On Twitter, You've Got To Take Any Opportunity You've Got [Case Study]
The Setup
I don't yet have a large following on Twitter. So right now, my discoverability depends on commenting on the posts of popular accounts in my niche.
While I was scrolling over lunch, I saw this tweet go up:
Posted 53 seconds ago. Already had 10 likes. I could tell that this was going to be a popular post.
This was my opportunity.
I quickly pulled up Adobe XD and illustrated the simplest version of that quote. To make it a challenge, I only gave myself 5 minutes before I had to post it.
What I posted is the image at the top of this post with the simple caption:
"Ask and you shall receive"
(Sorry I can't share more screenshots - don't have enough karma to share more than one link yet)
The Result
- 13,269 Impressions
- 2,040 Engagements
- 297 Profile clicks
- 9 Retweets (including Matt)
This post also lead to 30+ followers that day.
All for stealing someone else's idea, applying my unique angle, and sharing.
(Again, sorry I can't share the screenshots)
Moral Of The Story
Take the opportunity when you see it.
- Twitter moves quickly.
- Strike while the iron is hot.
- Find a way to contribute to the conversation and make the original poster look good.
Ps. If you're not already following @mkobach on Twitter, I'd highly recommend you do. His insights on social media will help you out tremendously.
Naaah, I am done with Twitter hacking.
Do we have any examples of someone who FIRST was popular on Twitter and LATER made known business / website / newsletter / whatever?
Everyone who has a lot of followers on Twitter is a business owner or celebrity or an expert in some field BEFORE being active on Twitter a lot.
I can make the most insightful comment and no one will care, because I am just some random guy.
I feel like everyone tries to hack Twitter backwards.
Elon Musk doesn't have 34 mln subscribers because he makes snarky posts and comments.
@csallen doesn't have 24 thousand people observing him because he made some witty responses on popular posts.
I am ready to get my mind changed, but I need some solid examples.
EDIT I obviously subscribed to you on Twitter. :)
Yeah, man, we're all struggling (esp devs) to make sense of the social online world we live in, to provide value and promote, balance that with what we want to work on, etc.
I want to build a Twitter following because a newsletter sounds like a ton more work, and I'm tired of all my random ideas not even being seen, let alone getting useful feedback.
My guess is my current project won't be "the one," but I'm committed to doing more for an actual audience, and Twitter sounds like one small way to do that.
I generally agree on the hacking front as well. Like Stew mentioned, a hack/tactic is something you can apply occasionally for a boost, but you still have to have interesting content the rest of the time to show there's a reason why people should follow you.
I see what you're saying @mpodlasin
What I'm suggesting is not to ONLY try to get followers based on commenting on the posts of others, but to do it ALONG with putting out your own content.
Musk and Allen both see the value in having an audience, which is why they post online. There are plenty of successful business people who don't publish, but they lack the support of their following every time they want to launch something new.
It's not my plan to use this technique forever. But the point of sharing this with IH is to show a way you can grow your audience through contribute to the conversation.
Thanks for the food for thought
Hey, if I was rough in any way I am sorry.
My comments are coming from my dissatisfaction with attempts to grow Twitter.
I am just asking the question is it really worth it.
I decided that for me it's it not. I prefer to write another blog article and at least attempt to make it popular on Medium or get some google traffic.
But of course I don't want to question your attempts, you are doing a better job than me, so... :)
Genuine question in response to your "is it really worth it?":
What do you want to happen?
To grow my Twitter following.
My point is that making an awesome popular product or crazy-good newsletter will probably contribute more to your Twitter numbers than anything else.
If that's true, then why waste time "hacking" Twitter? Why not use this time to design your product a bit better or write an awesome blog post / newsletter entry?
Case in point: my brand Twitter has 100 subscribers, my personal has 30. I am much more active on my personal account. Therefore - being active on Twitter is not an effective way to build a following.
Right, but why do you want to grow a twitter following? What do you want to happen by having a bigger following?
In case my current project fails I want to be able to pivot and create new products faster / more efficiently.
Obviously having some kind of audience makes testing ideas / creating products easier and faster.
Worst case scenario I want to use my following to more easily access "premium" jobs in companies.
Got it. Then I completely agree that you're much better off focusing on building that audience on a platform you own rather than social media.
And overall, having a big twitter following almost never translates to those followers buying. It's more of a relationship nurturing tool than a broadcast tool, even though its business model is built to encourage the latter. I think of it more like a massive cocktail party....or rather, lots of them all happening at once.
In my experience (I have 12,000+ followers and several colleagues in the 10k-50k range), Twitter's biggest strength is being able to interact with people who normally would be difficult to reach through other means. But that's not at all about how many followers YOU have, it's how you interact in public.
Do I understand your post correctly that building the followers base on Twitter doesn't have that value? For which use case does it have?
Sorry, your question is unclear, can you try to be more specific about what "it" and "that" refer to?
Here's the post since Stew isn't able to link to it yet :)
https://twitter.com/mkobach/status/1265308368211791875
This is perfect as-is.
And if it feels awkward to you, attributing the author probably doesn't hurt either - like giving additional credibility to the content!
I've had some folks drop my tweets into a canva template and try to get me to retweet them...both showing me that it was really just about them.
But I LOVE this - I would be honored to have a twitter follower create awesome images like this out of my tweets when there's clearly thought put into it!
Thanks for linking @AndrewV
You're absolutely right. When I then took that image and shared it on LinkedIn, I attributed Matt. Tagging people is a great way to bring more people into the fold as long as you're creating value and making them look good.
Great to see this. You executed it perfectly by the sounds of it @stew_hillhouse!
That's dope @stew_hillhouse, I'm at an even earlier stage in building my Twitter following, this shows there's hope! 😁
Gotta start somewhere! It's not always going to work, but it's a good way to get some visibility. Still gonna need to post regularly too on your own profile
Agreed! Consistency > Intensity
We built our 9-year-old 100% bootstrapped RiteKit (4 SaaS products, 17-endpoint API) in Twitter. Social is what powers our inbound marketing, and nearly all of it is from Twitter and Instagram.
The ability to curate the best content for our customer avatar and share posts with our ads riding on top is what makes this possible.
Example:
Meetedgar is a competitor to one element of our RIteBoost. Here's us advertising on their video - and showing how it can be done. Try the Rite.ly link in that Tweet. Yes, that's me.
For the why and how, please see this post of mine, including a Tweet that continues to get a heck of a lot of Retweets and likes. This could work for a great many of us indiehackers.
Marketing is war. Questions welcome.
Agreed! It's a good method. Though doesn't always work.
Here's my most liked Tweet this month: Reply to SHL
That one reply probably got me 30 follower as well.
Nice - And I agree. This won't always work. But as long as you're contributing to the conversation, you're using the platform in a positive way in my opinion.
Agreed! And that's mindset to keep as well.
I think this is one of the great ways you can get the 'spike' to your twitter account.
Great study, indeed.
Thanks @vaibhavThevedi