Before a build-in-public post, decide what the reader should do next: discuss the problem, ask for the next release, or try the product. Then show the piece of work that makes that action worthwhile.
Three historical founder and community accounts make the differences concrete. The useful comparison is their starting audience, what they shared, and where an interested person could go.
Contents
What do you need from this post?
- Understand a problem
- Share the question in the feed and make a reply easy. Record the situations, language, and constraints people describe.
- Find people for the next version
- Show what exists now and give people a clear way to request a later invitation. Keep that request somewhere you can act on.
- Find out whether the product helps
- Link a usable version and name the task to try. Follow what happens in the product, including failed attempts and questions.
A single post can lead to more than one action. Choose one primary question so you know which result to examine afterward.
June 2020 · community account
1. Rosie Sherry made the discussion useful inside Twitter
In her account of running Indie Hackers' Twitter presence, Rosie Sherry describes using forum questions, summaries, and member stories as material. The account already had more than 20,000 followers when she began. She chose not to track clicks, traffic, or conversions.
Here, the material was an existing community's questions and knowledge. The next step often happened in the feed: answer, contribute an experience, or discover another member.
What to borrow
If your goal is to understand how people do the work, ask a question they can answer from their day. An answer in the thread can be the useful result; putting every exchange behind an email form would interrupt that job.
November 2022 · founder retrospective
2. Victor sent the notes before making the follow-up request clear
In his 30-day challenge retrospective, Victor reports a launch post with more than 2,000 comments. He says he sent people directly to a Notion page, bypassing an email-capture page, and regarded that as a mistake. He also says he later changed the approach and links a waiting list for the product's V1.
The relevant mismatch is between access to the notes and a request to hear about a future product. Opening a document completes the first action; it does not by itself record the second.
What to change
Keep the preview useful, then make the release invitation explicit. A comment count is not a list of people who asked for an email. This account's revenue statements conflict, so the case below uses the documented handoff rather than a conversion-rate calculation.
What would you need before borrowing each approach?
- Community questions
- You need access to people who do the work and a question worth discussing. Sherry had a substantial community already supplying material. A new founder can start with a smaller relevant group, but should first establish that the problem is being discussed.
- A release invitation
- You need a useful preview and somewhere to keep explicit requests for the next version. The reader should understand what signing up will bring.
- A shareable product result
- You need a usable product and a result users may want to show. If the result is still unavailable, a founder's promise cannot stand in for the customer example.
For a product with no users, the first two approaches are usually the available choices: learn how people handle the task or invite a small group to try what exists. Customer-result sharing becomes an option after somebody has a result.
A clearer invitation for the Notion case
Here is an editorial reconstruction for Victor's 2022 situation. It was written from the retrospective and was not his published post.
- What the reader receives now
- The current notes. The invitation does not make a future product sound already finished.
- What the sign-up means
- A request for a V1 invitation. Readers can distinguish that from commenting or opening the notes.
- What the founder must do
- Keep the requests and send the promised next step. A form alone does not complete the handoff.
I'm turning the processes and resources from this build-in-public challenge into a Notion product. You can read the current notes here. If you want an invitation when V1 is ready, join the release list. That is where I'll send the next product step.
Use the same separation in your own post: what can someone inspect now, what can they ask for next, and where will you retain that request?
Write down the stage you actually observed
The Victor case can be recorded without inventing a funnel. The source reports many comments and a direct Notion handoff. It does not give a reliable table of post viewers, unique visitors, release requests, and purchases.
- Attention
- Record the source post and the response that is available. In this case, the comment figure is the founder's report, not a unique-person count.
- Interest
- Keep actual questions and requests. Do not count every reaction as intent to try or buy.
- Requested next step
- Record explicit access or release requests in the place you will use to follow up. Leave the number unknown when the source does not provide it.
- Product action
- Record whether invited people tried the task, where they stopped, and what they asked. Add payment or retention later when those are relevant to the question.
Post URL and date: Who the post is for: Work shown: Primary invitation: Where requests are kept: Observed next action: Unknowns: Product or invitation change to make:
If you get conversation but few requests, inspect the invitation. If people request access but cannot complete the task, inspect the product handoff. If the people responding do not have the problem, change where you look for the discussion.
Finish one post plan before adding a cadence
Choose one actual artifact: a short demo, a decision with its constraint, or a question from the work. Name the person who can respond and one primary next step. Open that next step yourself and check that it delivers what the post offers.
To find the problem language, use public X search or conversations you already have a link to. If the useful discussion happens in a different community, take the question there.
You now have a post, an invitation you can fulfill, and a record for the result. Publish the next contribution when the work or the answers give you something new to show.