On Twitter, You've Got To Take Any Opportunity You've Got [Twitter Case Study]
When starting anything new, I find examples to be the best way to learn. So here’s a Twitter case study of how I’ve been growing an audience by commenting on the posts of others.
The Setup
I don’t yet have a large following on Twitter. So what I’ve realized is that my discoverability depends on commenting on the posts of popular accounts in my niche.
This will help me to get my content infront of an audience that someone else has already built. But there’s the catch:
I need to provide value to the conversation, not just spam their account.
To keep track of which accounts on Twitter share a similar audience to the kinds of people I want to attract, I’ve created a List of accounts. This helps me stay focused when I get on Twitter and know that comments I make on their posts will be seen by the kinds of people I’m looking to attract.
So, while I was scrolling over lunch, I saw this tweet go up by an account I’ve added to my list of ones to follow:
It was posted 53 seconds ago. Already had 10 likes. I could tell this was going to be a popular post.
This was my opportunity.
I quickly pulled up Adobe XD and illustrated the simplest version of that quote. To make it a challenge, I only gave myself 5 minutes before I had to post it.
What I posted is the image at the top of this post with the simple caption:
“Ask and you shall receive”
The Result
This post also lead to 30+ new followers that day.
All for stealing someone else’s idea, applying my unique angle, adding value, and sharing.
Moral Of The Story
Take the opportunity when you see it – When it comes to social media, Twitter moves especially quickly. If you’re looking to build an audience, you’ve got to have a system in place to do so. This strategy will work ONLY if you’ve also got quality content on your feed to keep your new followers interested.
Strike while the iron is hot – By giving myself only 5 minutes to create an illustration, I knew that Matt would still be online to see my response. Had I waited half an hour, then started my illustration, then posted it, the timing wouldn’t have worked. Don’t be afraid to ship work that isn’t prefect.
Find a way to contribute to the conversation and make the original poster look good – I’ve heard from others who have large following that people try to use this technique on them. The problem they find (and why they don’t re-tweet their posts) is because they aren’t contributing anything new to the conversation. So if you’re going to give this a try, be sure to add your unique lens, not just comment “Great post”, or the like.
