Everyone starts at zero. Zero followers, zero reviews, zero momentum. The difference between app creators who break through and those who quietly give up isn't luck — it's what they do in those early weeks before anything feels like it's working.
Here's a concrete plan for your first 30 days.
Week 1: Stop Optimizing, Start Shipping
The biggest mistake new app creators make is spending week one perfecting a content strategy instead of publishing anything. Algorithms reward consistency, not perfection — and you have no data yet to tell you what "good" looks like for your app.
Your only goal this week: publish something on at least two platforms every day. It doesn't need to be polished. A screen recording with text overlay explaining one feature. A "why I built this" post. A before/after showing the problem your app solves.
Pick your two starting platforms based on where your likely users already spend time. A productivity app? LinkedIn and X. A photo or lifestyle app? Instagram and TikTok. A game? TikTok and YouTube Shorts. Don't try to be everywhere yet — you'll spread yourself too thin and nothing will get traction.
Week 2: Find Where Your Audience Already Is
By week two, you should stop broadcasting and start participating.
Search the platforms you're on for communities, hashtags, and conversations about the problem your app solves — not the app category itself. If your app helps people track habits, find conversations about productivity, burnout, or morning routines. Engage genuinely. Leave comments that add something. Don't drop your app link in every reply.
This is slow work. It's also how you get your first real followers — people who follow you, not just click a link.
Reddit is worth a separate mention here. Find the subreddits where your potential users hang out and lurk for a week before posting anything. Read the rules. When you do post, lead with the problem you're solving, not the product. Many subreddits have dedicated "Share your project" threads — use those.
Week 3: Create Content That Has a Reason to Exist
By now you've published a dozen or so posts. Look back at them. Which ones got any engagement at all, even small? That's your signal — not for what to copy, but for what angle is resonating.
Now start building content with a specific reason to exist beyond "promoting my app":
- Tutorial content: Show people how to do something useful, with your app as the tool. People share tutorials.
- Problem content: Name a frustration your users have and describe it accurately. Recognition drives shares.
- Behind-the-scenes content: Show a bug you fixed, a design decision, a feature you scrapped. This builds trust and is genuinely interesting to other app creators and to curious users.
If you're posting to multiple platforms, you don't need to create from scratch for each one. The same core idea — say, a short tutorial — can become a TikTok video, a LinkedIn carousel, a thread on X, and a Bluesky post. Adapt the format, not the concept. Tools like MakePost let you upload once and publish across platforms, which matters more once you're posting consistently and can't afford to spend two hours per post on manual copy-pasting.
Week 4: Make Your App Store Work With Your Social Presence
By week four, you should be connecting your social efforts to what people see when they actually land on your App Store page.
If someone finds your content and wants to learn more, your App Store listing is often the next stop. Make sure the first two lines of your description reflect the same angle you've been using in your best-performing content. Your screenshots should answer the same questions your top posts raised.
Pay attention to the reviews you're getting at this stage. Early reviews — good or bad — tell you what users actually care about versus what you thought they cared about. That gap is content gold. If three people mention the same thing in reviews, make a post about it.
If you've connected App Store Connect to a tool like MakePost, you can see your review trends and download data alongside your social engagement in one place, which makes it easier to spot whether a content push is correlating with any app activity.
What "Working" Looks Like at Day 30
Manage expectations. After 30 days with no existing audience, you probably won't have thousands of followers. What success looks like at this stage:
- You have a posting rhythm that's sustainable
- You know which platform is getting any response
- You've had at least a handful of genuine interactions with potential users
- Your App Store listing reflects what you've learned
That's not nothing. Most app creators give up before they ever get that far because they expect results in week one.
Promotion compounds. The posts you publish in week one won't do much. The habit you build in week one is what drives everything that comes after.
If you're still figuring out where to even start, MakePost is built specifically for app creators managing promotion across multiple platforms. Worth a look once you're ready to stop doing this manually.