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I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

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Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#21

Post by jondwillis »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #10
jondwillis wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Organic” The post screenshots in those links are… uh.. hey I look forward to all of the free time everyone will have to do more productive things than “organically” shill for attention on behalf of commercial interests.

It's just an industry term with a particular meaning. You don't need to rage at me about people getting paid for doing ad work because you don't like the jargon and don't like marketing. People who do UGC work get paid enough to not have to work full-time if they don't want to, giving them more time for other things in life than most jobs. Typical jobs care more about exclusivity over your entire working day than the…

Not raging at you, the term is newspeak, obfuscatory, slapped on top of antisocial behavior.

It’s better that profits are shared than fixed. But that doesn’t change the underlying system and incentives towards dishonesty.

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#22

Post by righthand »

alexchantavy wrote: post #14

I didn’t know people used Insta for b2b outbound like LinkedIn haha. > Build it and they will come is a fallacy. You have to tell people about the damn thing. Great lesson for engineering types

I think the hidden lesson in Field of Dreams is that “they will come” happens because of word of mouth. Shoeless Joe Jackson tells the other dead baseball players to come hang out. The townsfolk tell about baseball field to save the farm.

But really “build it and they will come” in product development is pitched as if “they will come” because they are searching for it. Which is not really true if people don’t know your thing exists.

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#23

Post by spike021 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #18
spike021 wrote: post #15

I recently made a small game for iOS/macOS and basically every non-development part of the process between setting up the App Store stuff and trying to promote it have been a lot more work than I expected. Not even including the game design, which is really separate from the actual game development.

Have you noticed the different roles that make up successful small businesses? You must anticipate and learn to wear several hats in turn if you're doing it alone

It's one of those things where I intuitively understand the roles when it comes to my normal job, but in doing this as a side project I foolishly thought it'd be more straightforward.

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#24

Post by rdrd »

As a solo/indie dev who's currently early in building a product, I've been keeping a journal of "ideas" for content in a txt file in the codebase as I hate context switching and want to build this up before I get to it.

Here's what I've done:

- At the top of the file I've listed my audience, 3 personas

- My content has to be useful to one of those

- If I see an interesting post/take on social media I hold the link and write an idea for my own spin/take (takes 30 seconds) - log it

- If I have a problem/issue that I resolve that would be useful to my audience - log it

- If I have a key product/design/UX choice that took some time to think through - log it

- If something takes me much longer than I thought because there's more to it (iceberge effect) - log it

I've been doing this for about 6 weeks now and I've got 100 ideas for pieces of content.

One of the best pieces of advice I read is that when you're solo, many times people/community rally around you. You are the product too so you have to share what you're doing, it's interesting to many, not just your customers. They care about the advice you give, the input you have, the way you build things. You are a subject matter expert in this domain, so you should structure your content with this in mind.

"You escape competition through authenticity." - @naval

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#25

Post by wahnfrieden »

spike021 wrote: post #23
wahnfrieden wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed the different roles that make up successful small businesses? You must anticipate and learn to wear several hats in turn if you're doing it alone

It's one of those things where I intuitively understand the roles when it comes to my normal job, but in doing this as a side project I foolishly thought it'd be more straightforward.

We get used to peers across different roles doing their work for us and mostly unseen, at day jobs

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#26

Post by Msurrow »

johannesberlin wrote: post #7

I’m surprised the owner of Lagree didn’t sue you for the name of the app, he’s notorious for that. I also recommend hiring smaller creators, they can be amazing if it’s the right person

Recommendations on where to find them?

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#27

Post by antoniojtorres »

tacticalturtle wrote: post #12
joeconway wrote: post #2

For anyone like me that’s never heard of Lagree before https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lagree-buddy-wrist-metronome/i...

From his website, I learned that he is a “VISIONAIRE, INVENTOR, and PHILANTROPIST (sic)”: https://www.sebastienlagree.com/

Maybe this is the final form of someone that permanently leaves xcode to market. Wow.

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#28

Post by klabb3 »

jondwillis wrote: post #21
wahnfrieden wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just an industry term with a particular meaning. You don't need to rage at me about people getting paid for doing ad work because you don't like the jargon and don't like marketing. People who do UGC work get paid enough to not have to work full-time if they don't want to, giving them more time for other things in life than most jobs. Typical jobs care more about exclusivity over your entire working day than the…

Not raging at you, the term is newspeak, obfuscatory, slapped on top of antisocial behavior. It’s better that profits are shared than fixed. But that doesn’t change the underlying system and incentives towards dishonesty.

100% agree. Plus ”organic” is an important term that has real meaning when you try to grow a product. Diluting it with paid advertisement just makes it harder to communicate clearly. Plus we already have a word for it, paid sponsorship.

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#29

Post by all2 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #17
paulcole wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineer does 40 outreaches in a week and says the results are “not that amazing” lol. If I said that I coded for 15 minutes a day for a week and wasn’t impressed by the results, what would an engineer say?

I do 40 personalized outreaches in two hours. Edit: I shared a couple details in my other reply under this post

It sounds like you have a system. Is it effective for you? What does your system look like?

Re: I forced myself to spend a week in Instagram instead of Xcode

#30

Post by nesk_ »

fsckboy wrote: post #16

TL;DR if you don't know who Sebastian Lagree is (my LA gf said "the pilates guy?") then don't read this.

I didn't know who he is and still found this blog post really interesting because the real topic is about marketing your app when you're a software developer.
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