Which social media strategy worked best for selling your product? On which platforms?
Throughout the years in marketing, I’ve witnessed many different approaches to how people use social media to sell a product (or themselves).
It always depends on the final customer; I can clearly see that companies usually bet on a few things:
– their personal brand (often LinkedIn and X, e.g. Levelsio and Marc Lou for B2B, or Instagram in the case of influencers and their products)
– purely paid ads (across Meta e.g. minimalist phone, where there is almost no organic content)
– community-driven growth (Discord, Reddit, Facebook groups, Slack communities, etc.)
Social media are not completely free (we are the product), but in terms of being visible and creating a way to reach users, it is one of the ways.
How did your brand/company position itself, and what strategy worked the best for you?
Don't forget to name effective platforms too.
Replies
For early B2B/founder-led products, I’ve seen the best results from treating social as a learning channel before a conversion channel. LinkedIn/X can be good for packaging a point of view, but the useful signal often comes from communities where people describe the problem in their own messy language: Product Hunt comments, Reddit threads, niche Slack/Discord groups, founder communities, etc.
The mistake is posting polished launch copy everywhere and calling it distribution. I’d rather do a few specific comments/questions, save the exact objections and phrases, then turn those into homepage copy, docs, emails, and later founder posts.
So the “platform that worked” is usually the one where the team actually learned what buyers were already trying to say.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jim_jeffers It is a fact that 2 or 3 days ago I saw a guy who copy pasted the same comment containing the name of his product. Definitely not a way to do marketing in 2026.
Exactly. The copy-paste thing usually reads like the person skipped the conversation entirely.
The better version is almost the opposite: comment only when you can add something specific, and let the product name show up later only if it’s genuinely the clearest example. Slower, but it compounds into reputation instead of burning it.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@jim_jeffers That's why I stick to the rule – when you do not have anything to say – don't comment on it.
@jim_jeffers The learning before converting framing is exactly right. The best early distribution I've seen is founders who spend weeks in communities just listening, then when they do post it reads like a genuine member not a marketer.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@amm8 Can you please elaborate on what you post on TikTok that gets attention? + How you approach Reddit? I do not get these two :D
For me, the most useful channel depends on how much context the product needs before people understand the value. If it’s simple and visual, Meta or TikTok can work well. If it needs trust, explanation, or a workflow change, I think LinkedIn, X, Reddit, and communities work better because you can educate, listen, and build credibility before asking people to buy.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@alpertayfurr LinkedIn is cool but it totally changed the rules of posting. Now, I am trying to fight the algo!
Shram
timely thread for me. couple weeks back my very first move on reddit was dropping my product link in a thread where someone had the exact problem i solve. felt helpful. mod removed it in minutes. turns out a newish account showing up only to post a link is the most obvious spam signal there is, doesnt matter how relevant it is. switched to just answering questions in those subs with no link at all. slower, but the comments actually survive now. the 'read like a member not a marketer' point is the whole thing. one bit id add: a lot depends on whether your product sounds fine or sounds a bit creepy on first hearing. mine touches personal data, so people are right to be cautious, and for that kind of thing communities are the only channel that works. you have to have the trust conversation before the value one, and an ad cant do that
reddit has been the best channel for us honestly. not posting links or self-promoting but actually being in the communities where our users hang out and being useful. the traffic is slower than paid ads but the people who come through reddit already trust you because they saw you being a real person first. paid meta ads work too but the cost keeps going up and the quality keeps going down. community first, paid second is what's worked best for us
I started with Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn because they were the most familiar to me. My goal was to learn about my audience (those are the channels most used by them). Once I started to understand the type of content that resonated (judged by engagement with the posts and clicks to the website), I expanded to LinkedIn, Substack, PH, Reddit, and other places where D2C/e-commerce founders and small teams are. So far, Instagram and Substack drive the most traffic, but community groups have given more paying users.
For me it was Upwork first and now LinkedIn.
Upwork served for a while, got some real good clients but then it stalls for long periods of time.
LinkedIn worked best as I built my personal brand. More people got interested and I was not even selling actively. Just original, authentic honest content going out on personal branding. Oh and client referrals... that holds majority of the credit.