I’m an inbox person, so after coming back from holiday, I always check my email inbox. And I’m never surprised to find a number of emails from new subscribers or familiar names! I love reading them!
Many new subscribers would say hi, tell me a bit about where they are, and share the challenges they face now. I think you can already guess the one question I get asked a lot:
What can I share? What should I share? Do I have to share everything?
And so today let’s talk about this!
I want to give you a mini framework so that you can quickly evaluate what’s worth sharing. If you practice this over time, it will be built into your brain muscles.
That’s when you drive the biggest impact using community X social media.
Don't wing it
There's one thing I need to address (or re-emphasize) first — Building in Public is a business strategy.
Just like content marketing or performance marketing, you need to be intentional about how you use it. This is not a "let me just throw things out and see what happens" thing even though a lot of people seem to do that. Well, I hope I can change one person at a time, starting with you.
Have you ever come across a post on X, Instagram, or LinkedIn, and you're completely lost as to why that person put that out?
Whenever I see a platitude, my alarm goes off! I'm like "Whyyyyyyyyy" To me, that's always a lack of effort. And it goes back to the root cause - they are on so many channels so the time they give to their storytelling is very minimal. No wonder there's no traction.
The 4 questions you ask yourself
Okay, so the mini framework I want to share with you is actually from Build in Public Mastery. The goal is to help you quickly evaluate what's worth sharing. In this framework, I ask 4 questions:
- Does this post drive eyeballs to the work I'm doing now?
- Does this post get me insights or feedback to improve my work?
- Does this post increase my credibility in the public's eyes?
- Does this post bring out my personality?
If a post doesn't hit at least 1 of the 4 above, 80% of the time I would discard and find something else from my idea bank to share.
I get it. Sometimes you feel the urge to say something. That's why the first thing I said here is that Building in Public is a business strategy. You can't let your urge override the purpose of why you're doing this — to build up your voice & community and to be successful!
(I definitely have come across people who just want to express and freestyle what they share online. In that case, I do me, you do you. Totally okay.)
Every post should have a purpose. That's what the 4 questions above are trying to help you with. If you look closely, there must be a reason why someone is sharing that piece of info. Let's look into them.
Examples
Example 1 - Someone like Kevon is sharing his family moments. What's the purpose there?
→ I am a believer that everyone should develop a personality in their brand. This means picking 3 things they care about so much in their personal life and showing that. For me, family is #1, so I show. You don’t have to share this.
Example 2 - Someone like Daniel is sharing his product revenue. What's the purpose there?
→ Daniel is using that as credibility to drive eyeballs to his community. But you don't need to use revenue to show that, a real screenshot of what your customers say can work too. If you're not comfortable sharing (e.g. the number is low), you don’t have to share this.
Example 3 - Someone might be sharing a childhood story to show vulnerability.
→ This person is likely building up a storyline to show his strength as a coach, so you know he has been through it. This increases your chance of hiring him. You don’t have to share this.
As you can see, there is always a purpose behind every post. If you haven’t thought through it, then don’t share. Posting more is not a solution.
A must-share for everyone
There's one more thing I think everyone can share and that is sharing what you're learning — learn in public!
Whatever niche you’re in, if you’re learning something new, the chances that it is useful for other like-minded people are very high. This is why we do mastermind in Build in Public Mastery. Because we grow just by listening to problems someone else is facing.
So if you’re always putting out your learnings, people definitely love you and want to follow you for more. Once you have like-minded people around, let's just say you can build a lot of amazing things to help them! If you observe and listen.
We can go very deep into this topic of "to share, or not to share" but I think you have enough to start reflecting on your storytelling.
Get to work now!
