How I went from 0 to 3.7k Twitter followers in 1 week
The secret to gaining a big audience in Tech Twitter community
My Twitter has been growing ever since I created it a week ago, and now Tech Twitter is demanding answers ASAP. It's finally the time to reveal my secrets, and conspiracies of whether or not I'm a bot😂
In this blog post, I'll be talking about how I started Twitter, and some know-how's I've gathered so far!
💛 How I started
Being self-taught, I decided to make a Twitter account to help people with their self-taught journey. I was hitting a very rough patch on my own learning; I was having difficulties understanding certain programming concepts, and found tutorials to be very difficult (especially docs). I wanted to help beginners like me to better understand programming (hopefully😆) by explaining concepts in a more beginner-friendly way, and to show them that they're not alone.
I didn't know how to use Twitter, as I've been off social media for the greater chunk of 3 years. I spent about 2 days trying to figure out how the bird app worked and how people were utilizing it. After getting the hang of it, I finally decided to make my first thread. I still wanted my first thread to be meaningful, so I made it about open source, a concept I found very difficult to get into. I was hoping that other aspiring developers would resonate with my struggle contributing to open source, and learn from my experience.
I gained about 300 to 400 followers from that thread.
Who would have thought that thread would blow up?
Certainly not me.
As the comments and likes started rolling in, you can imagine that I was pretty excited to talk to other people, as I haven't been doing it for a very long time😂 I replied to every comment; I was having meaningful conversations with strangers on the internet.
I gained about 200 to 300 more followers from this.
After this, it's been a constant increase, so although it's been only a week, I've gathered some of the know-hows of growing your Twitter account😏
💛 Things I think helped me:
1. Remember the human
It's often easy to overlook this, as all you can see are Twitter accounts plastered on your screen, but you must remember that there's a human behind every account. The account size doesn't matter; whether it's big or small, they're still people, and you've got to treat them with kindness and respect. It's human nature for people to want to be remembered, supported, and empathized with.
If you show kindness and common decency, it'll definitely be returned.
Kindness goes a long way!😊
2. Don't be a stranger, engage!
Building a meaningful connection with people can get you very far.
It unintentionally grew my account...but I'm not complaining😉
When I interacted with people, I was actually genuinely curious about what they were doing, and their learning journeys as self-taught developers.
I wasn't simply telling them 'Good job! 👍🏼' or 'Thanks!'
I was actually engaging with them on the comments, telling them about my journey, and showing interest on theirs. People tend to open up more when you do it first, so don't be afraid to tell them about your journey and road blocks you've encountered so far.
Chances are, they have too!
Also, I sent personalized DMs to every single follower for the first 400ish people that followed me. It was a lot of work, but definitely very rewarding!😅
Some conversations were pretty generic, but most of them were freaking awesome. I took time to look at their GitHubs, current projects they're working on, and their personal sites.
Talking about what projects people made serve as a huge ice breaker!
3. Ask for feedback!
Ask people what kind of content they want to see! I take my time to DM people and ask them if they like my content so far, and if there's anything else they'd like to see or change. Create content people actually want, instead of content you THINK they want.
This creates a closer relationship between you and the Tech Twitter community. It'll also help you push quality content!
4. Be authentic
You can probably tell when someone isn't being genuine, so it's mostly likely that other people can too. In other words, people can actually tell when you're trying too hard! Be yourself, be authentic, put out good content, and people will follow you. Your actual personality is bound to come out after a while anyways, so you might as well do it now. Being transparent is always good.
5. Your journey is unique, share it!
Although we all might have similar goals, our paths are extremely unique! I was very curious at what other self-taught devs were doing and how their journey was like. I'm sure other devs are curious about yours too! We all could benefit a little and could find some inspiration from sharing and helping each other out!
Also, sharing your experience can greatly help the community. What was difficult for you, was most likely also difficult for others. Ironically, most of my Twitter content is actually things I had trouble with. For example, learning loops was absolute hell for me, so I've gone deeper in the learning curve so that I can (hopefully) explain it better to beginners.
It could also help others improve their paths; self-taught developers would greatly benefit from some guidance.
💛 Conclusion
I know a lot of this seems very obvious, but it's not easy to implement at all! I think I've spend around 6-7 hours on Twitter everyday interacting with people, and even more writing content.
The main take away is that the community gives you as much as you give them. Tech Twitter is greatly supportive, so as long as you're consistent, put out good content, and engage with people, you'll see increasing numbers!
It will take A LOT of your time, but I promise that in the end, it'll be very rewarding😆
It was a long read, but thank you for making it this far!
Find me on Twitter!
