Build in public marketing, kept beside the diary

build in public marketing is sharing the real work of building a business, in order and while it is still happening, so the people who might buy from you, invest in you or work with you get to know you before you ask them for anything. it works because it is honest. it stops working the moment the sharing gets bent towards whatever performed last week. the short answer to how to do it well: keep two things apart. one is the record, what actually happened, posted on a rhythm you can keep. the other is the shop window, the material made on purpose to be found: videos aimed at a search, clips run as ads, a launch film, a page that answers a buyer's question. the record earns trust. the shop window brings strangers to it. mix them and the record starts performing, and people can tell. below: what build in public marketing is and is not, why it works, what to share, where, the trap most founders fall into, how to measure it, and how underway keeps the two halves side by side without letting one bend the other. what build in public marketing is, and what it is not most of page one for this search defines building in public as sharing your progress, revenue, decisions and setbacks with an audience as you go. that is right as far as it goes. what it leaves out is that it is marketing, and saying so plainly makes it easier to do well. a founder documenting a build is building an audience and a reputation. that is the point, and there is nothing to apologise for in it. what the approach rejects is not marketing. it is hook-chasing: rearranging the story so the most clickable line comes first, inventing drama, posting the win and hiding the week it nearly died. it is: what you did, what went wrong, what you decided and why, in the order it happened. it is: a rhythm, so the people following know there will be a next part. it is: the material made on purpose to be found, labelled as what it is. it is not: a highlight reel. a record with the bad weeks taken out reads as an advert. it is not: a metrics feed. a screenshot of a revenue chart with no story around it gives nobody a reason to come back. it is not: one launch post. the value is in the accumulation, and a single post accumulates nothing. why build in public marketing works there are three reasons, and none of them needs a growth hack. the first is trust over time. an advert asks a stranger to believe a claim. forty updates in a row show them how you think, what you do when something breaks, and whether you finish things. that is a different kind of evidence, and it is the kind buyers, investors and the people you want to hire actually weigh. the second is that it is serial. people who saw part twelve want part thirteen. they come back for what happens next, not for a clever opening line, which means the work is to keep going rather than to be brilliant every time. the third is that it piles up. every update is another page, video or post someone can find through a search months later. an archive of a real build is something nobody can produce after the fact. you cannot go back and film the beginning. a real episode cover from underway's own build in public series. the record is the part that earns trust: one numbered episode after another, in order. what to share when you build in public the useful test for any update is whether someone who followed the last one learns something new from this one. that rules out most filler and lets in a lot of things founders assume are too small. the decision you went back and forth on, and what tipped it. the thing that broke, what you tried first, and what actually fixed it. what a customer said that you did not expect. the number that moved, with the story of why, once in a while. a number with a story is news. a number on its own is a dashboard. what you are about to try, before you know if it works. the thing you shipped, shown rather than described. what you stopped doing, and why. what you leave out matters as much. customer names without permission, anything under a contract, a colleague's mistake told as a story, and keys or passwords on a screen you share. building in public is about your work, not other people's. where to post build in public marketing each place rewards a different shape. the same week can go to all of them if the words change for each, which is cheap. the video mostly does not need to change: a vertical cut serves the short-form apps, and a landscape one suits youtube and linkedin. place what it is good for the shape that fits x conversation with other builders, fast feedback a short thread or a single post with one point linkedin buyers, hires and investors who know your industry a longer first-person post, no thread structure youtube being found through search for years a video titled with the words people type tiktok, instagram, shorts reaching people who have never heard of you a vertical clip that makes sense in its first seconds a newsletter the people who already care, reliably the week in writing, with links back to the videos your own page the whole archive in order, owned by you every episode, numbered, with its date pick one place to be consistent on before trying to be everywhere. a series that appears on one network every weekday beats one that appears on five networks when there is time. the trap: letting the numbers write the diary here is how build in public marketing usually goes wrong. a founder posts honestly for a few weeks. one post does far better than the rest. the next week they try to repeat it. a month later every update is shaped like the one that performed, and the record has quietly become an ad campaign. the audience notices before the founder does. the fix is structural rather than a matter of willpower. look at your numbers, because they tell you whether the effort is worth sustaining. but keep them out of the room where you decide what to say about your week. decide what happened first. then, separately, decide what to make for strangers. judge the whole by totals that grow, not by your best post. thirty updates and a few hundred people following, none of which existed two months ago, is a reason to keep going. a ranking of your posts by reach is the same data arranged to make you chase your best day. how underway keeps build in public marketing beside the diary underway has two sides with two names. document is the diary: once a day, whenever suits you, an interviewer asks about your day, you answer on camera or by voice, and the answers become a numbered episode, in the order you said them, nothing reordered for a hook. promote is the shop window, its own tab in the bar at the top of the app, on the web and the phone, and under beyond the episode in account. promote opens on a set of choices, each its own page: your marketing brief, on every plan: who it is for, your positioning, your messaging, where to spend the effort and your next 30 days, read from your website and your episodes, with correct this on every part. found in ai answers, part of series: the questions your buyers ask ai assistants, asked once a month, and whether the answers name you or someone else. videos to film, part of series: what your audience types into youtube, checked against what ranks for it now, with how to film each one. ad answers, part of series: once a month, a few questions about what you are building, asked out loud, each answer you keep cut into its own captioned vertical clip. marketing assets: your ads, launch films, demos and graphics, uploaded and kept beside the diary, the same shelf as the vault's assets filter. reach, part of series: everyone you reach, followers across your connected accounts added up, and what each post you sent from an episode did. under them sits get featured in our ads: once five of your episodes are public on your page, your build can be featured in the facebook and instagram ads underway runs to its directory of builds. it is free and automatic, and you can switch it off in settings, under publishing. a real clip cut from one of underway's own episodes. the episode stays in order; a clip is an advert for it and may open on any line the founder said. the walls between the two nothing on promote is numbered. a promote video, an ad answer or an asset never takes an episode number and never sits between episode 47 and 48. nothing on promote counts towards your streak. the streak is the diary habit, counted against the rhythm you chose. promote's research never reaches your interviews. the questions you are asked come from your day and your season, never from what people search for. your numbers are shown to you and given to the interview and the edit as context. your words and their order never change. an asset shows on your page only when you switch show on your page on, in its own row below your episodes, never among them. anything made with ai is labelled made with ai wherever it shows. the two sides serve each other. someone finds a clip or a video answering their search, follows it to your page, and lands on a numbered archive of the real thing. today stays the diary's page: the record button first, then your progress, then the few things most worth doing next, some of which come from promote's findings. an earlier version of an episode's share tab in underway. the wording has changed since, but the job is the same: every episode is private until you say otherwise, and the words for each place are written from what you said. how to measure build in public marketing the record first: how many updates you have made, and whether the rhythm held. this is the part you control. followers across every place, added up, and the change over the week. times seen, kept separate, since views, search impressions and site visits count different things. searches you show up on page one for, which grow slowly and keep paying. whether ai assistants name you when a buyer asks about your market. in underway, today shows these as a strip of running totals under the record button, each with the week's change, and never a ranking of episodes. what it costs every new account starts with a 7-day free trial of founder, series or studio, with a card added at the start and nothing charged until day 8. founder is $29.99 a month and covers the daily episode, the words for every place, one tap to post to each connected network and your own page. series is $79.99 a month and adds, among other things, ad answers, found in ai answers and reach. the marketing brief is on every plan. the tools for doing it, compared honestly: build in public tools. what is build in public marketing? sharing the real work of building a business as it happens, in order, so people get to know you before you sell to them. it is marketing, and it works best when the record stays honest and the material made to be found is kept separate and labelled. does building in public actually work as marketing? it builds trust over time, gives people a reason to come back for the next part, and leaves an archive that can be found long after. it rarely works in a week. it works over months, if the rhythm holds. what should i not share when building in public? anything that is not yours to share: customer names without permission, contract terms, someone else's mistake told as a story, and passwords or keys visible on a screen. do i have to use promote in underway? no. it is a door, not a step. plenty of founders only ever film the diary, and that is the product working. does anything on promote change my episodes? no. nothing on it is numbered, counts towards your streak or reaches your interviews or the edit. real series and what they share: build in public examples. the brief behind every piece of marketing: how to write a marketing brief. Originally published at https://underway.life/build-in-public-marketing