Is Twitter essential for indie hackers?
How essential is Twitter to your product? Has it always been the case? What does your Twitter "workflow" look like?
Personally, I've been having a lot of trouble getting into it. Conversations seem superficial, for the most part, and it seems very difficult to find discussions that are genuinely engaging (as opposed to Reddit, for example). I also think it's pretty quiet in terms of feedback; it's very easy to feel like you're shouting in a desert. Seems not to be the case for others, seemingly the majority, so just curious.
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I don't think Twitter is in any way essential for an indie hacker. What is essential is that you have some way of reaching your target customers. If your target customers are on Twitter, Twitter is essential. If they're not on Twitter, Twitter doesn't matter.
A lot of indie hackers are building products for other indie hackers. You will see those people the most for obvious reasons - they want to market to you. Since many indie hackers are active on Twitter, those who are selling to them are also active on Twitter, thus it seems like Twitter is mandatory.
I took Daniel Vassallo's class (he successfully marketed on Twitter) and he noted another guy he knows who sells a really popular book on DynamoDB but doesn't have any online presence. Instead he speaks at cloud computing conferences. He found an alternative way to get attention from potential customers. Those ways may even be better since many, mamy people don't even use Twitter at all!
Twitter can be a hugely valuable tool for marketing products and gathering feedback on them. But I do think it gets a bit overrated because of the vanity metrics of followers . "Oh you got 10k followers on Twitter!" It's just an easy metric to measure and admire when "number go up". But unless you really care about having lots of internet stranger approval, ultimately Twitter followers only matters as a proxy for things you can convert it to.
One last big thing worth noting - on Twitter, people obsess over how many followers people have when who follows you is much more important. I know people who get huge follower counts, switched niches, and found the old followers had zero engagement. If you're building products for truck drivers, you'd rather have 1k truck drivers following you than 100k randos.
As far as shouting into the void, it's clear Twitter has a compounding effect where once people hit escape velocity and get a certain number of followers/likes, you hit "escape velocity" of engagement but you have to do the work to get there.
Thanks for sharing. The course looks great. Do you recommend? I've been looking for something like this. Years ago, I took a similar one for a photography Instagram account I had and it worked very well. Can't say I've found yet something similar for Twitter.
Reddit is essential for Indiehackers, a lot of untapped potentials. Twitter is good, but without an audience, there is little outreach, and even with the audience, there is little conversion.
While on Reddit, jumping into relevant conversations around your problem space, where people look for solutions that you might have, is driving a ton of conversions. And they are super relevant too.
The key is to provide value first. Offer help, use your expertise, and help others. Plugging your product at the end when it makes sense.
Using tools like Surfkey to set reddit keyword alerts is a huge timesaver. It sends you posts and comments with the keywords to your inbox, so you don't have to scan through Reddit manually.
Reddit has a higher barrier to entry I think because you're basically forced to offer value first.
If you can poke through the "layer of protection", there's a lot of gold underneath.
I think it's one of the easiest growth channels to enter and see actual results from tbh
Depends on your product and if you can get not banned for once haha.
If you want to do it right, I think it's more work than ads no?
A lot of upfront engaging etc.
I haven't seen a working (positive ROI) ad strategy for a pre-scale stage product.
We used to have one.
Not huge scale, but we basically ran ads with slight profit (~200 / month) to then tackle those keywords with organic.
Product made then around ~1000 / month organically (bit of seasonal fluctuation)
This guy also made money with positive ROI with ads, at a higher scale then the above.
Never say never ;)
Think in the end you should have all these tools in your toolbox and pick the one that works best for your specific case.
Cool! Yeah you are right, it's a toolbox!
What's your approach towards reddit?
Jump into relevant conversations, provide value first and then plug your product when it makes sense. Works wonders
Thanks for this. Will definitely look at Surfkey in detail.
This is precisely what has been working for me the most. But I am also having a hard time plugging my newsletter at the end, and comments without plugs simply don't perform as well as those with. It seems most Redditors don't simply go to your profile and click your product's link, even if you provided significant value. However, I've seen others being called out for having an unbalanced plug to no-plug ratio of comments.
I think that if I spend enough time not plugging, but providing value (i.e. a healthy ratio), then soon I can post a plug-only thread and, hopefully, it might be well received. At least, that's what I intend to test.
https://whispercatch.webflow.io/ it's laser focused on this type of Reddit marketing campaigns
I use Twitter more like a journal. A place to share what I'm doing.
I don't get much feedback (compared with other platforms), but it helps me to stay engaged with my projects.
But, yeah, if you don't build developer tools, definitely is not essential.
Your Twitter looks great. Just followed you!
My newsletter is aimed at aspiring developers so I feel like a lot of them are on Twitter.
In that case, I think you could try to build an audience there. I feel the same, I see Twitter as the de facto home for developers.
For my product, Twitter doesn't work because:
Sometimes I get something successfully commented on, but the amount of effort doesn't pay off.
I have decided to try to increase my audience, but without fanaticism, and not yet considering Twitter as a real "sales" place.
It depends on your market. If all your customers are active on Twitter then 100% it's essential to be there.
If not, then Twitter is optional if you want to have a peer group. IMO you can learn a lot from being on there.
Might be a stupid question, but how do you really know if your customers are active enough (for your product) on Twitter? I mean, couldn't you always find on social media people having discussions relevant to one's product, therefore making them potential customers?
I think being active and contributing to a random one off post about a product are completely different.
Twitter for indie hackers is primarily about showcasing their work and building an engaged audience. The platform's essence does not lend itself to deep discussions, and most interactions revolve around topics such as "what you are doing," "how it can help me," or "may I have the same problem." Therefore, reaching out to people for feedback, gaining insights on what others are doing, and showcasing one's own work can yield better results than focusing on building deep connections.
I enjoy Twitter, however I don't think there is any "one" channel that is essential.
I think you could blog, youtube, email, facebook or reddit or whatever just as well.
I think what is essential is you find your audience and engage with them wherever they are; and to spread yourself too thin across many channels.
Short answer, No, but it helps...
People with large followings are able to quickly test new product ideas and see immediate success or failure. With the audience, it will take a while to see traction, whether it's the best or worst idea.
I don't think you should put all your focus on Twitter but if you can grow your following alongside building your product, then it's a win-win.
Twitter definitely isn't necessary. I just like it as a tool to quickly share some stuff I'm working on. The #buildinpublic hashtag is solid in that you can connect with other indie hackers and people working on stuff, but I wouldn't say you're ever going to get into some deeply meaningful/helpful conversations.
If you expect it to be a place to be able to boost content marketing, retweet stuff from a company account, and develop a bit of leverage, then you're probably in good shape. However it's not essential by any means.
Having a solid profile design isn't a bad idea though because people might just look you up as a founder and want to follow you. Running customer support through Twitter is also a decent way to engage and grow naturally.
Loved your #buildinpublic daily routine. Just followed you!
it depends on who are the people you want to build a network with and the intent of using the platform.
For me it has worked great in terms of getting leads and first few users
What is your product, if I may ask, and how are you getting your first users?
It depends on who you sell to.
If you are selling to other startups or enterprises, usually, that's the audience that spends a lot of time on Twitter.
From a previous comment, I think that @shanefromfargo might disagree? :)
I've written about this topic in depth before.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/six-figure-monthly-revenue-and-im-really-bad-at-social-media-bc5578f214
I'm obviously bias as I hate Twitter just as much as you, but it certainly isn't necessary. Of course every channel helps, but you just need to focus on what works best for you.
I'm very much on the same boat as you, having a Twitter account for over a decade now and never felt it's like home to me. So by no means I think it's essential in anyways unless your customers are on Twitter and the only way to reach out is Twitter (I doubt this is the only channel) but it still makes things easier if you have a have a following on some channel including Twitter.
My take on this: If your product serves other builders, then it can be a great tool to build an audience and get users. Otherwise, it's a distraction and gives you a false sense of progress.
Not even close! I can’t even remember the last time I logged into Twitter.
If you choose a B2B niche social media isn’t required at all.
Good point. Sometimes I see B2B social media accounts and I genuinely wonder how much of that helps.
depends what your goal is. i was not previously using it but actually hired a consultant that built a few companies i'm a fan of in my category explodingideas.co i've been growing fine but he said i could ramp it up exponentially if i focused on twitter as a growth strategy. he told me to replicate people like justin welsh.
Thanks for sharing. One thing I've been doing to try to get into the Twitter workflow is to get inspiration from the (few 😅) accounts that I genuinely enjoy. Justin Welsh's account seems like an interesting one.
I wouldn't say it's essential, but it can boost your sales, branding, and basically everything.
With Twitter, you can actually build an audience and even better, a community around you and your product, which I believe is SUPER valuable.
You can't really do that in any other social media.
The only thing that needs to be done is to gain courage and do it.
We essentially need a CHEAP marketing hcanel to fifnd LARGE o. of customers.
It could be anything Web, Social, cold call etc as long as above 2 criteria's a met.
Twitter isn't essential for anything.
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Recently, I saw a tweet about someone who took 11 years (!) to get to 35 followers and 3 months to get to 500. Not sure if this was a joke or if they weren't doing anything for 11 years, but it's not the first tweet of this kind that I see. Makes one wonder if it's worth the time and energy investment.