort into Social Media.
I built it all on SEO which doesn't require any social activity.
Hey, thanks for sharing your experience!
What tools do you use for your SEO? Do you outsource this process?
Well my site was just a simple WordPress blog so I used YOAST to help with the SEO tasks. I also focused heavily on questions my community was asking in forums etc.
For SEO I'd recommend the SEO newsletter that @RobertoDigital puts together - https://rankmakers.net/ lots of great tips and tricks and answers to the common SEO questions 😀
Never outsourced it as I didn't need to at the time
Hey Max! Thanks for mentioning my newsletter 🙌
Thanks! I will have a look at your suggestions!
I have a community of entrepreneurs called Wbe Space and I have to say that most of my members come from twitter or IH. I don't know how would I do it without it....
Yes of course, if your audience is there, there's no other way to do it!
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Do you have any suggestions for how to validate the need for a product without consulting with an audience?
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Awesome advice, when you say a display campaign do you mean a landing page?
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Yeah I read countless articles/posts suggesting this technique... but I think it can be negative, because if you're like me, you just leave the page without joining the waitlist 😂
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I didn't dare to say it... thanks 😂
What would you recommend in addition to the landing page? Would it be too early to have a hosted MVP?
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👌
Agree!!!! Social media is a relatively new concept in the history of commerce. However, before all this internet businesses thing started, every business had a physical presence. Their promotion often revolved only around Place - amongst the 4 Ps of marketing; their showcase was basically their website.
As a matter of fact, I think for most newcomers in the internet business, social media is the only medium to get their voice outta here. I am talking about them, but I can include me in the discussion as well; my online businesses have not been profitable yet, but I'm working on that!
What is your personal strategy to promote your products - since I learned you are in fact a serial maker! - and how do you manage to successfully find your users? It might sound like a stupid question like this, but I think for most people it's still a bit complicated to figure it out 🌍
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It's good to have some fun too when we're building. Although it can quickly become a bit too much to handle 😅
Agree! This is nothing like random promotion. Plus I kinda like advertising - when it's done well!