10 tips if you want to make Twitter a high-quality acquisition channel

Hey Indie Hackers! I'm Sveta Bay

I went from 0 to 16K followers on Twitter in 1 year 🎉

That's not a big achievement. The number of followers means nothing.

But the important thing is that it generated 21K website visitors for my business — (MakerBox) in 1 year.

10 tips if you want to make Twitter a high-quality acquisition channel:

1. Don't target a wide audience 🍎

My viral tweets (1M+ impressions) gave less sales than niched-down tweets.

Of course, they bring a lot of followers, but only a few become your engaged audience.

As I said before, followers mean nothing. Don't fall into the clickbait threads (tweets) trap.

2. Choose your core and additional topics ✅

Create a strong association with your core topic.

Who is your favorite creator who tweets about marketing, copywriting, or building multiple products? The first people who came to your mind nailed it.

Additional topics will give you more ideas to tweet about. The important thing - keep all the topics connected.

3. Have links in your profile 🔗

Tweets with links can be deprioritized by algorithms. But they can not be hidden in your bio.

You don't need to include your website link in every tweet. Instead, have it in your bio & pinned post. Your profile visitors won't miss it.

4. #buildinpublic (sure thing!) 🧑‍💻

Build in public, learn in public, and share your wins & losses.

An educational thread based on a random article is not as interesting as the real experience.

What would you rather read: "10 marketing hacks that a corporation X uses on its landing page" or "My 10 learnings from growing a product from 0 to $1K revenue"?

5. Engage and find new people 🤝

I thought you could once connect with active Twitter creators and then forget about it. "I'm already a big account. People need me more than I need them".

Doesn't work like that. At least 50% of those people I connected with in the beginning are no longer active here.

Connecting with new people is important to keep your Twitter feed live.

6. Show some love to people you enjoy reading 💕

Here's the thing. If your Twitter feed is bad, that's only your fault (sorry!!!).

If you don't engage with people you want to read, you won't see their tweets. Don't forget to give likes and comments (it's free) instead of just bookmarking.

This will help you to be consistent and come back on Twitter daily. Feed quality is important.

7. Collect emails with Freebies 💸

I made 2-3 giveaways in the beginning. It worked great in terms of collecting emails, but the conversions were so-so.

Also, giveaways have a bad reputation now (thanks to Twitter creators who give 💩 content).

Here's a better method: share a valuable thread or long-format tweet. If it gets good traction, plugin a link to your free resources in the comments.

One more thing - don't forget to add a link with free resources in your bio. Works like magic.

8. Give value 🎁

My favorite example is how Nick & Alex do it for their design products & services.

"Everything related to design was focused on “giving”: free design roasts & reviews, and free anything related to design for 1 month before introducing design as a service.

Once we established our skill set through designing in public, we had complete confidence to generate rates.

We got our first paying customer 5 minutes into launching Getbaked. 2 minutes into launching Indie Design Kit, and 1 day into launching Value."

9. Have fun 🦄

Twitter burn-out is real. It won't be a long-term game if you treat it as an acquisition channel only.

Find more reasons to visit Twitter daily. It shouldn't be just to get traffic for your website.

Find other makers at the same stage as you, connect, and grow together. It will be X10 more exciting.

10. Don't make Twitter your "the only" acquisition channel 🙅

Platform risk, huh?

You can not control Twitter algorithms.

One day you go viral, the other day you are shadow-banned, and the next day Twitter servers are dead.

Treat Twitter as a platform where you share interesting things that you do outside Twitter.