Making content is connection.

I used to think building something good was enough. Ship it, share it once, let it speak for itself but actually that's not how it works.

Nobody's waiting for you so I discovered you have to go to them.

Going to Them

For me, going to them looked like posting in a teacher subreddit about a classroom tool I'd been building. It was more like a conversation starter post about challenges they are having in their classroom and something funny they could relate to. I found that launching to Reddit is kinda painful for them and for you. They immediately shut you down or downvote you.

The first post got 87k impressions. I think because I made a voice note then transcribed it and posted it like that. I was in their space, talking about their problem, as one of them, a teacher who got frustrated enough to build something. That was a conversation starter in a space where people already had the frustration I was building for. So they didn't feel so wary about me marketing to them.

I'd posted more professional content before where it was structured, clean and had a proper CTA. It flopped big time and one of the posts got called out in the comments as ChatGPT content. And that was tiring and draining. Then the next post was more real and it changed how the readers saw it.

What Actually Connects

Here's what I think actually happens when something connects. Instead of broadcasting to crickets, you're showing up somewhere specific, as a specific person, with a problem you both recognize. The teacher subreddit was a room full of people who already had the frustration I was building for. That was very relatable and it was so interesting to read the comments and their frustrations and to basically just chat with teachers in a fun non-marketing way.

Why Builders Wait

Builders struggle with this because we're comfortable in the work. Showing up in communities, being visible and saying please look at my project. It feels exposing. Presumptuous, almost. So we ship and post the link and wait. And wonder why nothing happens.

But there's a difference between posting at people and actually going to them.

Posting at people: here is my thing, please notice it. It can be well-written, well-designed and correctly optimized but at the end of the day it still won't matter. You're asking strangers to care before you've given them any reason to.

Going to them: here's the problem I'm working on, here's what I tried, does this sound familiar? In this way, it's more like a conversation as opposed to a pitch.

The 87k wasn't impressive because it went viral. It was just me talking about a real problem in a community that had it.

Be Somewhere Real

When people say "be authentic," they mostly mean don't be a brand. Which is good advice but it's not the whole thing. You can be authentic in a vacuum and still miss. The other half is being somewhere real.

Less broadcasting (which is what most social media trains you to do) and more showing up in a community that already has the problem you're solving. Reddit. Discord. A niche forum. A comment thread where the conversation is already happening.

Your content is how you enter that conversation. If you do it right, it doesn't feel like content at all. It feels like something someone said that was actually worth saying.

The Pattern

I don't know in advance which posts will land because that's not something you can engineer (well, in a way). But I know the pattern of the ones that don't: written for an imaginary general audience, polished and pointed nowhere in particular.

The ones that do? They're targeted at a specific community. A problem I actually have. Me showing up as a person instead of as a generic AI-generated post. By the way, AI can be a tool and a helpful tool, but posting on social media needs the human touch. Content is a great distribution mechanism, and it's also how you connect with your people and your customers.

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