Hey, it’s Anum & Fatima here again 👋
Welcome back! This is the fourth edition of our newsletter, your time and attention mean so much to us.
At the start of 2025, we gave LinkedIn a shot and grew one of our profiles to ~1,000 followers. But honestly? Writing on LinkedIn didn’t feel authentic to our vibe, so we decided to pause it. We wanted a space to share our wins, learnings, and mistakes more comfortably.
That led us back to Instagram. We’d briefly tried posting there back in 2020 for a university project and remembered how supportive the community felt. This time around, though, growth has been way harder. We’re at 115 followers after 70 posts. Still, we’re staying consistent because we see Instagram as an important channel for getting future users for our apps. If we quit now, it’ll only be harder later.
What we’ve learned so far:
Reels are key. Even with ~400 views, more than 50% are from non-followers. The new trial reels feature looks like a great way to experiment with content and get it in front of non-followers first.
Carousels work best when the first slide feels personal, two of ours hit 800+ and 600+ views this way.
Commenting and engaging with posts in your niche is one of the best ways to build visibility and connections - whether it’s on X, Threads, LinkedIn, or Instagram. It’s the new way to grow on social platforms. The only challenge? It takes consistent daily time and effort.
We’ve also started cross-posting our Instagram content to Threads. That’s been a pleasant surprise - in just two months, we’ve had two viral posts that alone brought in 200+ followers. Today, we’re at 400+ followers there. Definitely a reminder of the 80/20 rule: most results come from a small percentage of effort.
Once we had about 30 posts, we also began scheduling them to LinkedIn too, but we’re not active there.
What’s next?
Threads has shown us that written content works for us. So, our plan is to double down on that, keep posting on Threads and also post the same content for X, where the indie dev community is super active.
For Instagram, we’ll be experimenting more with reels to figure out what sticks. And if any of you have tips for fixing Instagram growth, we’d love to hear them!
Most importantly, we need to start commenting - engaging with others consistently is the key to growth on these platforms.
We’ll keep building, keep sharing, and keep experimenting across X, Threads, and Instagram. Excited to see how this unfolds.
Follow along with our daily updates on Instagram: @inthelinesofcode
Until next time,
🥷 Anum & Fatima 👩🎨
P.S. We love meeting people online! Hit reply and tell us who you are, what you do (whether it’s one sentence or your whole story). We read every reply.
