I created this app called Dytto. I thought nothing of it really, it was a simple "let's try some new tech" type of project with no real aim. It turned out decent so I decided to put it online.
Hours after going live without a proper logo and a landing page, I saw a tweet from Adam Wathan who created a CSS framework called Tailwind CSS, which I've been using since its very early versions.
(In case the tweet is unavailable: He asks who makes cool stuff with Tailwind.)
I replied with mine even though I did not think it's cool enough to show off. I thought it might bring a few visitors to the landing page and did not expected much.
A few minutes passed by, I checked my analytics dashboard and saw like 20 visits from USA and Canada. Feels great! It was 2 AM where I live and I've been yawning for the past hour. So I get up and go to sleep, but decided to check Twitter feed one last time. Someone liked that tweet of mine. Feels good. I checked the tweet statistics and it says around ~50 clicks.
Wait what?
It gives me that adrenaline rush and I jump out of bed to check analytics dashboard again, and YEAH! More than 50 people have already visited in less than an hour and it already got 3 registers as a product that's not even in its beta stage. THREE REGISTERS! This is the first time anything I've built gets that much attention in such short time.
I've ended up collapsing at around 5 AM and woke up at 9 again. As of writing this post (at 11 PM) we've got just a little shy of 300 visits from 120 unique visitors from all around the world.
This was definitely an achievement for me and I'm excited too see what's next!
I kind of hesitate to share this because I don't want everyone doing it and therefore lessening the impact... BUT, I built and sold a business last year purely by replying to relevant tweets on twitter.
I've created a piece of software (using the Twitter API) that can track when certain keywords are mentioned by a whitelist of accounts and it emails me instantly. Then I can log on and reply from my business account.
This led to 1000's of unique vistors a month and plenty of sales. This was a site with almost zero SEO, no paid marketing, no content marketing, just products and tweets.
What you've found out here is that this is a very valid approach to getting traffic. It's not evergreen and requires a bit of legwork, but it works.
Maybe the real business would be the keyword tracking software 🙂
https://syften.com does this (I'm not affiliated but I think the founder is on IH).
Rather than promoting your product aggressively in reply, consider looking for opportunities to help people with adjacent problems. Build a reputation as being helpful and authoritative in that space, and you'll increase your following and draw customers in with the value you create.
@akfaew is the founder of syften.com
I'm also using this tool. Extremely useful if you want to keep track of online discussions containing your favorite keywords.
Oh cool. I'll have a look at it, thanks!
Mention and Brand24 are well established products for this. Won’t say their user base are indie hackers though
Hey Jamie! Thanks for sharing your experience. I actually thought about this but decided not to do it for a few reasons.
One because I have a feeling that I would lose the human factor in my tweets for the sake of plugging my product. I don't wanna be that guy/brand that spams every slightly related topic. To overcome that, I would have to take time to pick which tweets to reply and pick them soon enough so that my reply is already there when people see the tweet in their timeline. That sounds like a big effort.
Second reason is simply because I did not want to spend time on such an aggresive marketing strategy for now. I still have a lot to do on the product itself. I still have a lot to learn on marketing and content creation in general. I still have a daily job.
Third, I'm not even sure I can handle the stress of thousands of visitors right now. I, being a developer with 10+ years of experience, broke the website last night and took 2 hours to figure out why. 😄 I rather go a little slow for the very beginning.
Completely agree that you don't want to be the guy spamming or overly plugging your product. It's a careful balancing act of deciding if you even want to reply to some of the tweets and if so, what you should write. Doesn't always have to relate to your product, just using the business account to interact with people works well on Twitter.
Anyway, good luck with Dytto :)
Thanks a lot Jamie!
6+ here and I also broke my metrics dashboard saas multiple times while being the only user :D then spent 2 months refactoring the db. ahh, one never stops learning :)
lol yeah. I have learned Linux management basically by catastrophically destroying servers.
@JamieO How does a tool like this works? doesnt it need to monitor ALL TWITTER tweets..? how can it do that realisticly
Twitter does most of the heavy lifting for you with their streaming API.
Any tips on how to find important keywords or accounts?
Similar to hkanaktas@ I would feel funny automating it, but it would be useful to know what worked for you.
Or was it mostly the fact that you were replying first?
Having the first response to Twitter accounts with massive followings was always the best traffic generator but could also be seen as a bit spammy. It's a careful balance as you don't want to seem like a bot.
As for finding the right accounts, usually look for those with high Twitter usage (at least daily tweets) and those tweets get lots of interaction. Keywords are just related somewhat to your business or niche.
The Twitter notifier tool that you built for yourself sounds great. I'd like to use such a tool. Any way I can do that?
If not, are there existing products available in the market that do the same thing, which I could use?
Hi Jamie, is this software publicly available?
I've thought about tidying it up to release it but there are already loads of Twitter tools out there and this could easily be misused in order to spam on Twitter. Maybe one day :)
Yes, I can see how it could be misused. Personally I'm only interested in tools that can help me build an organic, engaged audience. It seems pointless to build a huge following if it's basically inert. Is Followerwonk one of the tools you were thinking of? If not can you name the ones you were thinking of. Thanks
I thought this was so genius that I built a little app that allows you to plug in a list of twitter account handles, set up a whitelist or blacklist of terms if you want, and will email or text you when any of those accounts tweets so you can respond quickly. It's still pretty rough, and could obviously be misused in the wrong hands, but message me if you want to try it out :)
Nice work! It is certainly a valid strategy that performs well on many levels. This is how I set it up:
Hey Marko! Thanks for your detailed comment. I will definitely keep on putting myself out there.
Good stuff!
That's pretty cool. I remember the first time something similar happened to me...
Guy Kawasaki shared one of my blog posts and I saw 1,300 visitors over the course of a few hours. Up to that point I was only seeing about 200-300 visitors a day.
That adrenaline rush is something else. Congrats!
Guy Kawasaki shared your blog post?! That's huge! Where can I read that?
Oh, that was years ago... 2013 I think... and that blog post didn't survive my post-Content Audit purge in 2017. But it was a crazy honor having been familiar with his work up to that point. His social media person, Peg, was (and still is) a good friend of mine.
After he shared that article, we ended up doing a couple live webinars together. Ended up having dinner together at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego in 2014. We've both spoken at that event every year since and it's like our once-per-year "Hey, how are things?" lol
That is so cool man.
Your landing page looks really good! Don't be too self-critical :)
I get the same rush when visitors come to my website, so I built a little tool this weekend which plays sounds when people come and go: www.usersentry.com (password: indiehackers). I keep it on in the background while I work.
I think it would also cure you of your doubts about your own page
not using GA either, but I love your minimalistic website :D
edit: tried it out with an old website with GA. Pretty fun :D
Thanks! I threw bootstrap on it now because Google didn't want to verify it, saying it was still "under development". I'm trying to not take it as an insult 😂
Hopefully it's still minimalistic enough for you
Thanks! I'm constantly updating the page as I come up with ideas. It went through some fairly big changes since last night. Nice to hear that you like it.
UserSentry is such a good idea. I kinda regret not using Google Analytics now lol
Dude, this is sick! We need this!!
👌🏻 let me know whether it's working out for you
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Must be an amazing feeling. Well done!
It really is! Motivates a lot.
Since the pandemic and staying-at-home began I've been really down, couldn't eat much, depression-slept a lot. I've been sleeping ~5h for the past days because I'm so excited about all of it!
Sorry to hear that man. If you ever need a chat about random stuff or anything, give me a shout on twitter @93alan . I know what it's like!
Brilliant to see some positivity though I'm sure and this will keep that fire burning inside.
Oh, thanks a lot Alan. That means so much.
Nice! Piggy backing on relevant forum/Twitter conversations is a great way to start gaining bits of traction.
Did Adam follow you? :)
He did not. Yet. :p
I am trying to improve my online presence by being proactive in open source communities. I'm sure I'll build some recognition over time.
Great story! My experience showed an insane spike on one viral tweet about marketing. Unfortunately I´m not in the marketing business so it was nice but irrelevant for my niche. I got 2 or 3 times where John McAfee replied and liked my tweets, that didn´t helped either.
What is your opinion about Hootsuite or similar apps? I once tried Hoorsuite and got my twitter profile almost deleted, they simply blocked it for a few days and sent me a warning, so I´m now very careful about that kind of apps
Thanks for your comment Werner! I've always been a casual user on Twitter, so I never used anything other than the official client. Thus I don't know anything about any 3rd party clients.
Congrats dude! 👏🥳🎉
Thanks a lot Brayden!
Congratulations :) I would love to hear a story about finding this problem to solve :)
Thanks Oleg! I will definitely share when I figure out if there is a problem to solve.
Wow! Congratulations!
Thanks Tulika!
Congrats man! My recent milestone post on IH brought about 100 users to my website and it really feels great when you are just starting out. Keep on going!
NICE! It's amazing how plain text has so much effect, right? A lot of people I knew in the past made me believe that coding a lot and making huge features are the key for success. They were sooo wrong.
Marketing and spreading the word is the key. You can build the best technical product ever built, but if no one hears about your project - it's just time wasted.
I saw that tweet too :)
Congrats
Thanks Victor!
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Thanks Satvik! We are looking into the wording issue. Will settle on one of the options soon.
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Thank you, Youce!
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