Growing my list 40% WoW through Twitter with only 79 followers

I find Twitter can be a pretty daunting place for newcomers. You're surrounded by people with thousands of followers, likes and retweets, but until you've built up an audience, your carefully crafted tweets just fall into the void.

So, this is a brief story about how I grew my newsletter list 40% week on week for the last few weeks with only 79 followers. None of this is particularly new insight, but I'm posting it in case it gives some encouragement to those who might wonder how they can have an impact on the platform when they're just getting started like me.

First, some quick background.

I'm building Kommon (https://www.inkommon.com/) - a SaaS tool to make it easier to be a new manager. Often people get promoted to managerial positions and aren't given any assistance. They then struggle through, making mistakes which impact them, their team and their company. I'm trying to fix that by providing tools and guidance to help people succeed in the role.

Whilst we're building the SaaS, I also publish a newsletter for new managers with stories and advice. There's a real gap in the market here. Most managerial content is pretty corporate and dull, and i think we've created something fresh and engaging. Only problem is, when I tweeted about it, no-one was listening (again, 79 followers...)

So I started trying to meet my customers (managers) where they were. I took the time to create a Twitter list of prominent leaders and thinkers on management and leadership (84 members and counting). I also set up Tweet deck to track any popular discussions about managers (note: the overlap with sports terminology is a real problem here!). Monitoring these helped me spot when and where my customers were talking about related topics so I could drop into the discussion.

Now, instead of offering my newsletter into the void, I could offer it to those who needed it most, at the time they were engaged with the subject. Here's an example: https://twitter.com/WillStockd/status/1364903351884935170

The impact was dramatic. From a regular trickle of sign-ups, we've grown 40% week on week for the past couple of weeks, mainly through these interventions.

As I said, others have mentioned these tactics before, but I wanted to tell a story of them working and hopefully encourage others who may not have giant followings. I'll certainly be keeping it up!