Building a Public Changelog for App Marketing

0:00I recently created what is effectively called a change log which is for an app and it's for our pool care app that we've been developing for the last three years. This year, 2026 is the year where we're really going to push it. Last year we did a kind of a late push in July of 2025 because that's when I felt the app was kind of ready for prime time, ready for us to start promoting it. And since then, we've made a ton of updates to the app. The problem we ran into was people were downloading the app. They were using the app and then they would have some kind of like, oh, does the app do this or, oh, I'm having a problem with this. And so they would email us or use the built-in chat feature in the app, which is essentially all going to the same place, which is Intercom.

1:01We have somebody who's answering both the emails that come through Intercom, people who just email us regularly, they have questions about their pool or general customer service requests, and we also have chat support. So the problem we ran into was somebody would say, hey, I have this problem and I would get wind of it because we have a customer service report that comes through every week. So I know that somebody is having this problem in the app. We would fix it or update it. And then we had no way to communicate back to that customer that that thing that was broken or wasn't in the app is now there or fixed. So how would they know? So I would have to either communicate that back to our customer service rep, who would then have to go find that email and email that person back and say, hey, you know, hey,

2:03remember that thing you asked us about? We fixed it and it's now fixed. This is not a good way to solve the problem, plus if we did fix something or we did make some sort of big update. We want everybody to know that because the more people know or the more things we do in the app, the more activity in updating it, the more we get to talk about the app, which then promotes the app. So the solution or what I said to my developer, I was like, is there some kind of way we can make a public change log? Now change logs are fairly boring. Most people don't pay attention to them. Most apps, like who cares that you fixed a bug or two? Personally when I look at, like when I update plugins for WordPress, I kind of buy default always look at the change log because I want to know what was changed if there's any new

3:06features. I want to know about it because most of those plugin companies don't email you and tell you, hey, we launched this brand new feature because they probably don't even have your email address. In our case, we also don't have your email address, but we have a lot of email addresses and these are people who maybe have purchased the app, but mostly haven't. So my thought was, can we make this change log public and can we make it more user friendly, more SEO friendly? And I started to look at some other public change logs, like big, you know, app companies, you know, Apple has a change log. It's called Apple News, but they don't call it a change log. Notion has a public change log, but again, they call it a change log. No one knows what that is. That's the technical term. So what I want, so like I was talking to my developer because I'm like, there's got to

4:09be software that already does this. Now he always, when he publishes a new version of the app in the app store in Android, he writes a short little change log, which is like, hey, we added this new feature here of the bugs we fixed here, the improvements, et cetera. It's literally probably less than 50 words sometimes. But even he said, look, no one reads these. And I'm like, yeah, I mean, when it comes to downloading new features in an iPhone app, I, I mean, when would you read it? You never go back into the app to the original spot where it, where it was updated every time the app, and sometimes the app just automatically downloads. So how would you even know? So he gets, so the solution was, okay, this is a good idea. We should have some kind of public user-friendly change log, but where, where does it live?

5:15Because it obviously lives in a very crude sense when we put, when we push these updates into those app stores. And it doesn't necessarily, they don't even have to match necessarily, right? So where, you know, obviously we're not going to put it in, like GitHub or anything, like this is all not very user-friendly areas. So the solution was, hey, let's just create a public change log, let's call it, in WordPress. So I was like, okay. And then basically every blog post that we publish, you know, around this topic will include a new feature and, you know, improvements, et cetera, like that. And it's, and if it's going to be in WordPress, why not make it SEO-friendly? Why not, you know, hey, maybe we publish something that actually gets picked up in some way.

6:20We don't know. So if it's public, then we can send emails to our audience to say, hey, we made this update. And guess what? You can go read about it here. Like we're going to tell you briefly what we did in the email, but if you want to read all about it, go here. So I was like, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to tackle this project because once I get it set up, it's fairly easy to manage. So here's what I did in WordPress. I created a custom post type called updates because I didn't want to call it change log. I thought that was like, internally, I understand what that means. But I'm like, what's a better word than change log? I was like, news, but it's not always news. And then I thought, oh, updates, that's what it is. Because that's what you do. You update the app. So I was like, okay, let's do that. And plus updates don't necessarily have to be app related.

7:21They can be anything. They can be features on our app. It can be features on our website. Or if we end up making the app bigger and expandable, maybe it just becomes this thing, right? So I'm like, okay, created a custom post type in WordPress called updates. I used a paid version of advanced custom fields, which is like my favorite plugin ever besides admin columns pro. And I set it up in two seconds. So then I went back and thought, okay, what do these look like? So I had to create, I had to go back through the actual change log, which was on our app store and look at, you know, do I want to publish every version? Because some versions, it's like, we fixed these like minor bugs that no one even complained

8:22about. Right? Like things that we saw, like minor design tweaks, things like that. I'm like, well, that's not a big enough update to write a whole blog post about. You know, these blog posts are essentially like between 300 and 500 words, right? So I was like, okay, I'm only going to publish the ones that have like a significant feature change or a new feature or a big enhancement as like the headline and then include any of the updates or improvements or bugs as bullet points underneath that. And I'll take, you know, so let's say, you know, version 2.1 was minor, version 2.2 was minor, but version 2.3 was kind of huge. So it's like, all right, I'm going to take, I'm just going to publish version 2.3 with the big news and then include the updates from 2.2 and 2.1 as sort of bullet at the end.

9:28That's kind of my, how I'm going to approach this. So I set up this custom post type. I went back through and I ended up adding about five new blog posts. So here's how I'm doing it. I go back through, I see the improvements, I name it, whatever. So we had one recent improvement that we just, or one recent feature that we just added was a smart weather widget, which on the dashboard of our pool care app, we now show you the weather in your area. And we give you a little tip based on the weather. Hey, it's cloudy out, it's a good time to add chemicals, hey, it's raining, you know, keep an eye on your pH, alkaline, and anything like that, okay? Simple stuff, but big feature because it's like, oh, that's new. So I wrote up this whole sort of like blog post, how did I do that? I created a project in a cloud project in cloud, which is what I use for writing.

10:36And the way that I do projects now is I obviously have a set of instructions, a complicated detailed set of instructions to kind of give the project its own guardrails to craft exactly what I wanted to craft. But I don't just have it write anything. So what I do is to create the initial set of instructions for this cloud project. I will just open up a general cloud chat and I'll say, hey, here's what I'm trying to do. Here's what I'm trying to write a set of instructions for this purpose. Here's all the information you need to know about what I'm trying to do. Can you ask me a series of questions one at a time so I can so that you can help me write these instructions? So it does. So I just sit there, I use whisper flow to talk to it, and it asks me questions, I answer the questions, and then it builds me a markdown file that I can just copy and paste and put it into the project.

11:39Then what I do, now that I have this sort of guardrail, right, I have this one project, what is it called? It's an update article writer, that's the name of the project. Okay. So new update comes out, what do I do? Well I can take a screenshot or copy and paste from the actual change log to give, hey, here's what we published, here's what my developer wrote, here's some context. Then what I'll do is dictate the entire thing, I'll just get on a microphone like this on my phone, and I'll just talk about the update. Now that's one way to do it. And so I'll dictate the update, and then I'll stick it into the writer, and I'll say, all right, just, you know, obviously just format this into the correct, because there's like a specific format that we use, and then it prints it out, I publish it, and it's done.

12:39But I was looking at it, and I'm going, okay, this is fine, right? Like this update's fine, 300 words, you know, it says new feature, shows a new feature, I'm like, this is boring. I wouldn't want to read this. Well, I would, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it, it works, but I kind of want something more. So I'm thinking about it in, in my world, what would I want if, if I was using an app, right? And I like this app, this app was super helpful to me, like maybe it's something like Whisper Flow, right? I'm using this app, and they sent me an email and said, hey, we now do this, we now have this new feature, and I would go, okay, like cool announcement, I'm not going to fuck around with it right now, you know, I don't know if it's that big of a deal, whatever.

13:40Because what they're going to do is they're probably going to send that to me in written format, which is like, again, it's fine. You know, now if they had sent me an email that said, hey, here we have this new feature, check out the video on how it works. I would go, oh, okay, I'm going to go check it out. I go to whatever they sent me to, whatever page, and I watch a little video of somebody showing you how the new feature works. And I'm like, that's what I want. In fact, not that I got this idea from them, but I'm thinking about it right now, we used this plugin for Premiere called FireCut, and they recently came out with some new feature I forget what it was. Oh, it was animated titles. So you can like craft these automatic animated titles for your videos.

14:41And what they did was they sent an email out, and they said, hey, we now have this new feature. They linked to, you know, watch the video on how this works. I clicked it, took me to a web page where I watched this little video of the guy, I guess the owner of the company, demonstrating how this new feature works. And I was like, cool, and then I said to my brother, hey, why don't you try using this new feature? And he was like, cool, and he tried it, we didn't like it, but, you know, we stopped using it, but hey, that was, it got us to re-engage with the app. And I was like, oh, you know, like, oh, that's cool. So in terms of like, just written text, I probably wouldn't have given a shit. And plus, since it's like, I'm very, like, I read something and I'm like, like Shopify comes out with these like new big feature updates, like once a year, or I think it's twice a year, and they make this big stink about it. They create these huge landing pages, but they fucking never make a video.

15:43If they do, I don't see it. They might make like one video that's like, here are all the features we came out with. And I'm like, but it's like such an animated video. It's not showing me in Shopify how this fucking works. And I'm like, if you could just do this more frequently, I would be like more pumped. So I thought, hey, instead of like dictating to this AI, what this new feature is, let me jump in the video studio, hook up my phone, and actually talk to the camera on how to use the app and show this sort of side by side view. So I just use ecam live. I set up this little scene where I have my phone on one side of my head, and then I'm the talking head on the other side. And I go, hey, we just released this new feature, this smart weather widget. Let me show you how it works. And I don't have a script. I don't have a time frame.

16:44I just literally show people how to use it. And why we built it and what problem it solves, and I just kind of do it. And then it took me like, I think I recorded maybe two minutes, hit stop, brought it into premiere, that footage, just trimmed off the edges, like faded out the end and trimmed up the beginning, uploaded it to Wistia, which is what we use for video hosting that's not our YouTube stuff. I know we can do unlisted YouTube, but I just like the way Wistia looks embedded on our website. And then I posted the Wistia video along with the update. So I go and look at it, and I'm like, oh, I, I'm like, I went and watched one of the videos after I had done all this.

17:44And I'm looking at it going, this makes me want to use the app. I don't know why I have no use for it. But I'm like, if people did this more often, I would be like, this is, and how easy was it to make? Like, we had this little new feature, even if, like, even like, some of the features were really minor. And I went through all of them in a video, I did five videos in like an hour, right? It wasn't very hard to make. And I'm like, dude, I love this. Like this is so cool to me. And then I was like, well, hold on. I don't need to dictate, I just dictated into this video. So I go into Wistia, I pull the transcript because it auto-generates the transcript via AI, and I take that transcript, stick it into my cloud project, and it writes the blog post for me. In my words, because I just dictated what the app does.

18:50Sometimes I'll even add, I'll even like screenshot my phone and upload images so that the AI actually has context on what it's trying to write. And then since I took a screenshot on my phone, now I have an image that I can upload to the article as well. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is killer. So I created this little section of our website called What's New, and added all of the updates there. There's five updates currently. I went back all the way to like September and just did a bunch of updates, did a video for each update, put it all together, and I sent it to staff because I was like, hey, how do we promote this now? So we came up with a new email template, which is just called, which we're calling like app update, and we're going to send this out twice a month. So basically every other week, we'll send out one email to the entire list of people,

19:52whether you own the app or not. We designed the template to basically meet the needs, whether you own the app currently, or because if you own the app currently, cool, go, you click the button to go read more about it. You see the video, you're like, this is great. And then the rest of the email is just like a hard sales pitch for the app, which is basically hitting all the people who didn't even know we had an app, or just want our interest in downloading it. So we've kind of killed two birds at one stone. The first problem we solved in building all this, which again, took about a day or two to build, and I think was incredibly worth it. And super easy to do. The first problem we solved was what happens when someone has a feature request, or finds a bug, how are they notified that that bug or that feature was again fixed or improved

20:55upon? Well, now we will email you when that new feature comes out, or when that bug is fixed, wonderful. We're also, because it's in WordPress, and it's part of the rest API of WordPress, we can actually take that information and display it in the app. So it'll be both places. You'll get an email about it, and it'll appear in the app as sort of like update, you know, what's new section. I don't know where that's going to live yet, we still have to design that, we still have to build that, but that's not going to take that long. And then that way, if you're using the app and you're not on our email list, you'll also know about it. There'll be some sort of announcement. And there'll be a link to go watch the video, which will basically be in the app. It'll be cool, right? Okay. The second problem we solve is promoting the damn app, because we want people to, like,

21:57yes, we can promote the same thing over and over again. Hey, here's our app, here's what it does, you know, pull care in 60 seconds, whatever our ads are, like those work okay, right? And we do add those pitches in a lot of our emails. And we do email pitches for, you know, for the app itself directly. However, what we don't do is show you what we're building, show you how we're constantly making improvements, because here's the thing. You might not need the app right now, because you're like, well, I already have a system, I already do this thing. I don't really need it, right? So you're like, but then I send you an update. And you're like, oh, I guess that's kind of cool, but still like, all right, I know this exists, but all right, that's a cool feature, but like, I don't need it. But then the next feature, I'm like, oh, shit, that would be cool.

22:58I like that feature. You know what? I'm going to give the app a try, because one day will hit you with the thing that works for you. And it also shows our customers and our non-customers or potential customers that, hey, we're fucking working on this thing. We're building this thing. This is an evolving product. And I want to do that for everything. I think that would be great. So I don't know. That's all I have. That's the only news I have. But if you want to go check it out, you can go to sum university.com slash updates. That's where they all live. And you can watch some of the videos. I think you'll like them, because they're short. And it's just me. There's no script. Talk directly to the camera. It's great. And do me a favor if you've been listening this long into the episode, go to jivinesci.com, g-i-o-v-a-n-i-s-c-i.com.

23:59Sign up for me in the newsletter. I'm trying to send out more as I can, what makes sense, and need your help. So yeah, shoot me an email. Let me know what you think. All right. Talk to you next time.