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First 10 days of building in public.. 3.7x twitter followers, launched mvp, +119300% profile visits 🤯 Here are my 5 hacks!

Ten days ago I dusted off a side project to start building in public. I had heard good things about building in public, so time to put it to the test.

My first goal was to double my Twitter followers in 10 days by sharing my progress, code snippets and tricks. I had not audience at all.. except from 30 followers from when I last posted on twitter a few years ago.

At the start I thought this was ambitious, also since I have a (more than) full-time job and needed to make time on the side to both code and tweet.

My strategy managed to exceed my expectations. Here is what I did 👇️


1. Find and map your community

I’m building a software for developers, so my audience should be developers.

Since I wasn't familiar with the Twitter dev community and where to find them, I started searching for accounts with many followers in the Twitter dev space. I followed a number of them and started checking their content.

By looking who the bigger accounts interact with I was able to quickly get an overview of the community and who to watch.

People that are following their content would probably also be interested in my content.


2. Post valuable content

My assumption was that people will start following you when you provide value.

Since I was (and still am) a nobody on Twitter, posting things about my daily life would not be interesting. However I did have a lot to offer by sharing my technical expertise.

So I focused on writing in-depth posts and threads, containing explanations, how-to steps and screenshots of the various things I’m working on.

This resulted in very high engagements on my posts, of around 8%-30%.

Here are a few of my first tweets. Average views on newer posts are also 3-4x now.

Imgur


3. Post frequently

Somewhere I read that optimum post frequency for Twitter is between 3-8 times per day.

People need to see you appearing in their feed after all. If you are out there, you will get noticed.

Because my posts take a bit longer to create, I decided to stick to posting at least 3 times per day.

And spread these posts over the day. So one in the morning, one during lunch and one in the afternoon/evening.


4. Engage with your community

When having my first days at a new job, I make sure to meet as many people as possible. To get a personal touch with people I will work with and ship products for the coming years.

A twitter community, like any other, is also about the people that are forming the community.

If you are genuinely interested and actively helping other community members achieving their goals, so will they be to you.*

Every evening I spent at least one hour to scroll through my feed, like and reply on other people's posts.

It makes me become part of the community, and I noticed this helps in gaining impressions and people visiting my profile. Of which some will follow!

Imgur


5. Updating my profile

My profile wasn’t much as you can see. So I did the following:

  1. Created a nice Twitter banner, clearly showing why people should follow me and what to expect.

  2. Write a more informative profile, listing information about yourself and the project(s).

  3. Make use of emojis to make your profile look more compelling

  4. Pin an interesting Tweet to your profile. I keep updating the pinned tweet, currently it shows the launch of my mvp.

Before:
Imgur

Now:
Imgur


Final thoughts

I didn't really know what to expect when I started. However the past 10 days have definitely exceeded any expectations.

The developers community on Twitter is amazing. Great and interactive vibe 🙏

Also my first steps of Building in Public are made. I know, I still have a long way to go..

feel free to join me in my journey via @BramBloks ! ⚡️

Oh, and by the way… The project I’m working on is ReleaseCheck.net. It is (will be) a website and API that helps you keeps track of software releases and dependencies.

  1. 2

    Thanks for sharing, it's inspiring! I wonder how long your project was sitting there before you "dusted it off".

    Kudos for your writing abilities, you are surely paying attention to techniques to generate curiosity, like "+119300%", "Here are my 5 hacks" and "Here is what I did". I'm curious to know if you recommend something to learn those skills!

    1. 1

      Thanks @andrepiske!

      The project has been on a private github repo for about a year, the idea has been there much longer.

      With regards to the writing I did not follow any course or read a book to be honest. I just watched what other people are doing and write headlines in ways that I think would attract me too. I guess you have a similar sight for it given your comment.

      What I learned is that people love to learn. The hunger for information never stops. So descriptive things tend to work, like: 'here is what/how I did' etc.

      Also making things concrete helps. Like: 5 simple steps, 5 hacks, my 3 methods etc. Someone told me once that it is best to use numbers: 3, 5, 7 and 10. People somehow have most affinity with that.

      In addition write something that attracts peoples attention. Something that stands out. Things that seem unlikely, however can be possibly achieved by some expert. People will want to know the secret sauce. Hence I used my extreme profile visit metric.

      Those are a few rules I try to use. From my side it is mostly observation and putting in practice what I think that works. I'm not a professional copy writer by any means.

      Would be interesting to dive deeper into this topic though..

  2. 2

    This is a great reminder to update my Twitter banner!

    1. 1

      Great, looking forward to seeing your new banner!

  3. 2

    Thanks Bram for the inspiration to give it a try, I have been interested in building in public lately, it's a great hedge against possible failures and a good way to enjoy the journey :)

    1. 1

      You are welcome. You are right, definitely give it a try. As I mentioned in the post, my experience of building in public has been very positive so far.

      Hope to see you around on Twitter!

  4. 1

    Great insights in your journey.
    I'm a long time Indiehackers lurker and am reading most of the build in public posts here lately. I noticed a lot of people use the #buildinpublic in their tweets, which also makes your tweets visible on https://buildinpublic.com/ . Perhaps that's something for you to consider as well

    1. 1

      Thanks @Dutchie, great suggestion! I will definitely start using that tag

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