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I tweeted 100 times over 28 days with a new account. Here's what I learned.

Jan 29, 2022

It’s almost been a month since I posted on IndieHackers about how I got my first follower on Twitter.

Now that I’ve been tweeting consistently for precisely 28 days, I thought I’d give a follow-up.

Some context

  • I created a Twitter account on December 30th but started using it on the 31st.

  • I joined Twitter to stay accountable by building in public, which I’ve talked about on IndieHackers. Another goal I had was to connect with people and build an audience.

  • I tweet about my journey building in public and how I’m growing my next SaaS to $5k MRR.

  • I’ve been monitoring my stats closely to find out what works and what doesn’t. Doing this has allowed me to improve and adapt.

  • I already gained around 20 followers before I started tweeting consistently. I suspect these came from my first post on IndieHackers.

  • My account is pseudonymous (I don’t feel pretty, so I don’t show my face :P)

Enough introduction. Here’s everything I’ve gained.

Statistics

Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve done and gained.

Everything I did

  • Exactly 100 Tweets (406 if counting replies, retweets and quote tweets)

  • 3.5 Tweets Per Day on Average (Mid 3. Highest 6. Lowest 1)

  • 5 Threads (Avg 4 Tweets Long, 1 per week)

  • Always tweeted between 04:00 EST and 18:00 EST (The majority of my tweets were after 09:00 EST)

  • Tracked analytics with BlackMagic

  • Scheduled around 45% of my tweets (using Typefully)

P.S - I didn’t plan to hit 100 tweets after four weeks. That was purely coincidental.

Everything I gained

  • 73.4K impressions

  • 245 Followers (22 at the start, avg 8 per day)

  • 1.1k Likes

  • 253 Replies

  • 1.4k Profile Clicks

  • 96 Retweets

  • 423 mentions

  • 80.2K profile visits (according to Twitter)

  • 500+ Pageviews on my site linked in the bio

  • 24 People I’ve connected with.

My takeaways

I’ve learned a lot about Twitter in the past 4 weeks.

Talk about yourself

My account is way too small to give advice. Even if I share key insights I’ve learned building in public, no one shows up to listen because I lack credibility.

This is probably why none of my threads have performed that well. Not only do I lack credibility,

All my most successful tweets have been about me. In other words, they’ve been about what I’ve done and achieved.

Have a public goal / purpose

The reason why I think I’m growing relatively quickly is that I’m public working towards a single goal, scaling from $0 to $5k MRR.

It goes beyond writing your goal in your bio. Most of your tweets should reflect that. That way, the people that follow you know what to expect.

Notes About Content & Structure

  1. Hashtags are important when starting out. Without hashtags, nobody would’ve found my tweets. Period.
    I’ve found success picking one or two hashtags and sticking with them. I also don’t use more than one hashtag per tweet.

  2. I’ve noticed that Tweeter nerfs tweets with links in them, especially for smaller accounts. So, I try to avoid them when possible.

  3. A few of my most-liked tweets have images in them. I’m still not sure if that’s relevant.

Track it like you mean it

When I first joined Twitter, my posts performed horribly.

I managed to go from tweeting what I thought people wanted to hear, to tweeting the right content by watching my analytics closely.

I personally use Blackmagic to track this, but I’ve also used Typefully and ilo. They’re all great.

By seeing which tweets give the most engagement, I can share more tweets like that.

There’s no magic in scheduling.

Some people think that scheduling tools will automagically make their Tweets perform better, but that’s not true.

I published my most successful tweet with the Twitter Web App, and I did the same for many other great ones.

Scheduling tools are built to help you remain consistent and nothing more. So if you think you can stay consistent without Scheduling, go for it.

Have fun

I firmly believe I’ve gotten this far because I’m enjoying the time I spend on Twitter.

My happiness isn’t in the numbers, but all the interesting people I’m meeting and the relationships I’m building.

That had allowed me to push through multiple days in a row when I saw zero growth.

Concluding

It’s been a month, but I have no intention of losing my streak. I’ll continue tweeting and posting about what I’m learning.

Self-promotion has always left a bad taste in my mouth, so I’ll refrain from doing that here :P. However, if you want to connect with me, you can do so here on IH.