Where to say it
The same angle, translated for each platform’s native tongue. A channel guide.
5 MIN READ
One angle, many dialects. The message stays constant; the format bends to each platform’s culture. Here’s the translation table, in rough order of leverage for a solo builder.
X / Twitter: the daily channel
The only channel that rewards showing up repeatedly with the same idea. Founder-voice outperforms brand-voice; build-in-public beats press-release. One link maximum, no hashtags, and the first sentence is 90% of the result. This is where your nine angles get tested, cheaply, daily, with instant scoreboard.
Product Hunt: the one-shot
You get one good launch per product. The tagline is your one-liner; the gallery sells the outcome; and the founder comment is the highest-leverage slot on the page, tell the origin story, not the feature list. Show up in the comments all day. Hunters can smell an abandoned launch by 9am.
Hacker News: the honesty test
“Show HN” has a native tongue: technical, modest, specific. Marketing voice gets flagged; engineering honesty gets discussed. Lead with what was hard to build, admit what doesn’t work yet, and answer every comment like a peer, because they are. A good HN thread outranks your homepage on Google for years.
Reddit: value first, link last
Every subreddit is a country with border control. Read the rules, contribute before you post, and frame the post as the problem and what you learned, with the product mentioned the way you’d mention it to a friend. The self-promotion that survives is the kind that would be a good post even with the link removed.
Your README: the landing page that gets read
For anything developer-facing, the README outdraws your website. Same rules as a landing page: one-liner first, GIF of the outcome second, install third, philosophy last. A README that reads like a pitch is not selling out, it’s respecting the reader’s time.
Directories and newsletters: the long tail
Submit everywhere once: the alternative-to sites, the awesome-lists, the niche newsletters. Each is small. Together they’re a steady drip of high-intent visitors, and every listing is a backlink your future SEO will thank you for. One afternoon, lasting yield.
The thread through all of it: decide the angle once, then translate. The product that seems omnipresent isn’t doing more thinking. It’s doing more shipping of the same thought.