34 days of tweets - stats, learnings, and how I keep a healthy mindset

I think many of us on IH see the value of having a Twitter audience, but the amount of work it takes and how discouraging it can be, causes many of us to stop trying.

That happened to me last year, but this past month I decided to start trying again and I want to share my experience and learnings to hopefully help make building a following on Twitter seem more approachable.

A bit of background

I first started tweeting in the Summer of 2020, and was able to grow to almost 300 followers. I bought @dvassallo's Twitter course, which helped me learn from his approach.

Key takeaways from his course:

1. Tweet to give value, rather than asking
2. Make your Twitter profile value prop clear
3. Engage and comment on Tweets of people you follow (earlier replies are better)

I got burnt out with content creation (I was also writing articles for my newsletter/blog about indie tech, Small Tech Business), so I pretty much stopped tweeting. I found myself caring way too much about whether people were seeing my tweets and when my follower count sometimes went down, it would feel like a big letdown.

Bottom line: it didn't feel healthy or productive.

Instead I switched my focus to just working on my projects and gaining experience that would allow me to make better content in the future (I've always known I wanted to write and help others).

I quit my job in March 2021 to go full time as an indie hacker, and I have learned a ton since then, so last month I felt I was ready to start creating content again.

Juicy stats and my best performing tweets

🐦 +219 Tweets
👥 +46 Followers (+15%)
👀 +56,719 Impressions
🖱 +497 Profile clicks
🏠 +11,368 Profile visits (from Twitter analytics)

Top 4 tweets:

Those 4 tweets accounted for 33% of all my profile clicks, which I imagine have lead to many of my new followers.

With the top tweet, I was fortunate that the IH twitter account retweeted, and then got lots of engagement.

With the #2 tweet, I took an area where I invest a decent amount of time (listening to podcasts) and compiled a list with reasons why I recommend them. I also made sure I tagged the creators for two reasons:

1. As a creator, it is nice to hear good things about your content
2. If they like the tweet it helps my list reach more people

The #3 tweet was actionable advice that fit in one tidy tweet:

The #4 tweet was a thread where I broke down my favorite parts of an indie product, Typefully. I made it very visual and was able to lean on skills I gained from writing my newsletter/blog (I write about indie products like Carrd, TailwindCSS, etc)

What I've learned

1. Focus on improving, not results
I stopped tweeting in 2021 because I was too discouraged by lack of results. It made it hard for me to just consistently tweet and get better at creating good content. My second time around, I would still get a little disappointed when a tweet "bombed", but now I think of it as practicing a skill. Now I ask myself: "What can I learn from this and try to improve for tomorrow's tweet?". It helps me a lot.

2. Measure and tune profile conversion %
Profile conversion % is the most important stat to track because it is most actionable. If you conversion rate is low (<5%) then your content is not aligning well with your profile/bio/other tweets. During the 34 day period I was able to raise my conversion % from <10% to 24% by adding more info to my header (I used Canva) and playing around with my bio (keep it simple but descriptive).

3. Make real connections with people
It's easy to put Twitter in the same bucket as a less-personal community like Reddit, but founders and indie hackers on Twitter are so much more approachable and open. I've gotten to meet some people I really admire by having positive interactions on Twitter and DMing them to chat. Indie hacking can be really isolating sometimes and building personal connections with people with similar interests is what I think Twitter is really all about.

4. Experiment to find your focus
It's really important to find a cohesive focus for your Twitter profile. Try to pick no more than 3 topics to tweet about (mine are: Indie hacking, mental health, and game design/dev). Notice why you choose to follow someone, and also when you choose not to or when you unfollow. We usually follow someone when they provide clearly defined value - focus helps with that. We usually unfollow someone when it feels like they are "spammy" or uninteresting - which happens when you follow for one great tweet, but their subsequent tweets feel random/inconsistent. Early on, you have the flexibility to experiment and find topics that fit best for you, so take advantage of that if you can.

That's it!

Hope you found it helpful!

Follow me on Twitter (@jstnchu) if you want!

If you liked this write up, you should check out these other great ones:

• @euboid's post: I tweeted 100 times over 28 days with a new account. Here's everything I've learned.
• @GalacticLeopard's post: 1 Month of Taking Twitter "Seriously"