I made it to 165K followers on Twitter, AMA.
I started my story on Twitter in February 2021. In two years, I grew it to 165K+ followers.
My account was created years ago, but I didn't tweet and engage. When I ended my contract with NY based company, I decided to build my audience on Twitter.
It was not easy initially, especially when nobody knew about you.
But over time (6 weeks), I started to see some results.
AMA guys!
Trending on Indie Hackers
This is indeed impressive; congratulations. And thank you for offering an AMA on this issue.
One aspect that would interest me is the 'strategy' that one must use to grow followers even if one does not cherish that approach. In other words: Is there anything about your behavior on Twitter that you deem to be necessary, and yet personally annoying?
One thing that can be annoying, especially at the start, is that you must be fast. Really fast. I mean, when the big account posts something, you have to be first or one of the first who replies.
And the reply must be valuable and add value to the conversation. So it can be stressful.
If you're over 5K followers, it doesn't matter that much anymore. All depends on the engagement you receive on your tweets.
What made you want to pursue growing a large following? What are some of the side-effects of a large following that you did not anticipate?
What's the outcome for you to have this large Twitter audience?
Have you leveraged it yet for something?
Do you get sponsorship requests? What kind of deal?
I also ask because I might be interested. I'm at 28k but have a monetized thisweekinreact.com newsletter with 18k subs that I'm trying to grow.
Was also wondering if you consider your audience high quality? I see you often post content for junior devs with list of tools. Aren't you afraid to attract an audience of wannabe developers and not professional ones? I don't say this as a critique of course, really curious and it could definitively make sense depending on your end goals: it's better to grow a junior audience if you want to sell dev courses imho.
I get sponsorships.
Yes, I target a young audience because they're eager to learn. I don't think Twitter is the right platform if you want to target highly skilled developers just because they prefer in-depth content, which is hard to distribute via Twitter.
You need in-depth blog posts for this. So basically you would only share links to your blog which the Twitter algorithm doesn't like.
Can you detail how those sponsorships work and cost exactly? Interested to know the model.
On my side I target senior devs with my React curation newsletter and am quite successful on Twitter by simply posting the most interesting links every week (https://slo.im/thread). It's definitively slower to built an audience this way, but the audience is probably higher quality. Not sure it's easier to monetize it though.
This is pretty amazing!
Have you found that building in public help?
I've personally been building doing a SaaS in 7 day challenge and the amount of engagement has been insane. I feel like it's helped with getting people interested in a "story" and to follow along https://twitter.com/pwang_szn/status/1631312569154560000
I built one app in public, and over 5000 users registered, but that project was primarily free.
What were some of the strategies you used to achieve such growth? What advice would you give to others who want to grow their Twitter followers?
The most crucial strategy at the start is to engage with big accounts.
Why? Because you get much more impressions for your account from this tactic than your tweets because you don't have an audience yet.
So you basically leverage the audience of others to get noticed.
makes sense, thank you!
Impressive, congrats! Trying to grow my social media presence as well. Would you say that interacting with big brands was more important than what you actually posted? Also, what would be the number one thing you suggest doing to start growing your brand? My company has a small community slowly growing but I would love to see some growth from new people and am struggling to get out of the same ecosystem.
I have to say that growing your personal account is much easier than doing the same with the branded one.
People like to interact with real people. Even if you want to grow your company account I suggest interacting with personal accounts, not brands.
Because brands are businesses like you are.
that's a good observation. I guess if I grew my own account as an ambassador of the brand (don't know how else to word it) I could then use that influence to try and transfer the interest over to my company's account
Yeah, that's the strategy that can work. Grow your account and make it visible for others that you're a creator of the product.
your right!
First of all, congrats 🎉! It's a an impressive Win.
I want to ask these questions:
Be the first who comments on large accounts. Turn on notifications and comment on something that ads value to the conversation.
Programming (web development mostly)
First, it was about credibility.
You can monetize your account in many ways. Build info products, offer sponsored tweets, and build SaaS in public.
Still i wonder how you made this reach ???
I spent like 2 hours daily at the start just engaging with others.
Especially with big accounts.
Congrats @ckissi
Thank you!
First of all many congrats, Csaba 🎉
My question:
Is it good to post content or daily activities like building, growth, etc often to grow on Twitter?
Thanks, Basharath!
It depends on your audience. It's not easy to switch between topics.
For instance, if you tweet about programming as I do, it would be harder to tweet about your upcoming product that is off-topic.
So if I would tweet about my upcoming product that is e.g. some kind of graphic software, I would get much less engagement in comparison to new projects related to programming or Twitter or anything related to my audience.
In general, it's good to share what you're building especially if you engage with people who do the same.
Thanks for the info :)
Would you recommend paying for promotional content in the start to ensure you get seen in the start, or would you just use the money/energy making better tweets?
The question is, how does that following translate into helping you achieve business goals?
Twitter is really good for promoting products, i read this indie hacker post about how he launched an app that made him like 8K$ a month just using his 40k follower twitter account.
How many followers did you have after 6 weeks?
I got around 1000 new followers in 6 weeks.
Dang, that is some very nice growth. I am at 200 after about 6 weeks. I am not spending a huge amount of time on it though.
Would you say you spent an hour a day for the for six weeks?
Are there any twitter tools you'd recommend to subscribe to?
paid or free tools e.g. analytical or automation tools
Wow impressive! Congrats on this huge milestone! I'm just getting started on Twitter. What angle and tactics did you use to get your first 1k followers then to 10k followers?
This is very cool! when replying to these big accounts, were there topics that you found were more or less helpful to reply on?
I didn't think about it. I just replied where my expertise allowed me to respond with something meaningful.
Wow that's very inspiring!
Do you have any tips or practices you would recommend for companies seeking to expand their social media presence? I recently started a company and am seeking to expand to new audiences.
I would suggest growing your personal account and using it to push juice to your personal account.
Hey, thanks for sharing your incredible journey. Very inspiring!
I'm starting now on Twitter. If I understood well from other comments, it looks like the secret is to engage with large accounts (being the first to comment) and post 2-3 times per day. I want to ask you a couple of questions:
Thanks!
A scheduler is not an issue here. At least I didn't see any issues related to this. The problem is that you must reply to comments as soon as possible to keep the engagement. The algorithm likes that.
50 replies are not a big problem if you're experienced enough in the field. If you're not, it can be hard to reply to that many comments.
Thanks for your answer! I'm current struggling on finding the right daily routine to interact with big accounts, since they publish in different time of days. Do you have a dedicated time frame or you interact during the whole day?
How much time did it take for you to take it there?
It's been 4 months and we came to 489 at https://twitter.com/Noyan_idin
169K followers in 2 years.
Did you follow any methods or just sharing content and comments ?
Stay in your niche, and avoid jumping to different niches. Your followers don't like it. And algorithm also does not like it.
I didn't follow any specific method. Consistency and good content is what works.
I would be nice if you share how you did it.
Please read the thread here. I mentioned the most important tactics multiple times.
no response to my question??
Do you automate posts?
Do you use threads?
Do you argue with followers?
I use a scheduler only. No automated posts.
Yes, I usually do one thread/day.
No. You should not argue. You may post your opinion but never argue.
What's your motivation? Why are you building an audience?
The initial reason was that I wanted an audience for my upcoming products and side projects.
For a moment, I thought you were saying you earned 165k USD on twitter. That would be a hell of a story :D
Haha, no. But there are people who earn much more from their Twitter audiences.
But they are in different niches.
Wow Impressive, would you say there were any specific posts that were very big step changes for you?
First, you have to be "discovered" by others. I created Tailwind CSS widgets where I featured big accounts.
Imagine a small profile block with the image of the big account.
What were the good strategies you had to find those big accounts related to your audience?
Thanks for sharing all the lessons learned! And congrats on your achievement!
It's easy to find them. You must search for keywords related to your niche and check top tweets. Then you can check the accounts that posted them.
How often do you tweet? and do you use a ghost writer?
I tweet 3 times a day usually (my tweets). And post about 50 comments daily.
I don't use and never used a ghost writer.
Wow! Very interesting strategy. Kinda love it.
Also, you are one of the few account over 50k that I have meet that don't use a writer, but those account also post a TON of threads. Sooo. That makes sense.
Yeah, preparing content takes time. And to be honest, I like coding more.
I wish I knew how to code. haha
I didn't see anyone ask this... What's your Twitter handle?
@csaba_kissi
This is pretty impressive. Can you tell us, roughly, how much time it takes to post 3 tweets and 50 comments?
Thanks!
Except for about 2 and a half hours daily.
Wow, this is impressive. Thanks!
PS: Big congrats! I am at 6k trying to grow to 50k this year
If your followers went up by X% during the same timeframe what X% did your revenue go up?
When you have over 10K followers, your income from sponsored content will rise.
Below 10K followers, I didn't get any sponsored requests. But this is very individual.
The income floats from month to month.
I'm glad to greet you Kissi. I just joined the forum and hope to be able to do this result soon
I wish you success, Miguel!
Congrats! Do you think engaging with big accounts will still work since AI has taken over and most of the users on twitter just schedule tweets, auto replies, etc
I also use a scheduler. But you'll need to engage with the comments. I barely see any automated replies from my followers.
And I never used AI for replies myself.
Congrats
Thank you!