The Big Picture (#BuildInTheOpen)
by codeconfessionsIt's tempting to start coding. But I find taking a step back and considering the core problems helpful. Anticipating pain points guides the solution design.
Chicken and Egg
How do I build a network of guests and podcasters from zero podcasters and zero guests? Without guests, why would podcasters sign up? Without podcasts, why guests?
I'll need 50 guest profiles for the site to have value.
I'll have to swallow my fear of networking and ask for help. I'll reach out to 50 previous podcast guests and ask permission to create a profile on their behalf. I'll base the profile on past guest biographies from podcasts.
I'll do the same for 10 podcasts.
Guests can take control of these profiles by logging in with an OAuth provider that proves ownership of an associated Twitter account or email address.
I can also ask podcasters and guests to mention that they connected through coders.fm.
Once I have 50 guests, I will use content to keep the funnel flowing. My target demographic loves technical podcasts. A few well-authored and relevant articles like "Top 10 JavaScript episodes for new developers." are in order. Each post will end with a call to action. For example, "Want to join the conversation? Be a guest on a JavaScript podcast."
This has implications for the technical design. SEO requires clean HTML (canonical tags, only one H1, etc.) and usually server-side rendering.
Engagement
I want users to engage with the site once a month. The key to engagement is timely, relevant, and personalized updates.
For podcasters, I can have a monthly stats update:
- Number of new guests since the last login by the podcaster
- Number of times the podcast's profile page was viewed
- A "top match" guest profile that would match the podcast
- Success story of connections made through coders.fm
Similarly for guests:
- Number of times the guest appeared in search results
- Number of times a guest's profile was viewed
- Number of connections made to date
I also need to connect at an emotional level. To do this, I'll have featured connection stories (with permission from the podcast and guest). As the site builds history, I can include career success stories for guests.
The technical implication is to capture stats from day one. I know from experience constant small writes bog down a site. I will create a separate API endpoint dedicated to collecting stats and funnel them into a queue. An Azure function will parse the queue and update the database once every 10 minutes.
Discovery.
Guest discovery is coder.fm's value proposition. A search must be fast, accurate, and deliver rich results.
I need a solid technical search solution and compelling data to search on.
I have to ask the right amount of questions at signup. If I ask too much, users drop.
coders.fm will ask only for biography at signup and follow signup with prompts to enrich data. Think LinkedIn.
If I ask interesting questions, I'll get better answers.
For example:
- what are some questions an interviewer can ask you about?
- what topics would you like to speak on?
- what would make your interview particularly interesting?
- On your most recent project, what technology did you use?
- what was your favorite part about using this technology?
- what challenges did you face with the technology?
Another way to guide profiles to good content is by example. In my last update, I mentioned Stealing with Pride. In this spirit, I love how IndieHackers prefills business milestones with examples. It's genius. I'll apply a similar idea to profiles. I also will leverage the minimum post idea IndieHacker uses to encourage rich data.
Writing search from scratch is hard. I'll want to leverage a service. Since I'm on Azure, Azure Cognitive Search is the most straightforward. Azure Cognitive Search has connectivity to data sources and autocomplete out of the box.
Conclusion
It's time to define the MVP. Next time I'll share my MVP feature list. And then maybe I'll actually build something ; )
