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5000 Twitter Followers!

Yesterday the Marketing Examples Twitter crossed the 5000 mark, gaining around 2500 new followers in the last month alone!

I remember reading this post about doubling down on what works and it motivating me to focus more on Twitter (after all, that was one area which was clearly was working)! This is what I've been doing:

1. Introduced quicks tips

So, instead of just relying on the threads (article summaries) to get new followers I've tried some standalone single tip tweets:

These are being shared just as widely as my threads and are usually about 5x less work!

2. Started running Ads

Because these quick tip tweets are clearly very popular I thought why not run Twitter Ads against them and see how many new followers I can bring in (so I did)! And it worked great.

I ran two different campaigns targeting the audiences of different marketing personalities I respect: @julian, Andrew Chen, Luke Wroblewski etc ... and the results were £230 for 1106 new followers, so around 21p a follower.

Previously I had tried running ads on the first tweet in the one of my threads. And the result about £1.50 / follower, so clearly something was going right here! I would say:

  • The fact that I was promoting tweets which already had a bunch of likes and RT's on certainly helped a lot! Acted as great social proof.
  • The tweets itself were dense with value. 3 tips and one diagram packed onto one tweet. It was almost as much as a blog post. There's no way just a generic image / tweet could have done so well.

If I can spend £230 and bring in 1100 new followers it has made me think about doing some more contracting work, and then I can plug the money back into the business. Because currently, I don't have the finances to spend an extra £230 twice a month!

Anyway, that's the update. The Marketing Examples Twitter steam train powers on to its next destination: 7,500 followers!

  1. 2

    Man, you write really interesting articles. I browsed your site, then BOOOOM and after 30 minutes I noticed that I stuck there by reading next and next articles :D

    1. 1

      Hahaha! Thank you Alex!
      Very kind. Genuinely made smile a lot!

  2. 2

    You are definitely on the right track 😀

    If I were you, I would also experiment with other channels like FB and IG (especially IG stories: you could easily replicate your Twitter threads and with paid ads you are allowed to add a swipe up link at the end).

    1. 1

      Cheers Andrea. I started running some Facebook ads today for the first time actually. I targetted Product Hunt users. And sent them to my Product Hunt case study. Currently mobile is coming in at 11p for landing page view and Desktop 30p and session duration is 25p.

      The thing is on Twitter I'm targeting followers. On Facebook I'm just sending them to the landing page (and hoping they enter their email). Obviously email more valuable.

      I think some sort of stand alone handbook would work well for Facebook (because that way I could actually get emails easier). What's your thoughts on this? How would you run FB ads in my shoes?

      And re Instagram. Definitely worth experimenting, I'll get an account made.

      1. 3

        Random thoughts on FB ads:

        • Use the conversion objective, it’s much more effective than the others

        • The more conversions you get, the better the algorithm optimizes and the lower your CPAs

        • Your audience needs to be big enough, PH users only is too small

        • What will make or break your campaign is the creative, so test different ones as much as you can

        • Instagram is just a placement inside FB ads, running them together will help you get more conversions

        1. 3

          Totally agree with @andreabosoni on using conversion objective. Let the algorithm do the work in finding the right people.

          DigitalMarketer have a ton of strategies for FB ads on their site. Worth looking at.

          1. 1

            Thanks a lot Paul. Point taken with conversion objective.
            Have been browsing DigitalMarketer today. Yep, lots to learn!

        2. 1
          • will do
          • good to know
          • point taken. will increase next time.
          • gotya
          • gotya

          thanks Andrea. Great advice as always!

      2. 2

        I’ve run Facebook ads to lead magnets to get email subscribers (in the productivity niche) and it wasn’t difficult to hit 30-40% conversion. Using a dedicated landing page. Costing from $1 to $1.50 per subscriber.

        But that’s maybe 12 months ago and costs are always increasing. So really depends on your LTV for whether it’s worth it or not.

        1. 1

          Well if I can get an email for $1 that would be awesome. Came in a bit over today and my tracking wasn't set up too well.

  3. 2

    Interesting stuff re:Twitter ads. Haven't seen many makers do this (or at least write about it). Would be good to see some more people chime in about how effective it is.

    1. 1

      Agreed - would love to know if this has worked for others! I did some Twitter followers ads in the past for a company and we found the follows to be cheap, but the engagement after to be super low. Have you found these people engaging with your stuff since running the ads @harrydry?

      1. 1

        @andrewjdavison

        So, I haven't really found any way of monitoring the quality of the followers I got with ads. Any way I could do this. Compare the average of their followers perhaps with my organic twitter audience?

        I will add one point, when I did just targeted UK + US (and the cost per follower did double to about 40p) - I should have probably added this to the Milestone.

        TBH, I can't imagine the 1000 followers I got with ads as as engaged. A lot of my other followers probably followed the twitter account after reading a few articles, so they are more likely to engage purely because they've had more exposure to ME.

        1. 1

          Interesting point about previous exposure... I definitely find myself interacting more with people I've followed for longer.

  4. 2

    How are you planning to get more revenue from this?

    1. 2

      Well, short term I'm hoping sponsorship will keep me rolling on whilst I continue to grow the audience. More twitter followers, more traffic etc ... should hopefully mean bigger sponsorship. But we shall see!

  5. 2

    Good work! Interesting that you are doing paid ads now.

    1. 2

      With tweets packed dense with information it seemed to work well. I did also run a few of my threads as ads and no where near the same uptake.

  6. 1

    This is a great post! One pattern I notice in your post here and on Twitter is: value density! This has a bunch of value packed into the post (each of the tweets). Good content because it's helpful (I can learn something) and interesting (your experience/commentary).

    1. 1

      Cheers Joel. Lovely comment. Really appreciate that. Value density is something I really value in writing. So that does mean a lot.

  7. 1

    That's interesting how you are making what looks like a content-based product (the main website) and a blog (the Twitter page) at the same time; and how one reinforces the other.

    Are you planning to set up some kind of a community? I'd enjoy myself discussing and analysing the case studies with other readers

    1. 2

      Hi Valentine. Thanks a lot for the praise. Appreciated. The cross promotion between web and twitter is definitely something I think which works well.

      Yes. A community is definitely on the stocks. I've just got to get round to coding it haha.

  8. 1

    Massive congrats, Harry! Very interesting re: Twitter ads. I always found them too expensive but clearly you're doing something right.

    1. 1

      Thanks you Anne. I think it just really depends on the tweet you're running and the locations your targeting.

      I tried running ads on the first tweet in the one of my threads. And about £1.50 / follower. Then swapped to a quick tip tweets (where all the value was on that 1 tweet) and the cost zoomed down!

      So I guess use the best tweet you've got (which ideally doesn't link people to a blog) and try that? But idk maybe try your tweet with 400 RT's. But then it gets a little complex cause you'd be pushing people to your blog and targetting email subscribers instead of followers and might be hard to track conversion of that.

      1. 1

        Yes, I think what works well for you is the simplicity of it. You're basically taking your best single tweets and targeting followers on Twitter.

        May try this on single tweets that don't send people to my blog in the future. But I don't have a dedicated Maker Mind handle anyway.

        Good stuff to think about though, thanks for sharing great content as usual!

        1. 1

          Pleasure! And same goes for you. Yeah, you'd just have to run ads for your personal. Maybe worth trying but idk! You seem to be doing pretty good on Twitter without!

  9. 1

    Congrats Harry!! Great milestone.
    I'm curious are sponsors pay more if you gain more followers? Because if so - then you can find the way where and how to get extra £230 per month.

    1. 1

      Haha! Thanks a lot Alex. And good point. I think in the long run the bigger the site gets the more they'll pay haha! Coming up for renewal in 3 weeks or so, so we'll see what they say!

      1. 1

        Yep, we will pay more for more followers. How much is to be decided...

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