The Ten Commandments to grow on 𝕏

I gained more than 4k followers in ten months from almost zero.

Hey, listen!

I’ve been in Twitter for 14 years.

In 14 years I accumulated 300 followers, most of them friends that don’t care about tech.

10 months ago, I decided to stop being a consumer.

10 months ago, I start being a creator.

In this issue I’ll tell you my Ten Commandments to help you grow on 𝕏 from zero.

I use SocialBlade to check accounts performance

1. You shall have patience.

This is key.

You will desperate a the beginning when you are tweeting in the void.

But you have to trust the process, having patience is a must.

2. You shall be consistent.

Along with patience, being consistent is the second most important thing.

Twitter rewards consistency.

Schedule at least 1 or 2 tweets a day.

You don’t need any tool, I did it manually until 2k followers.

Nevertheless, I’m using lately Typefully just for convenience.

3. You shall focus on your niche.

Define what you want your audience for.

Are you a designer? Tweet your new designs, tools you use, trends…

Are you a developer? Post cool snippets, your work in progress, insights about technologies you use…

But don’t tweet one day about football, the next day about cars and so on.

It’s ok doing it from time to time, but at the beginning define your niche.

4. You shall have a real picture.

You are on Twitter for following persons.

If you have an AI generated avatar, or a picture of a waifu, that’s a red flag 🚩

We are more willing to follow others if we see the real human that is behind the account.

5. You shall not be a RT boy.

Don’t retweet everything.

If I enter in your profile and I see that 90% of your timeline are RTs, I just run away.

I don’t want to follow you for flooding my timeline. It should be mainly your own content, not others.

It’s ok to RT or quote from time to time to shoutout others, but don’t do it as a mad man.

6. You shall use media.

When someone is scrolling, you’re competing for their attention.

Go into the subway or the public bus and check how people consume social media.

You have milliseconds to grab their attention.

Posts with photos or videos perform better. Use them whenever you can.

7. You shall start with hooks.

This is kind of the same as the media.

In the attention race, you should catch the reader right from the first sentence.

So, make sure you think twice how you begin your posts.

8. You shall not follow everyone.

𝕏’s algorithm reduces the page rank of users who have a low number of followers but a high number of followings.

Keep it bellow 60%.

This means that if you have 100 followers, you shouldn’t follow more than 60 accounts.

9. You shall be a reply boy.

When you’re starting to grow on Twitter, most of your tweets will end in the void.

You will gain way more exposure replying to huge accounts.

So, create a list of the big players in your niche and turn on their notifications.

Be on the first ones to reply their tweets and you will have way more impressions than with your own tweets.

But don’t post any shit. Try to be meaningful or funny. Just avoid replying as if you were ChatGPT.

Disclaimer: Lately Twitter is a bit like TikTok. I’ve seen a lot of tiny accounts posting banger tweets, so this is the best time to grow from zero. It’s easier than before to get lucky with a tweet while barely having audience.

10. You shall have fun and make friends.

In the end, we are on Twitter to interact with other humans and have fun.

We are a little bubble.

Ask to your friends or family how many of them use Twitter… 🕸️

Thus, you’ll end up engaging daily with almost the same people and making new internet friends, that you eventually may meet IRL.

BONUS: You shall compete.

This cannot work for everyone, but I love competing—it motivates me.

So I create in my mind my own micro-quests:

Achieve 500 followers, overtake Mario, achieve 1k before Vlad, overtake Florian, and so on…

My current challenge is overtaking Filip. He’s a tough player, but I’m reducing the gap… [😈]

Don’t get me wrong, it’s healthy competition and we have fun making jokes with each other.

I made WrapFast: a SwiftUI starter kit to build iOS apps fast.

Yes, this is a promo. I want to sell it to you 😜

Feel free to follow me on 𝕏 and compete with me!

C’mon, let’s smash that algorithm! See you on 10k! 🫡