Building in Public to Attract Users: A Practical Guide

Building in public has become the default advice for indie hackers, which means most people are doing it wrong. They interpret it as tweeting “I launched a thing!” or posting revenue screenshots every month. That’s not building in public — that’s broadcasting. It attracts followers who want to feel inspired. It doesn’t reliably attract users.

The version that actually drives user acquisition looks different. It’s specific, consistent, and designed to reach people who have the exact problem you’re solving. Here’s how to do it right.

Building in Public Isn’t Just Tweeting Progress

The most useful frame: building in public is content marketing where the content is your product journey.

When you share a specific challenge you ran into — “our onboarding drop-off rate was 67% because users didn’t understand what to do after signup, so we added a checklist and it dropped to 41%” — you’re doing two things simultaneously. You’re showing expertise in the problem space, and you’re creating content that people searching for “how to improve onboarding” might find, read, and share.

Generic progress updates (“week 14, still building!”) don’t do this. They give people no reason to care unless they already know and like you. Specific, problem-focused updates attract the people who have that exact problem.

This is the distinction that separates building in public as a vanity exercise from building in public as a user acquisition channel. Every update you share should make your target user think “this person understands my problem.” If it doesn’t, it’s not working for acquisition — it’s just diary-keeping.

What to Share (And What to Keep Private)

Share things that demonstrate you understand the problem space deeply. This includes:

Mistakes and course corrections. “We thought users wanted X but they actually wanted Y” is one of the highest-performing categories of content. It’s honest, it’s instructive, and it signals that you talk to users and actually listen.

Specific numbers. Not necessarily revenue if you’re not comfortable with that. But “we went from 12 to 31 active users this month” or “average session length jumped from 4 minutes to 11 minutes after we changed the onboarding flow” — concrete numbers make updates believable and shareable.

Decisions and the reasoning behind them. “We decided to cut the free plan because 90% of free users never converted and support was eating 6 hours a week” is more valuable than “we updated our pricing.” Walking through the decision shows how you think, which builds trust.

Problems you’re currently stuck on. Asking for help publicly is underused. “We’re trying to figure out how to reduce churn from the 30-day mark — has anyone solved this?” gets responses and signals that you’re engaged and learning.

Keep private: things that would undermine trust if competitors or users saw them before you’re ready. Pre-announcement pricing changes, internal disagreements with co-founders, or details about a feature you might cancel.

Where to Build in Public

Pick one or two platforms and go deep rather than spreading thin.

Twitter/X is the highest-signal channel for indie hacker audiences. Short updates, threads, and honest takes perform well. The downside is the algorithm changes constantly and reach is unpredictable. Start here if your audience is founders, developers, or creators.

Indie Hackers is the most concentrated community for product builders. The platform actively surfaces people doing updates. Indie Hackers milestone posts (“I hit $1k MRR”) regularly drive hundreds of profile views and meaningful backlinks. Use it for weekly or monthly posts rather than daily.

LinkedIn performs surprisingly well for B2B founders. If your product serves professionals — marketers, operations teams, HR — LinkedIn posts about real business challenges and solutions can reach exactly the right audience. The engagement rates are often higher than Twitter for B2B.

Newsletter is underrated as a building-in-public channel. A weekly or biweekly update email to subscribers who opted in is a direct line to your most interested audience. Lower volume than social media, much higher conversion rate.

Check out the full breakdown of free marketing channels to understand how building in public fits into a broader strategy alongside SEO and community engagement.

If this is the kind of thing you want more of, the Struggling Entrepreneur newsletter covers it every week.

Converting Followers to Users

This is where most building-in-public efforts fall short. You accumulate followers, get consistent engagement, and still have nobody in the product. The conversion step requires deliberate action.

The most effective approach: create specific content that bridges the gap between “interested in your journey” and “interested in your product.” Share a before/after story about a user. Post a short video or GIF of the product solving the exact problem you’ve been talking about. Write a thread that walks through the exact workflow your product enables.

Every few weeks, make a direct invitation. Not a hard sell — a low-friction ask. “We’re opening 10 beta spots for [target user type] — if this problem sounds familiar, here’s the link.” People who’ve been following your journey are already warm. They just need a specific moment to convert.

Respond to every comment and reply, especially early. Building in public is a two-way channel. When someone engages with your update, that conversation is visible to everyone else who follows you. A founder who responds thoughtfully to questions comes across as approachable and trustworthy — both of which matter when you’re asking people to try something new.

Track which types of posts drive signups, not just engagement. Likes and retweets are vanity metrics at this stage. What matters is: did someone sign up after reading this? You can track this roughly by looking at signup spikes after specific posts. Over time, you’ll see patterns. Double down on what converts, not what entertains.

The timeline expectation: building in public rarely produces meaningful inbound before month 3-4. The founders who stick with it past month 6 consistently describe it as one of their most valuable channels. The ones who quit after 6 weeks say it doesn’t work. Patience is the main variable.