How to stay active on Twitter, Reddit, HN, IH, and PH?
As a tech founder, there are:
- HN
- PH
- IH
How the hell does one stay active on all these and get time to do anything else?
Do you just repost the same content everywhere? Is there any real benefit from joining and investing time into these communities?
I try to post everywhere, but there's no real strategy for which post goes where. Sometimes I recycle, and sometimes I don't. It's all time-consuming and seems a bit overkill. There has to be a better way to truly be engaged in an online community without the crazy effort and juggling going on.
If you're just starting out, choose one. Which one will really depend on who you're targeting but don't over-exert yourself initially.
Reddit and HN are not really into self promotion so be careful about being overly aggressive as you may find it backfires.
PH is okay but it's too superficial for my liking honestly. I'm not a huge fan of the community aspect.
Twitter is good but it can feel like shouting into a void until you get that initial traction.
Honestly, it's all starting to blur. The thing is, it's starting to feel like a waste of time.
My goal is not to self-promote or to sell anything in these communities at the end of the day. But I'm always seeing these subtle posts where someone puts something interesting or documents their journey, but there's a feeling that the real goal of it is to drive traffic.
Like you said, "superficial" is a feeling you get from PH, but across all of these forums for me. I'm now actively exploring an alternative.
You are 100% correct in that assumption. I used to come here a lot more than I do now and it's because, after a while, it's just so transparent. People aren't out to help each other so much as they are trying to monetize each other.
I haven't found a community that is about people helping each other but I have been told good things about smaller communities such as https://www.ramenclub.so/ or https://www.highsignal.io/community. The caveat is that they're not free but I think that's a feature not a bug.
That's very interesting. I actually just started organizing a YC style group of 10 founders that I meet with. and the goal is to get to PMF in three months and we'll do it in batches. Each batch is 10 people and only by invite can people join a new batch. Meaning only someone we know can vouch for them. So far so GREAT.
Similar to ramen club and high signal but localized with friends.
That's almost certainly the best way to approach it. Communities like IH and PH are too big and therefore appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Best of luck!
That sounds like an interesting format, whereabouts are you doing it?
We (as in Ramen Club) do IRL founder coworking in London (UK) specifically, but exploring doing it in other European cities.
hey @charlierward 👋, I do this in Detroit, Michigan. We have people remote as well.
Great insight. Thank you!
You're most welcome!
Twitter is a great place to post your content, but you have to be really careful about the timing. If you post at the wrong time, no one will see it.
Reddit is a great option for getting more exposure and engagement on your content, but it can be tricky to find the right niche/subreddit. You'll want to do some research on what kind of posts already get traction on that subreddit before posting yourself!
HN is also a good option for sharing your content—you should try posting at different times of day and see what works best for you!
Actually Mustafa, I've been following you for a while, you're incredibly active. It seems like you enjoy it too. I personally don't. I post every so often to get ideas and hopefully get meaningful conversations and connections. But I have to say, I don't enjoy it 😆
My experience is that posting makes me feel more connected with other people and helps me stay inspired when I'm working on projects.
Can you tell how to time the tweets?
You can analyze your followers and then find their active times.
Thanks.
If I'm mindlessly scrolling all day long I eventually get nothing done, so I set min/max goals for myself: at least once I day I spend no more than an hour going through all the platforms I want to check, from Reddit to IH, Discord and Slack communities.
I also try to carefully curate what I check - so for some that might mean just the front page, or just the top posts of the day.
Is it just me, or does you feel like these platforms have become more of a problem than a solution? So much so that you have to put limits and monitor and 🤯
Oh, definitely. My default mode is overconsumption, without any limits I'd be wasting so much time it's unbelievable.
I think if you find the right audience on one of them double down on that 'channel'! I'd start of posting on a few and then specialize.
reddit seems awfully hard to me to find the right sub. How do people find the right one?
Yes i've been finding this difficult too. Interested in any suggestions from the community
An easy way is to write about your journey: setbacks, difficulties, strategies, little wins, etc.
People love such things. What people hate is when you continuously try to sell something.
I bounce between them but focus on Twitter because is where I keep my personal communication. So doing some work also for my company is a bit easier.
Notifications are helpful.
Every platform has its own vocabulary and rules and what I found is that some of them are more energy demanding.
A suggestion that I can provide—that I'm trying to follow—is to choose the platforms that are easier for you to use. The others can be just a "placeholder".
Thanks for the input. They do get energy-draining at some point. And they can easily take a lot of your time.
I was very active on Twitter for 6 months. I posted daily content. Useful content, not only recycled hype content.
I gained around 2500 Followers and had pretty good engagement. At one point, something changed and my Tweets did not get any attention. I lost almost all visibility, without any reason. I pushed through this phase and suddenly, my content got shown to a completely wrong target group.
I started Twitter to promote my product era.sh. It's a markdown note-taking tool for developers, so our target group is pretty niche. Software Developers, Engineers with an IT Background.
As I could not get it back on rails, and all my clicks came from people (Indian and African NFT Artists, Musicians and non-tech related industries), which would never buy my product, I stopped investing more time into Twitter.
Has anyone experienced the same?
Any Ideas how I could get back on rails?
Thanks for sharing the experience. I think, to be completely honest, it's not a good strategy to share knowledge on these sites for hopes of driving traffic or selling things. I actually had the top posts in almost every platform I mentioned for a while. Selling based on your presence in a platform is more of an "influencer" job than a real marketing job. I think many of us read some stupid post artificially upped by SEO optimization about posting and being active. The conclusion I'm reaching is that this is not the way. Some good things may come out of it, but for a serious person working fully and dedicated to a startup, all the above are not great options. My humble opinion
I have a daily todo list. Checking things regularly is a big part of my daily routine.
Does it ever feel too much for you to handle?
Of course! :)
I try to stick to my routine as much as possible, but I also have days when I say "f*ck it, not today". Trying to stick to the routine no matter what is way too stressful.
Yep. I have to research, make content, market it on these platforms, keep posting and build a following....it gets hectic!
At some point, I thought about building a bot to do it for me lol.
be genuine on these platform. Make comment and replies on daily basis. Put your self in discussions. It will helps you alot.
the most important moment here is not the platform, but your message.
you should try to develop a certain authentic perspective/insights/voice. it will help you to figure out why people should follow you and then you need to put some effort into content delivering this message. depending on the content you can choose one first channel helping to deliver the message.
Good input. I think many platforms try to solve this. IH for example only allows you to post after you've commented for a while. But I'm starting to really veer towards being less active on online platforms and more of a way to simply share thoughts with others who might find it helpful. Or maybe start a personal blog like PG.
it's not just about being active: you can find first customers, twitter for example is great for DMs (HR, fundraise), etc. so don't give up, btw you can try starting this with a platform like tweethunter.io using GPT-3 to generate content
Do you use tweethunter.io and how was your experience?