Marketing for indie hackers #1

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Many engineering types/developers (Myself included) don't like the marketing side of building a business. Although I'm not an expert here are some things I've learned in my short journey so far with some good books/resources for getting started. 👇

Start small Any time you're learning a new skill just start with baby steps. Try to get 1% better every time you practice marketing whether it's on Twitter or anywhere else. Automic Habits is a great read for making this a habit. jamesclear.com/atomic-habits

Find your niche I'll just reiterate this although it's been said a million times. You can't learn from or provide value to someone you don't know. So get to know who your audience is and what they care about. @arvidkahl has a great book for this. bootstrappedfounder.gumroad.com/l/embedded-entrepreneur

Find your medium Believe it or not, Twitter isn't the only place to spread your message/connect with people. Painters use different mediums to create their art, so try to find the one you like, excel at, and contains your niche. Just remember, not all mediums are created equal.

Create a workflow This will help you get better and will reduce the amount of time/effort it takes to succeed. It's important to not over-optimize this, you can get too involved in over-engineering (This is what we do as builders). But leave some room for the creative process.

Write... (Like a lot) For me, this was newsletters/blogging but it can be any writing form. Whatever you write it's better if you share it somewhere, this gets you out of your comfort zone and makes you a better communicator. @david_perell has a course. writeofpassage.school/

Read... (Even more!) We can only put out so much quality work/content before we need to fill ourselves up again. It can be easy for builders to isolate themselves from new ideas and thought patterns. Don't let this happen to you, try a healthy balance of non-fiction/fiction.

Empathize with others It's easy to come off as too salesy when you start marketing and empathy can't be faked. People can tell when you're being insincere and you can't understand your audience without empathizing with them. @mjwhansen knows how to help. deployempathy.com/

Identify the parts you like I'll be honest I still hate marketing. But I like it more than I used to because I've experimented and found the areas I like more. You'll get less done and lose motivation if you don't do this. Try something different to prevent burnout.

Take breaks and build It's ok to take a break every once in a while. Stop and take a long weekend to build something you've been dying to build. Or try alternating weeks between building/marketing. And give yourself a pass when you make mistakes, these things take time.

Ok, rant over. These are just some things I've picked up over around a year of stepping out of my development/engineering hole and diving into marketing + writing. If you found this helpful at all give the first tweet in this thread a retweet, thanks!