#008 - How My Tweet Reached 40,000 People and Hit the Top of Reddit (3-min)

I tried for 3 years.

Yesterday (finally) one of my Tweets went viral.

#1 post of r/webdev all day
850+ upvotes
400+ likes
150+ followers on Twitter
100+ retweets

Here's why I think it was successful.

1. I Told a Story

Humans are wired for stories.

It's how our ancestors communicated for years.

Beyond that, this was a personal story with photos showing me doing it.

Like this one:

2. I Tagged People

If I would have just shared the story,

it wouldn't have worked.

What I also did was tag all the people who (unknowingly) helped me throughout my journey/story.

Like here, and here, and here.

Let's be real.

It doesn't happen every time.

Take Pieter Levels' retweet...

He liked it right away, but he didn't retweet it.

The next day I quote tweeted that the story hit the top of Reddit's r/webdev (550k members).

and like 36 hours after the initial tweet, he retweeted it!

(And he DM'd me,

which I'm abashedly so stoked about.

Dude's a legend.)

3. I Promoted It on Other Platforms

I promoted it on Reddit, Twitter, dev.to, and obviously here on Indie Hackers.

And on each, I didn't just share the link

I spent 30-60 minutes customizing it for each platform.

I wanted it to blend right in.

Without doing this, none of the virality happens.

4. I Summarized Useful Links & Tips

The tweet was long

and I felt like there were so many good links in it.

So I summarized the links to all the tutorials as well as my 5 top takeaways from the whole experience.

Like this:

5. I Made a Crazy Specific Retweet Ask

I could have just said, "Please retweet if you liked it!"

Instead, I told them to retweet the exact first tweet in the thread

Here's exactly what I said:

I stole this ask from @harrydry thread style.

Actually, tbh, I learned all of this from this Harry's Marketing Examples' article.

6. I Showed Up Every Day for 50+ Days Before This Happened

The biggest difference today vs last year?

I'm showing up every day.

I'm giving myself more opportunities for success.

Big moments like this don't happen every day.

Not even most days.

But because I'm continually showing up, they happen.