Twittter is hard in 2020

I've been in the fortunate position to grow my Twitter following substantially over the last 6 months, and here are a few learnings.

• Before I had a public accomplishment (selling a SaaS business of substantial value), growing my following was a pain. Doing something spectacular will put a spotlight on you, and that attracts people. Doesn't have to be selling a business, I've seen other things work: creating a great community resource, recording an amazing free course, launching a podcast with interesting content, writing an ebook that is super helpful, etc.
• Credibility is one of the core attributes that people are looking for, and it can be gained slowly by creating great content and distributing it for free, with no strings attached.
• Asking for people's opinions works very well when it comes to engagement. We all want to write incredibly thoughtful tweets that get liked and retweeted because they're so insightful, but what really works is asking people to share THEIR thoughts
• Posting at the right time for your audience is important. I live in Germany, and my audience is mostly in the US. If I tweet in my morning, I won't reach many people in the States. That's why I use a scheduling product to send my tweets out at a later point.
• Following and amplifying other Twitter users will get you followers much quicker than just relying on content. Follow people who you admire, comment on their tweets, retweet them, sub-tweet them, just ENGAGE. A certain percentage will follow you back and expose your tweets to a much bigger audience.

Hope this helps!

Stock Alarm ran into the same issue so we've decided to offer a different type of service on twitter. After much indecision, we decided to convert our twitter account into a bot that would reuse some of our data.

Our twitter account currently does the following:

• Tweets out breaking stock market news 4x a day
• Tweets out upcoming earnings info for the next day
• Tweets out top gaining/losing stocks of the day so far

Here is our twitter bot in-case you're curious.

All suggestions are welcome!

The biggest challenge in the beginning is that results are not linear. Things might be flat or slow for a long time, but then a lot can happen quickly (unless you get discouraged and stop half way).

I think right now you need to try to focus on bringing a spike of attention to yourself. Try to think of something that you can do that can potentially get you to the frontpage of Hacker News (or Reddit or anywhere where there’s a bunch of people refreshing the page waiting for something interesting), and work backwards from there. It can be on any topic, as long as it’s something that involves you. Do a few of those until something goes to the frontpage. When that happens, respond to every question and pay attention to what piques people’s interest. This kind of attention will guide you quickly to something that you can continue talking about and attract a following. Then adjust & adapt from there.

I did a massive thread on getting new followers naturally just the other day:

Some top tips

• tweet every day around one topic
• have real pic (trust)
• have a professional/relevant twitter handle
• reply to people, don't just like or retweet

Just a quick question - what's the goal here for you? To build a personal following? Or to use as a potential sales channel for your product/service?

I did a Post on Indiehackers on the same thing on How I got 357% Growth on Twitter

Its been 1.5 months on Twitter & I was able to sell my digital product quite nicely. $500 in 1.5 months on Twitter.

Hey @fenske,

I like twitter really much. I'm not that successful as I want ... but I use it more on the side.
Basically I use it to keep up to date with the latest news (world news, news from friends, news from devs). twitter is great for networking and getting in touch with people.

about your account, for one month, the numbers are good. but it's not that easy to say. how strong is the interaction? do these impressions bring you traffic?

these numbers are always difficult to interpret. there are accounts with 100k users but the interaction is bad. at those accounts you can quickly see whether the followers have been bought.

the tweet impressions, are they from one tweet or several?

i think twitter is good, but you gotta work hard to be attractive to your (future)user base

Sorry for not being able to contribute with much here, other than I'd say those numbers aren't bad.

But I don't know anything about Twitter marketing, and it's something I'd like to get in to. Can you perhaps share your strategies and what you've learned?

I'm just starting to take my twitter account seriously but a few things that have worked so far:

• posting interesting threads. I have an email newsletter where I share podcast episodes with some notes / lessons. A few days after the email, I post as a thread and tag in the podcast host and guest. Always gets a few followers.
• replying to people - especially ones with large followings. Topics that also fit with what I personally am sharing.
• giving shout outs to people when I've followed them or joined a newsletter. And giving reasons why.
• recently changed my bio to reflect more about what I share so that I attract the right followers. And then at least try to mainly keep to those topics.

Totally a WIP but followers are creeping up. And I'm enjoying it.

A useful article that was recommended to me https://medium.com/an-idea-for-you/26-ways-to-improve-your-tweets-and-grow-your-following-3e64cb7fe729

Hey Fenske,

Two ways to go about this.

1. Right now you're shouting in a void. Your voice isn't amplified because no one is hearing you.

Follow big accounts in your niche and add value to their timeline. Comment on their tweets. Quote RT them.

You will be noticed. You will be followed by others. If the accounts you're doing this with are not too huge they'll also RT you now and then.

2. Just like Daniel mentioned. How can you get the spotlight on you? On Twitter you could do it like this: Do you know someone on Twitter with a large audience? Does he know you as well as you think you know that him? :) What is something he can vouch for? Ask him if he wants to mention you to his audience. Being mentioned by (big players) others is the single best way to grow your account.

My Twitter follower growth has been very slow from the start but with gradual acceleration over time. Some basic stats:

• Tweet Frequency: 3x / week on average but inconsistent.
• Following/Followers: 170/803
• Growth last month: +53

I think the reason it's been growing fast and faster is because most of my tweets are about free tutorials I've made. Some of remainder are for paid content, but a lot of my customers also follow me on Twitter and like those tweets, too.

If I were just tweeting about my day or even my opinions, people probably wouldn't follow. But since my feed is more like a resource for a certain segment of web devs, people want to see the tweets on their timeline.

I've been tweeting consistently for years. I've seen almost no traction. Just a very small set of dedicated followers.

I've tried every trick in the book. Ultimately, I think it hurts (or, at least, doesn't help) that my interests/ventures are diverse and I'm just not going to pick one "niche" and become the ____-guy.

Perspective is everything.

One thing you have to avoid at all costs is to let your follower count define your success. None of those numbers that Twitter shows is actually a measure of success in and of itself.

Vanity metrics will destroy your self worth and undermine your growth.

What do you really want? As an indie entrepreneur, I'm guessing is you want to create a successful company/product that improves others' (and your) lives.

If you have a great idea/product but only 10 followers, does that mean your idea isn't going to reach a lot of people? No.

It only takes one of those followers to be a small-time Gary Vee to retweet one of your tweets and get you a million eyeballs. That's the magic of social media.

Build real relationships. Care about the individuals, not the numbers. Let the numbers tell you if you're headed in the right direction--but don't let them define your success.

I'll share a similar story about website visitors--similar to follower count, but nobody can see it but you.

For years I chased after more blog readers. Years.

I got to 1,000/mo and was like "cool! now how do I get to 10,000?"

I got to 10,000/mo and was like "awesome! how do I get to 20,000?"

I hit 20,000/mo and, as you would guess... I wanted to hit 50,000... I still wasn't much richer (in finances or in personal success than I was at the beginning).

Long story short... I was stuck at 20,000/mo for 3 years and couldn't grow. It really ate away at my self-worth. Battled with depression a lot.

After learning a ton about SEO, I finally performed a full SEO audit... 30 days later I was getting 40,000/month.

90 days later... 80,000 visitors/mo. 6 months after the audit I was getting over 100,000 visitors every single month.

And it felt great! For a while. And then it was just the norm. I had many other successes at this point--2 successful companies, a great reputation in the industry, people wanting to interview me regularly... but none of these were enhanced just because I had more followers (or blog visitors).

Sure, that was a factor. But it wasn't the defining factor. It was the relationships I had built, and the value I had given to those relationships that led to the real successes.

Hope that's an encouragement.

Perhaps this can help all of us who are in a similar position: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/should-we-start-following-each-other-on-twitter-3e4895c3d9

I literally tweeted the exact same thing (my stats) 3 days ago. You can check my numbers here: https://twitter.com/BLeonavicius/status/1254706584049135617

And I also started at the beginning of April, so almost one month and we have very similar stats except for the number of tweets. I was a bit more modest and only tweeted 40 times.

However, I see my own numbers and yours as a success. For the first month, it looks quite good, but the real question if that is sustainable. You usually get a big boost when you start something - telling your friends or colleagues about your twitter, maybe sharing it on other social media, etc.

I don't really use Twitter, so not an expert, but I expect you need to pay to boost (promote) your tweets to see reasonable results.

My twitter experience is terrible and I'd like to do something about it but it just isn't my priority. I find that there needs to be something on twitter that they'd benefit from. If you're referencing twitter in an email, you'd need to have a good enough reason for it. And then for growth to occur, your tweets would need reshare value - or at least cause people to engage (comment) on it and hopefully someone else notices that comment or gets drawn in. I make sure whatever I'm posting elsewhere also ends up on twitter, but I don't actively engage there (unless someone tags me directly).

Has been a challenge for us at https://twitter.com/HelloClouders

While our newsletter has about 150 people, our twitter isn't properly operated.

One thing we can do is to request subscribers follow on Twitter but dont want to ask explicitly.

Yeah, I think it's just inherently difficult.

My website was on the main page of hacker news and got very popular.

But 1 month after I have only 54 subscribers and only 2 are really interacting with me.

People write all the time that it takes them months to get to 1000, so I think there is no reason to overthinking. Just keep posting stuff and it will slowly grow.