A Complete Guide
How to grow on Twitter
@shivsakhuja
I grew from 0
in 8 months
→ 50k on Twitter
In this guide, I'll share all the secrets I've learned along the way
@shivsakhuja
What you will learn
Everything you need to know about Twitter growth
• Branding your profile to increase follower conversion
• Designing an effective content strategy
• How to ideate and create high quality content efficiently
• Strategies to boost your following (real tactics, no dodgy apps)
• How to befriend the algorithm
• Tools for Twitter creators
@shivsakhuja
+ a lot more
Growth Hacks
Reply Strategy
Engaging with large accounts
Profile Branding
Analytics
What is "good" content?
Content Templates
Engagement Tactics
Good vs bad followers
Content Strategy
Engagement Tactics
The Algorithm Game
Starting from scratch
Content Frequency
Best Tools
@shivsakhuja
An Important Question
Why?
Why do you want to grow a
following on Twitter?
• Grow your reputation
• Share your knowledge or journey
• Find leads for your business
• Network
• Document your knowledge
• Monetize
@shivsakhuja
Unpopular Opinion
Monetization should not be
your primary goal.
It might lead you to make tradeoffs where you compromise on growth
or get demotivated because of the long journey ahead.
Monetization is a side-effect that will come naturally if you
achieve growth
@shivsakhuja
Branding
Determine how you want to be known.
Focus on what value you will provide
Your brand should appeal to your target
audience
@shivsakhuja
Designing your brand
What is your content niche?
What can you write about well?
What do you enjoy writing about?
Who is your target audience?
What does your audience care about?
What is your goal?
@shivsakhuja
Designing your brand
An ideal content brand is
Unique
Authentic
Useful
Memorable
Try to differentiate
yourself from other
creators.
Do NOT write about
something you don't
know or care about.
Your writing needs to
be useful to the reader
or evoke a feeling.
Your branding and
content should be
something people
remember.
Specific knowledge can
help you differentiate.
People can smell
through BS and you
won't be able to write
good content
consistently.
It could be informative,
entertaining,
educational, creative,
inspiring, etc
Going super-niche is
one way to differentiate.
@shivsakhuja
Profile
Name
Username
Profile Picture
Cover Picture
Bio
Location
You get 9 elements on your profile to
show off your branding.
9 opportunities to convince
someone to follow you.
Make them all count.
Link
Pinned Tweet
Social Proof
@shivsakhuja
Twitter Bio
Good Examples
@shivsakhuja
Bio
Your bio needs to explain one or both of the following:
• What value do you provide your followers
• Who you are and why you are credible
@shivsakhuja
Cover
Your cover is an opportunity to creatively
explain what your account is about.
@shivsakhuja
An example:
Can be subtle
Or explicit
@shivsakhuja
Pro Tip
Profile Photo
Try to make yours unique or stand out.
You can use
BlackMagic.so to add a
ring around the photo
that fills in based on your
follower count - it makes
it more interesting and
people are more likely to
click.
If it’s a headshot, you could try:
• adding a colored background like me @shivsakhuja
• using a really professional shot like thejustinwelsh
• using a cartoonized version like @heyeaslo / @dickiebush
Don’t use random NFT images that don’t belong to you.
@shivsakhuja
Location
Use the location section to be more creative and share
something interesting.
Anything that tells the audience a little more about you to
get them interested in following.
@shivsakhuja
Link
Personal Website
YouTube
Instagram
If you have multiple links, linktree can be a good solution.
@shivsakhuja
Pinned Tweet
This could be:
Your pinned tweet should highlight
your best work to your potential
followers.
A post linking to all your best pieces
of content.
A sample of your best work
You want to make a good
impression.
Something that is representative of
what your audience will see when they
follow you
@shivsakhuja
Social Proof
When big accounts follow you, your potential audience sees that
as validation that you are worth following.
punk6529, thedefiedge, cdixon, Route2FI and 245 others
you follow follow shivsak
"If I see @thedefiedge following someone, I’m much more likely to follow too
since he follows only a few people and I’m interested in similar topics as he is."
@shivsakhuja
Becoming a Content Creator
Now that your branding is on point, let's turn you into a content creator.
@shivsakhuja
What is good content?
Good content:
helps your audience meaningfully
is true to your brand
Don’t write about content that is too far
off-brand just for engagement.
(Don’t sell your soul for engagement)
@shivsakhuja
Pillars of Content Creation
There are 4 pillars to succeeding as a content creator:
Quality (10x)
Quantity
AudienceContent Fit
Engagement
with Audience
I’m an engineer, so I tried to think of the
content game as a function.
Inputs
quantity
quality
engagement
audience fit
Outputs
likes
retweets
followers
@shivsakhuja
Content Strategy
Define a concrete content strategy.
This should be a guiding light for your content creation.
Your content strategy plan should define:
1. Content Buckets
2. Super Content
3. Satellite Content
4. Regular Content
5. Frequency
@shivsakhuja
1.
Create Content Buckets
For example, your buckets might be:
01
Explainers of
complicated
topics
02
Investing
Psychology
Tips
03
Industry
News
04
Personal
Stories
Then find the right frequency for each bucket to fit your brand identity.
@shivsakhuja
2.
Invest in Super Content
Sometimes you want to really invest in a piece of content, and go all
out to make it phenomenal.
This is your SUPER content. A lot of your followers will come from your
super content.
I got 6000+ followers
from my post about "The
Future of NFTs"
I got 8000+ followers
from my post: "Where is
the money coming from"
@shivsakhuja
3.
Core Content + Satellite Content
Your content strategy consists of 3 types:
Core
Content
Satellite
Content
Regular
Content
@shivsakhuja
Satellite Content
Core
Content
When you create your core super
content, create other satellite
content that feeds back into your
core content.
@thejustinwelsh wrote
a great article about this
@shivsakhuja
Why you should create
Satellite Content
1
Continued Engagement
in the following weeks and months even after the initial wave dies out. (24-48 hours)
You've already done the work.
2
You've already done the hard part
For super-threads, you'll put in many hours of work. But much of the research won't
make it to your final thread.
You've already done the work for many pieces of content. It’s often a good idea to
create follow-up pieces to your super content that your audience can dive deeper into.
@shivsakhuja
Think of it like a business
Customers → Readers
Product → Content
Create More Products
→$
Create Better Products
Differentiate
→ $$
→ $$$$
$
→ Attention
Regular Content
Every piece of content you put out can’t be super content.
I can create 1 or 2 truly SUPER
pieces of content a month.
And it takes a lot of effort.
4.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t post other
content. And that other content doesn’t
have to suck. It can still be REALLY good.
@shivsakhuja
Your bread and butter is the content you post regularly.
It should take less time than the super content &
should be sustainable for you to create consistently
Regularly Posting Top-Quality Content is
your best chance of growing your following.
@shivsakhuja
5.
Frequency
They say you should post 3-5 tweets per day and 1 thread per week.
I say make every post count.
@shivsakhuja
Content
Ideation
The goal is to find topics your
audience or target audience is
interested in it and that you can
write about really well.
Here's what I do for ideas
I do a weekly braindump of ideas.
I throw all ideas I come up with,
good or bad into my notes.
Create notes as I read or hear
interesting things through the week
After many months of this, I've gotten to a place
where everything I read about gives me content ideas.
@shivsakhuja
Find good brainfood to inspire you.
What you consume determines what comes out of you
@shivsakhuja
What is "good" brainfood
Not meant to give you copy-pasta ideas
Good brainfood should expose you to unique ideas
so you can connect the dots for your audience
@shivsakhuja
My
Brainfood
Podcasts
News & Stories
Economics, Finance & Markets
Innovation & Tech
Psychology & Marketing
YouTube
Design, photography, & illustration
Threads
Strategy games like Poker & Chess
Blogs
...
@shivsakhuja
Content Ideas
Some examples to inspire you
@shivsakhuja
1.
Do original content
with visuals.
2.
Do a thought experiment, and
share your process or your idea.
@shivsakhuja
3.
Take an interesting piece of
content, and offer a different
take, a fresh perspective,
and/or additional insights.
4.
Share your creative work
(designs, animations, etc)
@shivsakhuja
5.
Share a story or
personal anecdote.
This can be really powerful to
connect with your audience.
6.
Share your failures.
@shivsakhuja
Make sure your content is
unique and authentic to you.
Don’t pretend to be someone else.
Go for authentic you (the best parts).
People can see through bullshit.
@shivsakhuja
Ultimately, you need to put
out original, high-quality
content frequently that your
audience cares about.
Simple, but difficult.
@shivsakhuja
Quality REALLY matters.
If your content is high quality, then you get:
more likes
more retweets
more engagement
Quality has a massive
multiplier effect for all
aspects of growth.
more readers converting to followers
more opportunities coming your way
@shivsakhuja
Content Quality Tips
@shivsakhuja
Give > Ask
The majority of your content should be focused on
GIVING value, not asking users to sign up.
You can ask people to sign up, subscribe, etc, but making
sure your give : ask ratio is heavily skewed towards giving.
@shivsakhuja
What makes a high-quality post?
Unique and interesting
Copy-pasta content won't get you far.
There's little incentive to follow
someone who's posting content I've
already read 5 times before.
Well-structured
Your threads overall structure is very
important. Your threads should tell a story
and capture the audience till the end. People
won’t retweet a post if they got bored a third
of the way through.
@shivsakhuja
Well-Written
Do
Write concisely and clearly.
Edit aggressively
Every sentence should be
necessary for your post.
Minimize fluff
You're not writing a book. You're
competing for attention. Don't
lose the audience with fluff.
Go on tangents
Stick to the story. Keep the
story continuous.
Don't
Overcomplicate
Use fancy words
You don’t get points for big
words. Instead, you get your
audience feeling stupid.
@shivsakhuja
Well-formatted
Nothing scares away
readers like dense
walls of text.
Make threads skimmable
People may only care about the latter
half of your thread. Make it easy to
find what they care about.
Short paragraphs
Avoid writing paragraphs that are
more than 2-3 lines.
Try to avoid continuation tweets
where a sentence spills over into
the next tweet
Use bullet points and headings as
needed
@shivsakhuja
Use Grammarly to improve
your writing.
Poor grammar, typos, mistakes, etc are a flow
disruptors because people will re-read sentences.
It might also make people question your credibility
(perhaps unfairly).
The language is a tool (just like memes)
Mastering the tool can help you master the game
@shivsakhuja
Don’t share links
People don’t click on external links a lot because it disrupts their flow.
You’re competing for attention, and it’s priced in time.
It’s easier/faster to expand a thread than to click on an external link.
External
Links
Low
engagement
Fewer
impressions
@shivsakhuja
News Websites
A classic example
@nytimes The NYTimes has over 54
MILLION followers, and they ONLY got
129 likes on this post after 24+ hours.
They have a 1000 times as many followers
as I do, and yet my last post got over 400
likes in the same period of time.
Maybe the @nytimes could learn
a thing or two from this!
@shivsakhuja
You can still share links, but that should
not be the primary part of your content
strategy.
@shivsakhuja
Engagement
Engagement = Likes, Retweets,
Comments, Clicks
@shivsakhuja
Dirty Engagement
Some posts get you cheap engagement. Don't abuse this
1. Which coin will 100x in 2022?
This kind of question is an open invitation for shillers to
attack the comments section.
You probably won’t get any meaningful discussion in the
comments, but you will get impressions and you might
spot a trend.
I don't recommend using this much though - you're not
adding any value for anyone.
@shivsakhuja
Some people like to use dirty engagement a lot as filler
content, so they are always getting impressions. I prefer not to,
though I will occasionally ask questions about something I’m
interested in polling my audience on.
If you want to use these, I’d recommend at least asking
interesting questions to stand out and using them sparingly to
not become known as a spammy engagement farming account.
@shivsakhuja
Engagement Tip
Ask meaningful questions that
others aren’t asking
@shivsakhuja
The right way to get followers on Twitter
1
2
3
4
Quality content
Consistency
Engagement
Branding
@shivsakhuja
Good Followers
Bad Followers
Bad ways to get followers
Follow for
follow
Mass follow
/ unfollow
Engagement
spam
Buying
followers
Giveaways
These methods bring in lower-quality followers.
These followers are not high-value accounts who will engage with you or have lots of followers.
@shivsakhuja
The best followers are large accounts (10k+) who engage with
your content and have a similar target audience as you.
When these followers like / retweet your posts., you get
Tens of thousands of impressions
Engagement rate goes up
If the quality is good.
@shivsakhuja
Don’t hesitate to DM people
you want to connect with
Many large accounts have open DMs and reply to everyone
But don't be spammy or Twitter will flag your account
The Algorithm
can be your best friend or your
worst enemy
@shivsakhuja
The Algorithm
No one truly knows how the algorithm works.
But I have learned some tricks from analyzing
my own data and experiences. It might help
you play the algorithm game better.
@shivsakhuja
Here are some things I believe to be true:
Most content has a shelf life of 24-48 hours. After which engagement
drops massively.
I’ve consistently seen this on my posts using blackmagic.so
@shivsakhuja
Retweets are much more powerful than likes.
Especially if they come from a creator with a genuine
following and the right audience for your content.
People offer me hundreds of $ just to retweet their content
I don’t do it because I don't want to lose the trust of my audience
@shivsakhuja
But likes are also valuable because
1. It signals to the algorithm that people enjoyed the post.
2. “shivsak liked your post” also (sometimes) shows
up in the feeds of shivsak's followers.
@shivsakhuja
Mentioning other creators in a relevant
way is helpful to get noticed by them
(since it shows up in the mentions section of their notifications)
One way to do this is to include a relevant tweet from them in your threads
@shivsakhuja
Autoretweet your content after
12 hours to reach your audience
in other timezones
@shivsakhuja
Schedule your posts to be retweeted
after a few weeks or months to resurface to new followers.
These will never do as well as your fresh, original content
but every little bit counts, and sometimes it gets
noticed by a large account weeks later and you could
get a nice boost.
@shivsakhuja
How to start if you have few followers?
You spend 5 hours researching and writing a thread - a masterpiece,
some might call it.
You hit the button to publish your tweet.
*cricket sounds.*
Turns out your 86 followers don’t care about .
You get 2 likes and 0 retweets in 24 hours.
Demoralized, you give up.. Sound familiar?
@shivsakhuja
Days or weeks of writing long threads and getting almost no
engagement could make anyone want to give up.
1.
Figure out what’s working / not working, and double down on what is.
2.
Engage with others in your niche - add value to them.
3.
Try to boost your following.
@shivsakhuja
Boosting Hacks
Build relationships with
large accounts
by replying, DM-ing,
engaging and answering
questions or adding
valuable insights on their
posts.
Add targeted value
to large accounts
I heard this awesome podcast on
@RealVision with 6529 and @RaoulGMI
speaking.
I made some notes and
created a mindmap out of it.
@RealVision and other large accounts
retweeted it, bringing tens of thousands
of impressions to my post.
@shivsakhuja
Don’t create content only to get
retweets from large accounts.
Your content should be valuable enough that a lot
of people find it interesting and engage with it.
Retweets will get you more impressions, but they
won’t help much if no one engages with your
content or follows you.
Here's an example!
@shivsakhuja
Reply Strategy
Add value in replies to Big Accounts
For big accounts, tweets can have millions of impressions
Suppose only 1% of people see the comments
If you can get to the top of the comments, you can easily get 10k+ impressions.
This is a great way to grow a small account...
but there’s a right way and a wrong way.
@shivsakhuja
How do you reply the RIGHT way?
Whatever you share must be contextually relevant to the original post.
You don’t want to spam your favorite big accounts, you
want to add value to their posts by doing one of these:
Share interesting thoughts on the topic
Share relevant insights
Share a relevant meme
Ask a relevant question to start a
meaningful discussion
The key word: relevant
@shivsakhuja
Every tweet you post helps
shapes your brand identity
Make sure you're not going too far off
brand just to get follower boosts
@shivsakhuja
Analytics
Analytics help you measure what
the market is voting for.
@shivsakhuja
I got over 12.5M+ impressions in a
60 day period from May-June.
4.4M of those came in just 3
days from my best post.
125
100
75
That post alone did 2M impressions itself and added
another 2M impressions for my embedded tweets.
50
And I had only 24k followers at the time.
25
This tells me that it’s worth investing the time to create
SUPER content that has a high likelihood of doing really well.
0
May
June
@shivsakhuja
What analytics do I track?
I use blackmagic.so to track these numbers
Followers per day
Impressions
Like Rate
Likes / Impressions
This helps you compare how well posts
are doing.
How many times people saw your
content.
Retweet Rate
Engagement Rate
Profile Click Rate
Engagement / Impressions
Engagement is when people interact with your
content (like, click, see comments, click on profile, etc)
Look at the rates not the raw numbers.
@shivsakhuja
You can find analytics in a
few places:
There’s an analytics button under each tweet that shows
you the tweet’s statistics.
analytics.twitter.com (official Twitter Analytics page)
BlackMagic.so by @tdinh_me
@shivsakhuja
Tools
Black Magic for Analytics
Advanced Twitter Search
Typefully for Writing Threads
Social Blade for seeing other
creator’s growth and drivers
Twemex for fast, advanced
search and finding the best
threads by other people
Hypefury to schedule tweets
Especially useful for short filler
content
@shivsakhuja