Indie Hacker Diaries #29: Adapting to the Algorithm

When I first started out about 13 years ago, marketing was dare I say...easy.

You could be working on something, send out an email to your list, post a tweet, and you’d get engagement pretty quickly. Beyond that, SEO took care of the rest.

Now? It’s kind of crazy.

Over the past handful of years, I’ve noticed—as I’m sure many of you have—that the stakes are higher. As algorithms have taken over social media, what used to be fun has turned into a game. You’re at the mercy of the robot.

What used to be simple is now an invisible maze. Can it be navigated? Sure. But the cost of navigating it is having an increasingly negative ROI. That's a catch-22 for someone like me, as I'd prefer the majority of my time is spent on making things. Getting better at my craft. Achieving mastery.

But, we no longer live in the early, easy days. So, adapt or die. Right?

To avoid sinking too much time into it, I've started to pay attention to where I'm getting the most traction now (vs where I used to find it in the good ol days). That used to be Twitter, but now, it's trending more toward LinkedIn and as of this week, Bluesky.

Tired of seeing an endless stream of bots following me on X combined with near-zero engagement, I decided to make a split decision and move my primary posting spot over to Bluesky.

Quick tip: you can find me at rglover.bsky.social and cheatcodeco.bsky.social over there.

I had tried Bluesky out a year or so ago but was unimpressed. Lately, though, I’ve been hearing a lot of the same sentiments around X. Some of those are politically motivated, some are similar to me: total frustration with how the algorithm kills engagement on anything that isn’t a political opinion, divisive, or likely to keep you glued to the app.

I have no idea if it will end up being worth it, but seeing a few follows and engagement from real people on there (within a few minutes of setting it up) was a breath of fresh air. What I like about it is that it's very much like old school Twitter. Chronological updates from people you follow. If you want you can go dig into the "Discover" tab or other communities if you want to find more random stuff. It’s not just force on you.

Time will tell. I'll keep playing with it and posting, but I'm making a change to my overall marketing strategy.

This move got me thinking about something I heard Gary Vaynerchuk say in passing in regard to his own strategy. He doesn't get attached to a platform. He figures out how it works, starts posting content, and if it doesn't stick, he drops it.

For indie hackers and small businesses, I think this is a worthwhile approach moving forward. Instead of fighting and clawing your way against the algo, if it doesn't start generating some form of a result (even a single like or repost), ditch it. That may sound like a "duh" statement, but I've seen others like myself get stuck in the old way of doing things, only to limit their growth.

Your time is already limited as a solopreneur, so it's worth investing your time in what works.

This is the approach I'm taking moving forward: it either clicks or it doesn't.