TII #003: Go From 0 to 1000 Twitter Followers in 3 Months
Your step by step guide to grow from 0 to 1000 Twitter followers and beyond.
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4 months ago I had Twitter following of 0 and never participated in any social media much. If anything, I was just a consumer.
I didn’t the see the benefit of moving part of my life online.
This changed mid 2021, when I migrated from Europe to New Zealand and founded my own business.
I looked for two things:
Building connections with other founders (there are only few where I live)
Building an audience to get the word about my products out
Twitter seemed like the obvious choice, since this is where many like-minded startup founders are spending their time.
Only three months later I hit 1000 followers.
Here is my approach, stats and mistakes/lessons for you to learn from.
My three step growth plan
There are three things you need to focus on, when it comes to Twitter growth and building connections:
Visibility: How many people will see your tweets and profile
Conversion: How many people hit the follow button after seeing your tweets or profile
Genuine interaction: Build connections with like-minded people for mutual benefit, such as learning, entertainment, support, network, etc.
This translates into three questions for you to answer:
How can you make your profile interesting enough for people in your niche to follow?
What and how often should you tweet?
How can you add value to content of others?
Interpret all these bullet points as a process.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and see what works.
IMPORTANT: You must satisfy all the above points to grow. Unless you have some following already, or are a person of interest, two or less will not be enough.
How I executed this plan
For the profile I tested different combinations of image, banner and bio.
I’m aiming to tell a story:
Who am I?
What did I do/where do I come from?
What is my goal/plan for the future?
What do you get out of following me?
When people click your profile the second thing they see is your tweet timeline. If there aren’t enough interesting tweets, it’s less likely they will follow you.
You can use the built in, free Twitter analytics to check which Tweets did well, impressions, profile visits from each Tweet etc.
On the Twitter web app click on “More”, expand “Creator Studio” and then click “Analytics” (You need a professional account for this):
For your own Tweets there are three content categories:
Entertainment
Lessons/Learnings
Connections (e.g. personal Tweets of your travels, etc.)
My content is a mix between all of them, leaning more towards entertainment. I make sure to tweet twice a day to keep the content fresh and timely.
Focus on providing value first. If the value is big enough, people will like and share it. Guaranteed.
A few ways to provide value:
A joke/meme can provide value in form of entertainment
Something you have learned can provide value in form of a lesson for others
A picture of yourself in the mountains, or a video of you learning surfing can provide value in the form of inspiration
Quotes can provide value in form of a lesson or motivation
Don’t just look at my content and think this is the end all be all. It’s not. My growth is decent, but can always be better.
CSS/JS tricks have a huge potential audience. Financial tips have a huge potential audience. Think about what you like, and try to find ways to provide value in that arena.
By far the most important part to growth with little to no followers is engagement with others.
I can’t stress this enough. You must engage with content of others daily.
This is how you build connections and get seen. If you don’t engage with others, you will have a hard time growing your following.
Make sure to add value to conversations. Posting emojis or saying “This is awesome” is not enough.
A few examples on how to add value to responses:
Ask interesting follow up questions
Provide your own take to the original Tweet
Add your experience to the original Tweet
Answer a question (only if the Tweet was a question)
Bonus: You can use a pinned tweet to expand on your profile’s story OR use your best performing tweet.
Your Tweet with the most likes and retweets is already proven to resonate with many people → use it to entice people who haven’t seen it.
Recap and lessons
Here are my stats for September, October and November
Month 1: 1255 Tweets, 197k impressions, 35.7k profile visits, 214 new followers
Month 2: 2573 Tweets, 312k impressions, 28.4k profile visits, 250 new followers
Month 3: 3759 Tweets, 577k impressions, 58.5k profile visits, 498 new followers
Keep in mind I started Tweeting sometime around the 9th of September. You can observe a massive increase in Tweets every month. Most of these are replies to other peoples’ Tweets.
Tweet stats composition:
Two original Tweets of my own per day
In September and October I also posted one thread per week. I stopped this, because I didn’t see the payoff I wanted. → Experiment → Evaluate → Adjust
The vast majority of “Tweets” are replies to other’s content and replies to my own Tweets
I replied to every single comment on my Tweets.
Main lessons from these three months:
It’s vital to post at least one time per day. I don’t think it’s necessary to post twice, but it does work quite well.
It’s vital to engage with others daily. Pick a list of 20 people you like between 0 and 20k followers. Smaller is better at the beginning, as they are more likely to interact with you. A few should be bigger accounts. You can use Twitter’s “List” feature to create a private list.
Reply to every comment you get on your Tweets. The quicker you can reply to a comment on your own Tweet, the better. This is especially true if the commenters don’t follow you yet.
Don’t try to get 3700 Tweets per month. It’s too much and not worth it. Focus on fewer but meaningful interactions.
TL;DR
Create an enticing enticing and recognizable profile
Tweet something of value daily. People need to see what they can expect when they scroll through your tweets and profile.
Engage with people that interest you daily. Make sure to add value to the conversation.
Posting emojis or “that’s cool” doesn’t provide value. Think about what you can add, such as interesting questions or different takes on the Tweet you are replying to.
Focus on visibility, conversions and genuine connections at the same time. Doing only one or two of them will yield mediocre results.
This guide should give you a good idea how to grow from 0 to 1000.
If you want a deep dive on the Twitter algorithm, how to make media Tweets and more, I can highly recommend Dagobert Renouf’s course.
It helped me a ton to understand how Twitter works and create my content accordingly.
You can get it via my affiliate link here: “Dominate Twitter”.
I hope this article was helpful, and I wish you good luck growing your following!
Cheers