You're building in public but nobody replies. Here's what to do instead

You ship something every day. You post the screenshot, the revenue update, the lesson learned. A couple of likes, maybe one reply from another founder, and then nothing. After a few weeks it starts to feel like talking to an empty room, and you wonder whether you are doing it wrong.

You are probably not doing it wrong. Building in public is a fine habit, but on its own it is a slow way to reach customers. This guide explains why posting and waiting rarely works early on, and gives you a different approach: go to where your future users are already talking, and reply to them. It ends with a seven-day plan you can start today.

Why posting and waiting does not work early

Posting reaches your followers. Early on, your followers are mostly other people building in public: founders, makers, friends. They are supportive, but most of them are not your customers. Your customers are busy with their own problems and have never heard of you, so they will not see your posts no matter how good they are.

• Small audiences mean small reach. A post to a few hundred people, most of them founders, will rarely land in front of someone who needs your product today.
• Progress updates are about you. Your customers care about their problem. "Shipped dark mode" is interesting to builders; it rarely makes a stranger stop scrolling.
• Timing is random. Even when a potential customer does see your post, it is unlikely to be the day they have the problem.

None of this means you should stop. Building in public creates a record people can find later, and it helps when someone looks at your profile. It just should not be your only way of meeting users.

Switch from broadcasting to showing up

The alternative is to go where your customers already are, at the moment they are describing the problem you solve. Every day, people post questions and complaints in public: on Reddit, on X, on Bluesky, on Hacker News. "How do you all handle ...", "is there a tool that ...", "I'm so tired of ...". Each of those posts is a person who has your problem today and is asking for help.

When you reply to one of them with something useful, three things happen. The person who needs help reads it, because it is a reply to them. Everyone else reading that thread sees it too. And if you are helpful, a few of them check your profile, where your building in public posts finally have the right audience.

In other words, replies feed your public building. They bring the right people to the record you have been creating.

The order to reply in: problem, answer, relationship, product

The fastest way to ruin this is to lead with your product. A reply that opens with a link reads as an ad and is ignored or reported. Follow this order instead, and do not skip ahead.

1. Problem. Read the post carefully and make sure you understand what they are stuck on. If it is unclear, ask a short question instead of guessing.
2. Answer. Give a direct, useful answer, including free or built-in options. The reply should help even if they never hear of your product.
3. Relationship. If they reply, keep the conversation going. Ask about their setup, share what worked for you. This is where they start to trust you.
4. Product. Only when it is clearly relevant, and ideally when they ask, mention that you built something for this, and say so plainly.

Many conversations will never reach step four, and that is fine. The ones that do are far more likely to turn into users than any number of likes on a launch post.

A quick test before you send any reply: would this message still make sense if your product did not exist? If yes, it is a real answer. If the reply only works as a way to mention your product, rewrite it or skip that post. This one check prevents most of the mistakes that get founders ignored or muted.

A 7-day plan

Here is a concrete week. Each day takes about twenty to thirty minutes.

1. Day 1: Write down five moments when someone needs your product, in their words. Not features: situations, such as "my client keeps asking for revisions by email and I lose track". Turn each into two search phrases.
2. Day 2: Pick one platform where your customers are most likely to post. Run your ten phrases there, sorted by newest. Read, do not reply. Note which phrases found real people with the problem.
3. Day 3: Reply to two posts, following the order above: understand, answer, nothing about your product. Make each reply something you would be glad to receive.
4. Day 4: Update your profile so a curious visitor understands in one line what you build and for whom. Then reply to two or three more posts.
5. Day 5: Go back to every thread you replied to. Answer anyone who responded. Replace your two weakest search phrases with new ones based on the words people actually used.
6. Day 6: Add a second platform. Run your best phrases there and reply to two posts.
7. Day 7: Review the week. How many posts did you reply to, how many people responded, how many profile visits or sign-ups followed? Keep the phrases and platforms that led to conversations, drop the rest, and plan the next week.

Keep posting your building in public updates during the week if you enjoy it. Just make the replies the main event.

What progress looks like after a week

Adjust your expectations before you start, so a quiet first week does not discourage you. After seven days of this, a possible result for a small product is a few people who answered back, and perhaps one who looked at your product. That may sound small, but compare it with the week before: those are conversations with people who have your problem, not likes from other founders.

The number to watch is conversations started, not followers gained. Followers will come as a side effect, because people who find your replies useful tend to follow you, and they are the right followers: people who care about the problem you work on. Over a few weeks, your building in public posts will start to get replies from them, which is what you wanted in the first place.

Where to go next

Each platform has its own etiquette and its own search tricks. For the details, read how to find customers on Reddit without getting banned, how to find customers on X by replying, and social listening for indie hackers, which covers what to listen for across platforms and how to tell a real opportunity from noise.

The part most people drop after the first week is the daily searching. If that is you, Ownfeed can take it over: paste your product URL, and every day it searches public posts on Reddit, X, Bluesky and Hacker News and uses AI to keep only the posts where your product would help. You still write every reply yourself. It never posts for you and never connects to your accounts.

Whatever you use, the shift is the same: stop waiting in your own timeline, and go to where people are already asking for what you built.