What Should I Post When My App Has No Users Yet?

An event planning company spent six months building a beautiful app that would connect party organisers with local suppliers, complete with booking systems and payment processing... and when they launched, they got twelve downloads in the first week, eleven of which were from friends and family. The problem wasn't the app itself, it was that they'd spent half a year working in silence, never telling anyone what they were building or why it mattered, and by the time they were ready to shout about it, they'd lost all that precious time they could have been gathering interested people around them.

The best time to start talking about your app was the day you decided to build it, the second best time is right now

I've watched this happen probably forty times now, where talented developers pour months of work into an app and then suddenly expect people to care the moment it hits the app store. Building in silence might feel safer, you're not making promises you might not keep, you're not showing unfinished work, you're not putting yourself out there before everything's perfect... but it means you're starting from absolute zero on launch day, and that's a position nobody wants to be in when you've already spent twenty or thirty grand on development.

The truth is that posting content before you have users isn't just acceptable, it's probably the smartest thing you can do during your development phase, and over the past ten years working with pre-launch apps, I've seen the ones that document their journey consistently end up with ten or twenty times more downloads in their first month compared to the ones that stay quiet until launch day.

Why Pre-Launch Content Actually Matters

App stores are absolutely packed now. There are roughly five million apps between the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which means yours needs to fight for attention from day one, and if nobody knows you exist when you launch, you're going to struggle regardless of how good your app actually is. The cost of acquiring a user through paid advertising sits somewhere between two and ten pounds depending on your category, which adds up frighteningly fast when you're a startup with limited funds.

Pre-launch content gives you a different path. You're building an audience of people who already care about what you're doing before you ask them for anything, which means when launch day arrives, you've got a group of folks waiting to download rather than a room full of strangers you're trying to convince. This approach works particularly well when combined with building an email list before your app launches, giving you multiple touchpoints with interested users.

I worked with a fitness app team who started posting workout tips and exercise advice three months before their app was ready. Nothing fancy, just helpful stuff. By launch day they had about eight hundred followers genuinely interested in their approach to home workouts, and they converted roughly thirty percent of those into downloads within the first week, which gave them enough momentum to start appearing in app store search results organically.

Building Your Story Before Launch

People don't just download apps, they buy into ideas and solutions to problems they actually have, so your pre-launch content needs to focus on the story of why this app needs to exist rather than just what it does. What problem did you spot that made you think this was worth building? Who struggles with this problem every day? Why aren't the current solutions working properly?

When we built an app for freelance invoice management, the founding story wasn't about features or technology, it was about a graphic designer who'd lost three grand because she forgot to chase a payment and had no system for tracking who owed her what. That's the story people connected with, not the fact that we'd built a really nice notification system or had clever tax calculation features. Understanding your target audience through proper research methods during app planning helps you craft stories that actually resonate.

Write down the specific moment you realised this app needed to exist, the exact problem you witnessed or experienced, and use that as the foundation for your content

Your story should feel real and specific, not vague and corporate. Avoid talking about "revolutionising" anything or "disrupting markets" because that language doesn't connect with actual humans who have actual problems they need solving. Instead, talk about the specific frustrations your future users face, the workarounds they're currently using that don't quite work, and how your approach thinks about the problem differently.

What Your Future Users Want to See

The mistake most pre-launch apps make is posting content about themselves rather than content for their audience, and there's a massive difference between those two things. Your future users don't care about your tech stack or your development milestones... they care about whether you understand their problems and might have something worth their time when you eventually launch.

• Educational content about the problem space you're working in, helping people understand their own challenges better
• Quick wins and tips they can use right now, even without your app, showing you genuinely want to help
• Behind-the-scenes looks at how you're approaching problems differently, giving them insight into your thinking
• Questions asking about their experiences and frustrations, showing you're listening and building something that actually fits their needs
• Early previews of how the app works, but framed around solving specific problems rather than just showcasing features

A healthcare app we worked with spent their pre-launch period posting about medication management tips, how to talk to doctors about prescriptions, and ways to remember to take pills on time. They weren't selling anything, just being genuinely helpful, and when they finally launched their medication reminder app, they had about fifteen hundred people who already trusted them and understood they knew what they were talking about.

Content Types That Work Without Users

You might think you can't post testimonials or case studies without users, and you'd be right, but there are loads of content types that work brilliantly during your pre-launch phase. Problem exploration posts do really well because they help people understand their own frustrations better, and if you can articulate someone's problem better than they can themselves, they'll assume you've got a good solution for it.

Show people you understand their daily struggles and they'll pay attention when you say you've built something to help

Development updates can work if you frame them correctly, not as "look what we built" but as "here's how we solved this tricky challenge that affects you". Show a screenshot of your interface but explain why you designed it that way based on a specific user need. Share a technical decision but connect it to a real-world benefit. Creating consistent design systems for your app early on also gives you plenty of content to share about your design decisions and user experience thinking.

Industry news and commentary positions you as someone who knows this space deeply, which builds trust before anyone's even tried your app. A fintech app team would share news about banking regulations and payment processing, adding their perspective on what it meant for small business owners, their target audience, and when they launched, people saw them as experts rather than just another new app asking for attention.

Creating a Posting Schedule That Makes Sense

The temptation is to post loads at the start when you're excited and then gradually trail off as development gets busy, but consistency matters more than frequency when you're building an audience from nothing. Three posts a week that you can actually sustain beats posting daily for two weeks and then disappearing for a month.

I usually recommend picking two or three days a week and sticking to them religiously, which gives you time to create decent content without it taking over your whole life while you're also trying to build an actual app. Monday, Wednesday, Friday works well, or Tuesday and Thursday if you're tighter on time... the specific days matter less than the reliability of showing up when you said you would.

Different platforms need different approaches too. LinkedIn wants more professional, industry-focused stuff and you can get away with longer posts there. Instagram and TikTok want visual content and quick hits of value. Twitter wants conversation and quick insights. You don't need to be everywhere, just pick one or two platforms where your future users actually hang out and focus your energy there. If you're considering video content, you might want to explore starting a YouTube channel to promote your app as part of your content strategy.

Documenting Your Development Journey

There's something quite powerful about letting people watch something being built, it creates investment and connection that's hard to get any other way, and I've seen apps build audiences of thousands just by being open about their development process. The key is making it relatable rather than technical, focusing on the decisions and challenges rather than the code itself.

Share the moment you realised a feature you'd planned wouldn't actually work the way you thought. Talk about user research conversations that changed your whole approach. Show early designs alongside later versions and explain what you learned. People find this stuff fascinating because it pulls back the curtain on how things get made, and it makes them feel part of the process rather than just a customer you'll eventually market to. However, be mindful about sharing too much detail early on, as you'll want to understand what happens when someone copies your app design and how to protect your intellectual property.

Take screenshots and write quick notes throughout your development process, even if you don't post them immediately, because you'll forget the interesting decisions and challenges later

A language learning app team I worked with documented every major decision they made, from choosing which languages to support first based on community requests, to redesigning their lesson structure after testing it with twenty volunteers. By launch, they had about two thousand followers who felt like they'd helped shape the app, and their initial retention rates were brilliant because users were already invested before they'd even downloaded.

Building Community Through Conversation

Posting content is only half the job, maybe less than half actually, because the real magic happens in the replies and comments and conversations that develop around what you share. Every question someone asks is a chance to help them and show you're listening, every comment is an opportunity to learn something about what your audience needs and how they think about their problems.

Ask questions regularly and actually engage with the answers you get. If someone shares their frustration about an existing solution, dig deeper and understand exactly what bothers them about it. If someone suggests a feature, explore why they want it and what problem it would solve for them. This isn't just good community building, it's phenomenally valuable product research that'll make your app better.

The mistake is treating pre-launch social as a broadcast channel where you announce things and move on. It needs to be a conversation where you're genuinely interested in what people think and experience, responding to everyone who takes time to engage, and creating a space where people feel heard and valued long before they become users. If you're working on specialized apps, like event apps that work for both virtual and in-person events, these conversations become even more crucial for understanding diverse user needs.

Growing Your Audience From Zero

Starting with zero followers feels uncomfortable, you're posting into the void and wondering if anyone's even seeing what you share, but every single account started exactly where you are now. Growth in the early days comes from being genuinely helpful in spaces where your future users already gather, not from hoping people will magically find your profile.

Find communities, groups, and conversations where people discuss the problems your app will solve, and contribute helpfully without trying to sell anything. Answer questions in relevant subreddits or Facebook groups. Add thoughtful comments to LinkedIn posts in your industry. Share helpful responses on Twitter threads where people are struggling with exactly what your app addresses.

Your first hundred followers will come from being useful in other people's spaces, not from posting on your own profile

We launched a productivity app's pre-launch content by having the founder spend thirty minutes each morning answering questions in time management forums and productivity subreddits, never mentioning the app, just being genuinely helpful. After about six weeks of this, they had roughly four hundred followers who'd found their profile through those helpful contributions, and that core group became the foundation of a much larger audience as launch approached. This organic approach is often more sustainable than working with developers who show red flags during the selection process, as it builds genuine relationships rather than forced connections.

Conclusion

Posting content before your app has users isn't just filling time until launch, it's building the foundation that determines whether your launch succeeds or falls flat, and I've watched this play out enough times to know that the apps that start talking early and consistently have a dramatically easier time gaining traction when they eventually release. You're not bragging about an unfinished product or making promises you might not keep, you're helping people understand their problems better, showing you're someone worth listening to, and creating a group of folks who'll be genuinely excited when you finally have something they can download.

The apps that wait until everything's perfect before saying anything end up launching to silence, spending thousands on paid advertising just to get those first few downloads, struggling to get any momentum going. The ones that document their journey, share helpful content, and build community before launch start with an audience already waiting, which changes everything about how those first few weeks and months play out.

If you're building an app and feeling stuck on your pre-launch content strategy, or you'd like someone with a bit of experience to look at what you're planning, get in touch and we can talk through what might work for your specific situation.

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