How to tweet for snail growth of your SaaS project
I've never used Twitter that much till this year. I became obsessed with it as the quality of content there is another level.
I believe 1 hour per day on Twitter will become an MBA in one year with the same amount of networking effect from meeting great people.
Recently I've focused on kickstarting my Twitter game talking to other makers and people into productivity as well as sharing valuable content (well, at least I think it is valuable).
Very slowly results started to appear and my account is growing with snail speed.
At the same time, there is a quicker way to grow your followers count for a small $25 investments - just keep reading.
Exhausting 90 tweets a day experiment
The idea was to write mindful comments to 90 tweets of other people. Gary Vaynerchuk calls it a $1.80 rule as you add your 2 cents to 90 tweets.
So, I did it. Only once. And it took 3 hours. I attracted 2 stunning followers.
Writing something that adds value takes some time, so it took for me too much and I'm not ready to repeat it every day as Gary Vaynerchuk offers.
But why it brought only 2 followers?
The thing is I was doing it with my project's account and it turned out, obviously, trust level to faceless tweeting is incredibly low. It is hard to grow such an account organically.
My next action was to give a try to my old personal account from 2014 with already 40 followers there.
I updated the cover image and bio, started to engage in conversations with the people from the list of indie makers (shared by mynameis_davis), spending around an hour per day.
Within a week I gained 20 brand new followers. Not bots, not brands - real people, some of them are influential. Paul Graham even liked my tweet about his tweet :D
This snail growth is stable with a bit of commitment. The better side of it is that while leaving 10 comments under interesting tweets you take an immense amount of practical knowledge from others.
So my tweeting schedule elaborated to the following KPIs in a while:
- I blocked in my calendar 30 minutes in the morning and 30 in the lunchtime for tweeting
- I try to come up and post 1 to 3 tweets every day
- I engage in conversation with 15–20 people
A quick way
The general recommendation I got from more experienced users was the following:
Pay to an influencer who makes 3000 retweets stably. $20–$25 for a retweet is ok.
I'm in the process of figuring out influencers for my niche. People like Paul Graham or Notion founders don't need $25. These guys will retweet only if they see value in my content.
I'm going to reach at least 5 big names in my niche this month and try to nail at least one retweet collaboration to figure out a pattern to follow and some ROI it has. I'll share it here of course.
Key learnings:
- Corporate accounts on Twitter work best as a communication tool with existing customers. People follow mostly boring corporate tweets just to be timely updated on the new releases, discounts, etc.
- If starting from scratch, easier and faster to grow with a personal account
- Paying for retweets is an option for getting faster first 100 followers to avoid creating in the void
What was your experience with growing on twitter?
Now I started to share more interesting things on twitter, follow me there as I continue to document my experiments on live mode.
Love it!
I think the influencer purchase might work better for consumer products. I can't imagine many b2b influencers selling their space.
It's also funny how we don't realize just how much time this stuff takes:
If 1% convert to users, that's 25 hours per user.
If 50% of those convert to paying users, that's 50 hours for a paying subscriber. At 10%, that's 250 hours per paying user!
(Someone check my math haha)
But it also snowballs, because once you have more followers, they'll retweet you more often, and get you followers without commenting on other posts. And those results, like the results above, are exponential, so one tweet from you becomes immensely more valuable.
I think I saw a video the other day that confused the "1000 true fans" idea. They said once you get 1k followers on various platforms, you're set if they pay you $x/year. But 1000 true fans is not about social media followers, it's about people who love you, trust you, and look forward to anything you release.
I wouldn't do the influencer approach either, just doesn't feel right in the B2B space. Not saying it won't work to gain you some followers, it might, but at this stage you want solid trust from people and buying tweets could potentially have a negative effect.
Yeah, buying tweets even sounds like a black-hat technique but it really depends on the niche.
Thanks for motivational comment! Math behind this is crazy, Andrew! I suggest not thinking about this otherwise it is just makes no sense to invest so much time in the beginning in hope for snowball effect xD but I guess that’s the only way. We all should be a little bit insane and work hard - this results will come.
No way! :-P
I think it's good for us to be honest for 2 reasons:
Also, I think following your process pretty much guarantees a snowball effect!
Why? Because in the beginning, we're experimenting and learning what works. So actually putting in this time, we'll get better, and some % of our followers will see and share, and that will gain more followers.
100% agree here with you! Like all good things in life, twitter takes time :)
Hey Gio,
Do you make money with your Indie project? Do you have users? People on your mailing list?
If you make money, tweet about your revenue numbers.
If you don't make money yet but have people using your product, tweet about how many people use your product.
If you don't have people who use your project yet, tweet about how many people are on your email list / are on the waitlist / are interested in your project.
My point is: people love to see other people be successful.
I tweeted this a few weeks back: https://twitter.com/Yannick_Veys/status/1265635706006908928?s=20
That 1 tweet got me 200+ followers. I have 4k+ now.
Add value to accounts in your niche. Getting a like from paulg is nice. Getting RT'ed by people in your niche is 100x better :)
Create a hidden list on Twitter and add people you want to connect with.
I checked your timeline. You already add lots of value to Twitter. Once you comment on someone's timeline, RT them, follow them. You need to follow more people. People usually check out who follows them. Your timeline is interesting. Pretty high chance people will follow back (if they're in the same ballpark follower range, up until 1k followers)
If people follow you, always connect with them in the DM's. Look at their timeline. What's a tweet that makes you happy? Mention that in the DM's. Don't ask for anything. Just tell them they made you happy :)
Buying 1 RT for $25 won't land you a lot of followers. It might not land you any followers at all, but just a bunch of engagement.
If it's followers you want, getting mentioned is the number one thing you should strive for.
How?
Do things without permission.
Select 3 - 5 bigger accounts in your niche. Help them with something. Become their apprentice without permission. They will engage with you.
As you're into productivity, you can probably think of a lot of things that would help them and tie into what you do.
If you want to grow your account quickly beyond 100 followers. Just do follow4follow. Don't expect any engagement back, but having an account with 100+ followers attracts more followers quicker. Plus, it doesn't cost a thing. Don't overdo it because it will hurt your engagement rate. That, in the end, determines how many people see your tweet and how many people will click through to your profile to follow you.
Last tip for growing your account:
Ask other people's opinions (in the DM's) about something you're building. Once you tweet about it, send the tweet to them in the DM's too. Thank them for helping you—big chance they RT it.
Hi Yannick, you forget to mention your Twitter followers counter extension, I remember it very well as my account activity was suspended for 3 days. Then I stopped it but it was a great way for getting early subs. I got 800 profile views with it in a few days (my bad luck, the landing page was just an email box and the logo so it didn't convert at all.)
Good one! :) thanks for telling the story :)
You can find the Chrome extension here if anyone is interested https://twitter.com/yannick_veys/status/1262084066775531522?s=21
Hey Yannick,
This one comment answered all my questions and predicted the future ones. Unbelievable amount of value! Gonna use your comment as a manual now 😂
Thanks for inspiring!!!
You’re very welcome Gio! Keep it up :)
i like how you're experimenting! keep going! and thanks for sharing your experiences!
Thanks , John! I follow your community building journey on twitter, very inspiring btw!
thank you friend! appreciate the support! i'll need your help as we get closer to launch... to test-drive stuffs!
No probs! Just drop a note
Have you ever thought of scheduling and automating your tweets?
I'm the founder of Zlappo, a Twitter growth tool designed from the ground-up specifically for entrepreneurs like yourself to build an audience rapidly so you can monetize it ASAP. If you value productivity, a Twitter growth tool is a must for you to batch-schedule your content, auto-retweet your best evergreen tweets, track your advanced follower/unfollower analytics, etc. etc.
I've written numerous articles on Twitter growth hacking on my Twitter growth hacking blog, particularly if you're starting from scratch. You can check it out.
I've also written a comment on IH a few months back on how to growth-hack your Twitter: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-did-you-grow-your-twitter-audience-7d90d6b42e?commentId=-M5fLxeiEksbPW02gp_C
Basically when you're small, you want to comment on others' content more than you create your own content. Once you're visible enough by leveraging on others' following to build your own, you can then start posting your own original content and grow from there. Here's a guide on how to growth-hack your follower count in 2020: https://zlappo.com/blog/how-get-more-twitter-followers-ultimate-10-step-growth-hack-2020/
Before you begin anything, you might also want to optimize your Twitter profile: https://zlappo.com/blog/ultimate-guide-optimize-your-twitter-profile-more-followers-and-conversions-examples-given/
Hope this helps! If you want to talk about this, just drop me an email at [email protected], and I'll try my best to help.
PS I wouldn't pay for retweets. Going about it the wrong way IMO. You want your content to stand on their own merit, not as a result of financial incentivization.