I made a twitter cheat-sheet!
It's a living document, which contains the most important twitter learnings I've had. Will update it as I learn more tricks.
As someone with zero natural tweeting talent who has more than 1000 followers, I think I'm actually uniquely positioned to write this. I've made every mistake I possibly could, and documented all my learnings from them.
Getting started
Pay for the highest tier of Twitter Premium you can. It's pay to win, you'll get more views.
Make friends. Twitter growth is compound, and getting just a few actively engaging friends early on will be the difference between it taking 3 months vs 3 years to get 1000 followers. The first 5 likes on every tweet of mine is usually still my 5 best friends.
If you don't know anyone on Twitter yet, you can simply:
Make mutuals with other small accounts. Try to find really interesting accounts with less than 500 followers, engage with their stuff, and follow them. This has way higher likelihood of getting you a follow back.
Only do this with small accounts you actually want to be mutuals with. They will grow & you will grow with them, but only if they're good accounts.
Go from mutuals to real friends. This is super doable, and in tpot / tech twitter / meditation twitter, it's part of the norms. The sequence is usually something like:
- be sociable in the replies of your mutuals
- send first DMs
- schedule calls on Google Meet
- go to Vibecamp or local meetups
- move into SF / NYC / Lisbon / Berlin grouphouses
Writing better tweets
If you have a solid network, the next big lever is writing better tweets.
Find the handful of tweet-archetypes that work. Bayeslord has 8 archetypes:
I have 4 archetypes that reliably do well:
- "hi look it's me being cute and wholesome" (1, 2, 3, 4)
- "here's how to be 100000x happier" (1, 2, 3, 4)
- "nobody likes sauna more than me" (1, 2, 3)
- "i built something cool [link]" (1, 2, 3)
There are other ones I've tried to do, but they don't work:
- tweeting about mrbeast
- tweeting about the creative process
- tweeting about AGI
- tweeting about rap
(There's a parallel in MrBeast having a few different "series". This blog post is mainly an excuse for me to talk about MrBeast, because fan-boying MrBeast unfortunately doesn't fit into any of my tweet-archetypes. P.S: that ^ is the best MrBeast interview, I recommend watching it.)
Make tweets easier to understand (without making them less rewarding). Rework the wording until it couldn't possibly be more readable. Add enough context that the tweet's target audience can always understand it, but not so much that they feel patronized. Make it as short and simple as possible, without making it less readable.
Being hard to understand is often the big challenge for the smartest and nerdiest tweeters.
(This tip was inspired by Jenny Hoyos using "reading grade level analyzers" on her TikTok scripts, and requiring it to be < 5th grade)
Never disappoint. Bad tweets derank you; not in the algorithm, but in people's hearts. Before tweeting, think:
"Is this actually worth [pick any mutual]'s time? Will they be overjoyed to read this?"
If yes, tweet it.
If it ends up performing more poorly than average after ~200 views, delete it. You don't want to let it disappoint more people.
Write in lowercase. I don't know what the psychology is, but people universally get more likes on lowercase tweets. Guesses for why non-lowercase tweets perform poorly:
- they inspire dread (feels like school)
- they intrinsically "promise" more, and end up disappointing you
- they feel distant, less like gossip and more like a news broadcast
Increasing efficiency
Optimize for profile-clicks. Check your tweets that blow up, and see how many people clicked. You can increase this number with a good handle, display name, and profile picture. Ask your most brutally honest friend to rate your profile. Mechanical Monk has a great thread here.
Optimize for followability. After people click your profile, only some % follow you. Check your "profile visits" : "new followers" ratio in the weekly analytics. I've seen profiles with 2% conversions, and profiles with 40% conversion - this is the easiest 20x you can possibly find.
- Bio: Blatant signalling (e.g. "prev @openai", "founder", "Stanford alum") does well, poetry or jokes don't.
- Banner: Just make it aesthetic.
- Pinned tweet: Whatever is the most viral + representative tweet you have.
- Other tweets: Prune tweets that do poorly, or aren't in line with your general theme. People should get the correct impression of why they should follow you in 1 - 3 tweets (they won't scroll further).
Iterate for a couple of weeks, and watch how your conversions change in the weekly analytics.
Tweet between 9am-12pm SF time. Unless your tweet performs really well, it'll primarily be shown in the first few hours after posting. So you want to post while your entire audience is awake. If they're american & european, that means morning on the west coast, evening in europe.