Marketing has changed. Here's proof.
I posted a random thread on X about the cost of living in the Netherlands. Nothing about what we're building. Just genuine thoughts about life in the Netherlands.
It hit 1M+ impressions. And here's the weird part we got a ton of signups and paid users for Starnus from it. Without ever mentioning the product.
Meanwhile, my "here's what Starnus does" posts? Way less engagement.
This genuinely messed with my head. I'm sharing the actual X post below 👇
What I think happened:
People connected with me as a person first, got curious, checked my profile, found Starnus, and signed up. The algorithm rewards content people actually want to engage with, not content you want them to engage with.
The uncomfortable truth for founders:
Your best marketing post might have nothing to do with your product. The post that drives the most signups might be about rent prices in your city😅
I'm not saying stop talking about your product. But maybe the ratio should be 80% being a real human online, 20% product not the other way around.
Has anyone else experienced this? A random non-product post outperforming your actual launch content?
Replies
I’ve also noticed that content & videos where founders show their real faces and talk about the product gain a lot more trust and sympathy, perhaps especially for AI companies. As image & video generation quality keeps improving super fast, it’s truly important to leverage it. However, it probably works best when you combine both - using the newest tech, but still showing real faces.
This is one of the most honest marketing posts I've seen here.
The "cost of living in Netherlands" going viral and converting into Starnus users is a perfect example of parasocial trust. You didn't sell anything — you gave people a reason to be curious about you as a person. When they checked your profile and found a product, it felt like a discovery, not an ad.
We've had similar micro-experiments with Hello Aria. Our most-shared content is never about features. It's founder stories about productivity failures, burnout moments, stuff people recognize in themselves.
The implication is a bit uncomfortable: people don't want to buy your product. They want to buy into your worldview. The product just happens to be the most convenient way to do that.
People buy from people, and with the dead internet theory being more and more closer to our reality, personal accounts that actually share insightful + relevant (not sales-oriented) posts will become more and more valuable.
Can confirm this works. I recently posted on LinkedIn about a pattern I kept repeating across four companies - building features nobody wanted because I was filtering user feedback through my own bias. Zero mention of what I'm building now. The engagement was 5-10x higher than anything product-related I've ever posted. The reason is simple: product posts are for your audience. Personal stories are for everyone. When someone relates to your struggle, they check your profile. Your profile does the selling. The post doesn't have to.
Kiara Translation
this makes a lot of sense