Growing your Twitter following takes time and effort, but there are strategies you can use to increase your reach and engagement. Here are some tips:
Find your niche: Identify the 0.01% of users who have specific needs not being fulfilled in their feeds and provide them with valuable content .
Cross the 10K follower mark: Crossing this milestone can lead to exponential growth in followers .
Follow and engage with influential accounts: By following and interacting with Twitter accounts that produce high-quality content, you can learn from their strategies and gain exposure to their followers .
Provide valuable and unique content: Share insightful information, tips, and interesting stories that resonate with your target audience .
Optimize your profile: Your bio, headshot, and pinned tweets play a crucial role in making a positive impression on potential followers .
Be consistent: Regularly posting content helps to maintain engagement and attract new followers .
Participate in conversations: Join relevant discussions and provide valuable insights to establish yourself as an authority in your field .
Utilize call-to-actions: Include a call-to-action at the end of your tweets or threads to encourage followers to engage and follow you .
Connect with like-minded individuals: Build a network of individuals who share similar interests and support each other's growth .
Explore different formats: Experiment with different types of content like visual media or threads to diversify your content and attract different types of followers .
Understand your audience: Pay attention to the preferences and interests of your followers and tailor your content accordingly .
Remember, growing your Twitter following takes time and persistence. Consistently providing valuable content and engaging with your audience can lead to organic growth over time.
(someone): So get those few amount of accounts in order to follow you and get them to retweet you. And that's basically the secret to growth. I don't think it's that complicated. So what does that mean? It's like, well, find that niche, the 0.01%. What do they need in their feed that they're not getting? Provide that service. For me, I was the first guy in order to tweet the transcript, which means that they were all following me, which means they're all retweeting me and exposing me to their millions of followers, which means that some people would then follow me. So for me, it was, I would say around 10K is a big jump. For some reason, in people's minds, it's like when you cross 10,000, that is a point where you're going to get exponentially more new numbers of followers. What I've discovered across all my platforms, the more followers you have, the easier it is to get followers. which is so frustrating whenever you're starting out. You're like, when you're, oh man, 5,000. At that point, if I had 5,000 followers on Instagram, which once upon a time was the case, if I got 50, I was like, oh my God, I lose 50 a day to now. Actually more, probably more like 100. And yet I'll net out at 1,000 a week or something like that. And it's simply because of the churn, the burn, the way that your algorithmic treatment is offered. So I think 10 is a big inflection point. I think 50.
Shaan Puri: He's not a founder or VC that like isn't super well connected in this area, but I think has earned a lot of people's Twitter respect. You know, he's probably got, I don't know what, like 70,000 followers, maybe a hundred thousand. I don't know what it is. Um, So George is really good also. So there, there are the ones I would say to follow if you want examples of what good content marketing is, as well as kind of like, uh, marketing slash psychology hacks is what I would call them.
Sam Parr: Yeah. This guy, Harry dry has some of the best stuff. He's like, she just basically takes landing pages and he goes, this is why this is good.
Shaan Puri: And he just very simply, have you seen his, his Kanye West thing?
Sam Parr: What did he do?
Shaan Puri: I remember something like that Ben pull this up go to go to the Kanye West story calm I think that's what it's called so basically this is like a blog post that he just like tricked out it's like exhibit knocked on the door and was there to pimp his blog and Maybe I got the domain wrong. Maybe it's not the Kanye story calm. Yeah, the Kanye story calm and And it's basically this epic website blog post that's just like a scrolling story about the day he got in touch with Kanye West and how it all went down. And so it starts with this epic photo of Kanye that you scroll and it's like a slide.
Sam Parr: And I included him, but I'm going to actually tell you the one you should follow. So I like Ryan Holiday because he's got these things that are not business related, but help me in business and help me in life. And so he's got five lessons from Seneca. Seneca was a Greek. I actually don't know what he was. He was a philosopher. And so they are, we suffer, what was he?
Shaan Puri: I think it was Greek, I didn't look it up.
Sam Parr: It was Roman, Ben, thank you. Five stoic lessons from Seneca. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. Associate only with people who improve you. The greatest remedy for anger, this is the best one, the greatest remedy for anger is delay. Nice. Value your time more than your possessions, and death is not in the distant future. We are dying every day. And he's got these amazing things that I love. But he's got this other Twitter handle called The Daily Stoic. I love The Daily Stoic. And they just tweet out all these interesting stoicism tidbits.
Shaan Puri: That's his, right? It's his brand?
Sam Parr: It's his, and it's incredibly useful. Stoicism is one of the few philosophies that's actively practical and you could use on a daily basis. And so I like following this account.
Shaan Puri: And this was a month ago. And since then, two people have crossed the 100k mark. I'm about to, I'm at 94.4 as we tape this and you know, the others are going to get there too. So one thing I've did this when I tried to get good at poker, same thing, go move into a house with a bunch of other people that have the same dream as you. And every day when you eat, sleep and breathe, you guys are all chasing this dream and you'll be sharing tactics and tips and you'll be inspired by each other's successes. And when you fail, the other people will pick you back up. That's the best way to win at something. So I'm doing that with the content side. So they basically shared some tips and tactics. how to optimize your profile page so when somebody checks you out after your tweet, that they actually click follow. When should you tweet out? Should you retweet compliments of yours? Should you not? Should you, at the end of your tweets, your Twitter thread, it feels awkward, but if you put in the call to action that says, hey, if you like this kind of stuff, follow me, and boom, your followers are going to spike just by doing that kind of awkward step. So that's really helped me do that. Plus the consistency, you know, when I see somebody else's tweet go viral, I'm like, fuck, why isn't that me?
Shaan Puri: Like the problem is that just only I don't know whether we're like 300 million people use Twitter and it's like, you know, five times smaller than like the other big social services and it doesn't really grow that much and like. It's not like, you know, my mom doesn't use Twitter because she's like, oh, there's too many bots. If I tweet about crypto, that will tell me to buy crypto. That's not her problem. She just doesn't see value in it. And like, you know, she just says, I don't get it. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't know why I would need this. Like, you know, I don't I don't need to check this. Whereas Instagram and WhatsApp and like Snapchat have all given her a reason that she needs to have it. Like she needs to have Snapchat if she wants to see more pictures of our kids. She needs to have Instagram if she wants to keep up with what's going on with like Bollywood or whatever, right? Like, you know, everybody finds a need in the service. And like, that's the core problem with Twitter is that the core needed addresses is only for like people like us. And like, it doesn't address the need for a whole bunch of other people on the planet. And if they wanted it to be more valuable, then they would need to do that. Our software is the worst.
(someone): what would you do to modify either one to increase conversion? So on conversions with the startup, we're talking about clicking and signing up, but on Twitter, we're talking about clicking and following. And so you can, if you actually dive into the weeds, there's more you could do to your Twitter profile. And maybe it's a fun exercise we can walk through because it just shows how to apply the lens of growth marketing to Twitter or to YouTube or to your podcast, right? So I'll give you one quick example. Like if you just think, ask yourself this question, If I'm presenting the public with a page of any sort, what are all of the elements that surface on that page that factor into their decision as to whether they're going to convert? So if I'm looking at my Twitter account right now, I'm seeing my bio, I'm seeing my headshot, I'm seeing my pinned tweets. So let's just talk about that. Let's use that one example, pinned tweet. So your pinned tweet can reinforce what your bio said to further qualify why you talk about that, why you should talk about it rather. And it gives an example of it. So they get the quick dopamine hit off the bat that your pinned tweet is delivering on. Like for me, I said, I talk about storytelling and critical thinking. So my pinned tweet is exactly, it's a tiny little blog post, little essay. Exactly. Exactly. So, that's your surface area. And the same thing goes for YouTube.
Shaan Puri: Meaning like if OG believers start selling, that's kind of a signal. Like it's like when a CEO starts selling their stock, it's like, wait, why are you selling your stock? That doesn't seem quite right. What's the reason? And so like when a bunch of old hands start selling, that's actually a signal that comes before the price changes. It may not even affect the price yet, but it's an indicator of something to come.
Sam Parr: Damn right, I just follow them.
Shaan Puri: So this guy's got all kinds of analysis and he's a lot more reasonable. So crypto is full of, especially crypto Twitter is full of like just propaganda artists and they're good at it. They're like, they will make you believe that some random fucking NFT is the hottest shit because it's like one guy controlling 55 bot accounts and they're all replying to every tweet that uses the word, you know, art with like a link to their freaking project. So there's so much propaganda, there's so much noise and there's so many like just believers who, if I just go out there to say, and I say, my price prediction for 2022 is $6 million a coin, I'll get a bunch of attention because people want to believe that the number is going to keep going up. And so this guy is a lot more reasonable. He's still obviously a big believer. He's super bullish on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general. But he grounds it at least in real analysis.
(someone): And people often find, at least in the folks that I've chatted with, even personally, honestly, demand curves, Twitter has been difficult to grow versus like, you know, personal, like individuals as like Julian, for example, has a much easier time with his growth than we do as a company account. So yeah, the question behind the question, that's a great question, Sean, is, you know, how ought to, like, how should startups and companies be thinking about audience building when they have, Yeah, but they haven't got like the personal brand in there.
Shaan Puri: Now I understand. Now I understand. Yeah. The question really is like, what am I doing wrong here with demand curve? But more generally speaking, like, I don't know the it's I haven't cracked this nut. What's the difference? I've noticed personal brands are easier to grow. But I also do I want my company thing to grow blah, blah, blah. I think that here's my like, very simple slash controversial take on this, which is, I think if you're a company, You should be using individual faces to grow. You'll grow faster that way. If you're an individual trying to grow like a media property, you should put it under a brand umbrella, mostly because you can't ever sell you. So if you want this to be an asset and not a job, you need it to grow its own brand. You need breaking points.
Shaan Puri: So that's really helped me do that. Plus the consistency, you know, when I see somebody else's tweet go viral, I'm like, fuck, why isn't that me? And then I go to, you know, I go that night and instead of watching, you know, that 30 minutes of TV or 45 minutes of TV, I write out some content and that's what's worked for me.
(someone): That's awesome. Yeah, it's one of the things I've tried to do is I don't know if you've heard of read wise. I've heard of it.
Shaan Puri: Yeah.
(someone): One of the things it does, it lets you save Twitter threads, and they have a leaderboard of who has the most saved threads. And so trying to march up that is like a sign of not just quantity, but quality, like how much people actually like the thing that you're making.
Shaan Puri: I hate those things, by the way. Every time I tweet something, the first comments are always like, at Readwise, at Threader app. Or it's like, dude, what is this spam? Was it so hard just to read this? Why do you need this? Compile this for me. Doesn't Twitter do that? What is the appeal of this? I don't understand.
(someone): I love that like, these are the people that are like most interested in your content. And you're like, what the hell are you doing saving my words?
Shaan Puri: But guess what you liked more was like instant real time news constantly flooding into your brain. Turns out that that was more addictive that like, you know, being able to get news from all these different sources rather than just your local provider. That turned out to be really important. Being able to access it on the go on your phone turned out that wasn't really important. And so, yeah, you like the feel of it, but there's all these other benefits that like ended up crushing that. So that's what happened after this tweet.
(someone): You contextualized it well. You talked about kind of the benefit of accountability. It's a double-edged sword here where, you know, the upside and the risk involved in that. Super interesting. Sagar, yes, like I said, challenging to find tweets I can share with everybody here, but I would love to hear from you. Yeah, actually, I think your most viral was two days ago. I just saw that. Yeah, very cool. Talk to us about why did this tweet work? What is this speaking to, and why do you think this resonated?
(someone): Yeah, I'm actually it's interesting. I kind of pivoted to becoming the gas guy politically. This really is really just purely a function of what I talked about earlier, which is that if you were to ask me why I think my show is successful is I think because I cover things in a way that most people feel are not being covered by existing sources of information. That's very basic like thesis statement. That's why I think. It does well.
Shaan Puri: He's not like widely. He's young. You know, you know, there's like the circle jerk of like, we all kind of like the same things in the same circles. I think he's like 18 or 19. I think he's probably a little older than that, but whatever he is, he's amazing. His content is so good. I think most people, when I see their content, I'm sort of cocky where I'm like, I could do better. If I wanted to, I could do better. I see his shit and I say, oh, I should be copying things he's doing. So that's like a very, very high compliment in my book where I want to copy your shit because I think you're doing such a good job. So I think his account's really great. And then George Mac is similar in that George Mac basically tweets out kind of like, cool marketing hacks, mental models, um, just interesting stories. And, uh, it's a George is really, really good as well. And he's also kind of like outside the scene, meaning like he wasn't, he's not a Silicon Valley person. He's not a founder or VC that like isn't super well connected in this area, but I think has earned a lot of people's Twitter respect. You know, he's probably got, I don't know what, like 70,000 followers, maybe a hundred thousand.
Shaan Puri: And there's some, but there's a whole new market of people who were basically never on Twitter. Just didn't like Twitter didn't work for them. So, you know, you get a whole new set of people that are going to use threads that weren't, they don't have to switch off of Twitter. There's just new people to a Twitter like behavior. So it can basically beat Twitter without getting people to switch because it's expanding the market. Twitter is, I don't know if you know this, Twitter is basically the most abandoned product I think ever. So more than a billion people have signed up for Twitter or tried Twitter and then been like. No, I don't get it. I'm good. Just that's not for me. And the big question, like sort of like the $100 billion or $200 billion question is, is that because the idea of Twitter doesn't appeal to that many people or that Twitter's execution was not good enough to hook those people? And if it's the idea, then those same people who try threads will eventually bounce because they're like, they're just people who like to look at pictures and videos. They don't want to write text and read Random ass text messages from different people. So if it's the idea that Twitter safe, all these people will try it and they'll bounce. But if it was the execution, if it was that Twitter didn't hook them properly, then they're screwed because.
Shaan Puri: they'll go after like Chamath for, you know, most people are kind of afraid to like poke the bear in a way, but Chamath in reality had a bunch of really shitty SPACs where he made a bunch of money and people who invested in his SPACs on the whole, like just got ripped to shreds this year. And so this post-market account will like call out basically bad stocks, bad behavior across the board in the stock market.
(someone): So I like that.
Shaan Puri: For example, our buddy Moyes tweeted something. He goes, Honest Company went public in 2021. It raised $400 million that day. The shares closed at a valuation of $2.7 billion. Since that day, it's lost $2 billion in value and is now worth less than $800 million. And then he says, public markets are brutal. Be careful if you IPO. And Postmarket replied and said, public markets are not brutal. Private markets are a facade. And it's like, I like the hot takes. I like the intelligence and I like that they don't pull punches.
Sam Parr: All right, I like this one. Yeah, I'm gonna subscribe. I'm gonna follow. All right, I'm gonna give you one. See, some of mine are popular, but I'm gonna give you three examples of why I like them. Ramit Sethi, do you follow Ramit on Twitter? I don't follow.
Shaan Puri: No, you should be able to read tweets before you sign in, you know, you sign up. And then, which is like an experiment has been tried many times before. And then it's like, you know, we need to have this verification program. We have five days to deliver this, I guess. And so there's like sort of trying to figure this out of, you know, who stays, who goes, what are we building? How are we going to turn this thing around? And Fascinating. I wish I could be a fly on the wall in this, uh, in this war room. I think that would be like probably the most interesting thing to do right now.
(someone): I think it would be awesome. I hope they don't screw it up, though, because I got some fucking courses I got to sell. So don't screw it up for me, Alon.
Shaan Puri: My point of view has always been very simple, which is all the things he complains about are things that like power users would be annoyed at on Twitter, like the bots problem or, you know, verification or the algorithm, you know, like not serving me the tweets I want. Like the problem is that just only I don't know whether we're like 300 million people use Twitter and it's like, you know, five times smaller than like the other big social services and it doesn't really grow that much and like. It's not like, you know, my mom doesn't use Twitter because she's like, oh, there's too many bots.
Shaan Puri: Like for example, he has a tweet that he put out yesterday that was, India now exports more software, 133 billion, than Saudi Arabia exports oil, 113 billion. India is the largest engineering population in the world. What an amazing story that's come out over the last 40 years.
Sam Parr: How'd you find this guy? This one's the best one. This is the most helpful one on the list.
Shaan Puri: Yeah. And so like I, I do a lot of investing in Indian startups and I was like, okay, if I'm going to invest in a new startup, so I'm not on the ground, I'm not the like local domain expert. So what did I do? I invested in a fund. I became an investor in somebody else's fund. That's India focused. I was like, okay, cool. I'm going to get insights from him and I can bounce any deal off him. to see if he wants to participate. And maybe he has a local view that I don't understand. And then this was another guy that I thought was really smart. So I wanted to find who I wanted to basically see who's the thought leader in that space. And then how do I subscribe to them? And so his, you know, his like blog, I think has 50,000 subscribers now. So he's not like, you know, no name.