How I Got 53,000+ Views and One Lead on My Tweet (With Less Than 240 Followers)
Breaking down the secrets behind viral twitter threads
Twitter is growing like crazy.
It was once for celebrities and politicians. And, some random memes across the internet. Now, it is a heck of a platform for writers and other forms of content creators.
I was wrong in assuming Twitter as a waste of time.
But recently, my friend recommended I try out Twitter. I considered his advice and started fresh. I had some toxic tweets in my feed so I unfollowed most of the previous profiles I was following.
And, I discovered the most amazing folks and communities on Twitter. Once I followed and engaged with the right people, I got to learn and have fun.
Now, getting your tweets to people is what makes Twitter interesting and challenging, especially when you are stating out and you have less followers. Yet, I got my tweet to 53K+ views and 68 retweets, with less than 240 followers. This helped me connect with some great fellow writers and entrepreneurs. It got me one website copywriting lead as well.
In this story, you’ll see a clear picture about how this happened.
1. I used a credible talking head.
Okay. It was difficult for me to understand this, but originality is overrated. And, when you are starting, you don’t have any credibility. Once you have your name established, you start gaining some credibility.
How do you manage to do it when you are starting? You use credible talking heads.
Dropping names of credible people works.
I’ve seen people using Elon Musk, Naval Ravikant and more to get attention.
Some tweets from Shaan Puri (Most of his tweets go viral):
Dickie Bush, One of the amazing writers, most of his tweets have some credible name and now he is a credible person for sure.
2. I provided something most folks would find value from
Who doesn’t want to write amazing headlines? Anyone in an online business, or owning a website, or any kind of content creator, or writer wants to have views and that’s only possible with having great headlines. So I created a thread about this pain.
It is always about the reader. If you are giving them something they can immediately put to action, they’ll like it. And, they’ll retweet it to share and to add to their profile.
Sometimes the subconscious reason why people retweet is because they don’t want to lose it. They want to bookmark it for later.
3. Clarity about the thread (headline or hook)
The first tweet in your thread works as a headline. To have a great thread and get it rolling you need to tell the reader what they are about to get in the thread.
You need to deliver on three things:
- What is your thread about?
- Who is it for?
- The promise: What are you offering to the reader?
When you successfully implement this, you create a curiosity gap.
“The Curiosity Gap is what tells the reader what this piece of writing is about, who it’s for, and what it’s promising-all without revealing the answer.” — Nicolas Cole
Here are some of the examples of great hooks.
4. Build trust in the second tweet
The second tweet in the thread is where you build trust with your reader.
The reader should feel like, “Oh, he knows what he’s talking about” or, “I’m so lucky I found this” or, I’m going to get so informed after this.
Notice the second tweet of Sahil Boom’s recent thread that got viral with 2.4K retweets and 10.3K likes. He’s showing that he is going to deliver on the promise.
If your hook — as in the first tweet is good but your second tweet doesn’t hit the punch, most readers will scroll past your thread and might not read the complete thread.
5. Get the attention of the folks with high followers
I’ll be honest. I got more traction with this tweet because I got retweets from Dick Bush and a reply from Nicolas Cole. Once this happened, the tweet blew up.
Justin Mikolay got a retweet from Naval Ravikant and it took off.
One way is to tag them (only if they’re relevant, else it’s spamming).
Twitter is an amazing platform to interact with some big names in the industry. I’ve been interacting with one of the top medium editors on Twitter. You ask them proper questions and they’re happy to help.
Share your tweet with them. Ask them for advice on making things better. NEVER ask them for a retweet. Just share.
6. Engage with your community
Engage and show gratitude to those giving you a quote retweet. If it is good enough, don’t just settle with giving likes, give that a retweet. This keeps your tweet up and rolling for the algorithm.
The Twitter algorithm (or any social media?) supports the new content. If the algorithm keeps on getting signals about your content being good, it will push more and help your tweet stay on top.
If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.
— Tony Robbins
Keep experimenting and learning. My initial thread didn’t get much response. But the game of online writing is all about publishing and learning.
Here’s link to my twitter account.
