How did I share about Bleppi?

I was initially thinking of sharing it in developer/builder groups that I'm a part of, but I then realized that these are not the people I'm building for.

I'm not building for developers

Although sharing it there provides extra availability and I found it easier to post there since I'm already part of some developer groups, at the end of the day developers aren't the people that Bleppi is for.

So, I decided to check out groups on X, Facebook, and Reddit for groups that actively discussed the board exam. I then started viewing the type of discussions these groups would typically have and what the rules were on posting to make sure that sharing about the app didn't get me banned.

Once in, I started thinking about how to introduce the app. Personally, I originally thought posting something like "I built X" since it was straightforward. However, I began to recognize that using such an opening sentence/title may come off as generic since there are already other apps in the review tool space such as Plepared or Psychmon (great apps btw!).

My thought process was:

1. Person sees "I built Bleppi"
2. Person thinks "Another review tool?" and scrolls

I settled with a different approach by asking myself "What does Bleppi actually do?" Well, the tldr is Bleppi was built as a faster alternative to Google Forms for encoding review drills (for more context, see here). I decided to use this angle, since it's something the reviewees can understand and relate to. On Reddit, I shared it as a "free review drill encoding tool" and hoped that would get the message across. I also did the same on X and Facebook, though I tweaked the wording differently on each to avoid coming off as spam-y.

What happened after posting?

I think the post that reached the most people was on Facebook, since there were a lot more reacts to it compared to the other platforms. This made sense to me since a lot of reviewees use Facebook already on the daily for review and other activities. It was uplifting to see that a number of people were thanking me for the initiative!

However, there was still a lot to improve, especially now with more people using the product. Some people reached out asking about things such as:

1. File upload support
2. Login issues

I was able to resolve these, the details of which will be in a follow-up post or two, but my main takeaway from this experience is that I was exposed to questions or use cases I never would've thought of on my own. To me, this just emphasizes the importance of getting software out there as soon as possible because that's the only way to validate it. It also creates a tight feedback loop that allows you to quickly iterate and improve your application.

Another lesson I learned is more on the SEO side of things. A day or two after sharing about Bleppi on these platforms, I realized that Bleppi was now appearing closer to the top for queries such as:

1. Blepp review drill encoder
2. Blepp review drill encoding tool

Bleppi appearing on top of search query "blepp review drill encoding tool"

What made this so interesting to me was that the site itself wasn't what was topping the search results, but it was my posts about it! What I take away from this is that you can use social media platforms to increase the surface area of your application. Instead of relying on the site alone to optimize for certain search queries, you can use social media posts to do so as well.

What would I improve next time?

Whether it's for Bleppi or for future projects, one of my main points of improvement will be implementing tight feedback loops. My approach for Bleppi was just to be active in replying to comments and also reaching out users directly for feedback via social media.

One way I can improve this better is to make it easier to reach me. A good example of this is an in-app contact form where users can shoot me an email without having to leave the application. Another approach could be to create a Discord server or Facebook group with the app users so I can ask for feedback there. This also provides the additional benefit of making it simpler to communicate updates.