Tools for building in public

Yuri Lisin
23 replies
I wonder, what are the tools that allow you to achieve the greatest effect from building in public 🤔 Except for twitter:)

Replies

Greatest Effect from Building in public - I think that's tough to really quantify. But I'd suggest the following from what I've seen: Join some relevant communities - as already said lots of discords out there. Platforms like Indie Hackers and Open Makers have options to share project milestones/updates
Yuri Lisin
@maxwellcdavis for the gaining part agree, twitter it is
Yuri Lisin
@maxwellcdavis Thanks! Haven't heard of Open Makers, will check that out. Well yes, greatest effect from bip sounds abstract indeed, I actually meant any available tooling to gain audience, share progress, cultivate supporters etc.
@yuryfication the tricky bit is gaining the audience by using the tools - Twitter seems to be the most effective by far
Sneha Saigal
@maxwellcdavis @yuryfication I'd also add slack channels and communities to this list!
Yuri Lisin
@maxwellcdavis @sneha_saigal Haven't been looking much towards Slack communities so far, thanks for the tip
Sergio Zaciu
I see tons of teams using discord: direct access to devs, quick feedback, and a place to grow community early. Are you more interested in building in public, or in the open for your community? for the latter, we’ve kept a whatsapp group going for the past year with our first alpha testers, and it’s where they’re more comfortable giving us feedback. 1:1 conversation is still the most honest and intimate, so signaling that there's someone on the team that anyone can DM helps!
Yuri Lisin
@szaciu I guess I'm interested in both:) Your whatsapp group sounds great, would love to check it out, could you share a link pls?
Sergio Zaciu
@yuryfication i don't want to post the link publicly out of respect to those alpha users (this is the smallest cohort we have; my closest friends who were willing to put up with a super unreliable product in its earliest stages). Hope you understand. But you can imagine that the conversations are much more friendly and casual than larger chats you might find on Discord/Slack. As CMO I get on 1:1 calls on an almost-daily basis. No matter how many surveys or chats I create, a 1:1 is the only way to really dissect what a user is thinking but perhaps unable to articulate (oftentimes feedback doesn't point you to the solution, but is a discussion of symptoms that are 1-degree of separation from what the user is talking about)
Yuri Lisin
@szaciu Also, for 1:1 feedback / conversation it is Shapr that works good for me. It's like Tinder for business, but not that lame as it may sound:)
Fabian Maume
In addition to Twitter, indie hackers and medium could be nice places to share your progress. Medium tag for build-in-public is quite active: https://medium.com/tag/build-in-...
Shem Leong
@fabian_maume Thanks for sharing the tag. Does medium still distribute content well anymore?
Kazimieras Melaika
We're still working on our product right now but I try to stay up to date with Medium. Many people post their progress and opinions there. It's pretty good too. Btw, we’re launching in late April or the start of May. Check out our upcoming PH page: www.producthunt.com/upcoming/eff... Our project is called: Effecto. It’s an app for detailed health tracking. Pretty much for everything that is related to your physical or mental health and every daily factor that can affect you.
Yuri Lisin
@kmelaika Are you satisfied with your traction on Medium? Does the platform show your article to those people who are interested in building a public, or is the targeting wider? Effecto looks interesting, good luck with the upcoming launch!
Sneha Saigal
@kmelaika Will definitely check Effecto out. It sounds super interesting! Curious to know how you chose Medium? Do you have a content strategy in place for blogs etc.?
Dylan Merideth
indie hacker, stack overflow, github, gonna say twitter again even though its redundant
Arun Pariyar
I feel that makers use discord/slack, product hunt and indiehackers and a website for info sharing. Of course not everyone is using all of these but certainly two or more at once... that what I have seen.
Yuri Lisin
@arunpariyar that’s also what I have seen so far