Optimizing Twitter in 20 Minutes a Day

Experiment: 17

👋 Hey, Eve here! Welcome to this week’s paid edition of the Part-Time Creator Club. Each I divulge an experiment I’ve been working on in the Part-Time Creator Club to show you what I’m learning.

P.s. this week I realised a masterclass on ideation, it’s available for the next 12 hours, you can check it out here.

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Waddup Part-Time Creators, today we’re talking about Twitter and optimising growth in 20 minutes a day.

I analysed my eight latest tweet threads and found some surprising results that were staring me straight in the face. Here’s how you can steal what I’ve learned and grow. 

Here’s what’s in store today:

• Step 1: My problem with Twitter

• Step 2: Study the greats

• Step 3: My experiment

• Step 4: Discussion

• Step 5: Next steps

Step 1: My problem with Twitter

I’ve had a problem recently that has been hard to fix, try as I might, I couldn’t seem to find a consistent way of nailing Twitter growth. My aim? To grow by roughly 100 followers a day, or 3,000 a month. But here’s the catch, I didn’t want to spend a tonne of time on Twitter.

That’s for two reasons, I have 2–3 hours a day to create. I don’t want to spend time lost on a platform. I’m not sure what it is about Twitter but I’ve noticed recently that I find it hard to log onto Twitter and stick to a task. Let’s say I go on Twitter to write a series of Tweets, I’ll log on and ten minutes later I’ll remember that’s what I came on for and realise that I’ve just spent the last ten minutes scrolling the feed.

There is little friction on Twitter and because you are presented with the newsfeed with little else to look at, I find myself easily distracted. During a Sunday review, I noticed that a lot of time seemed to be lost scrolling Twitter.

The other reason is that once you spend a lot of time on a platform, you find your ideas get influenced by the creators on the platform, which is okay to an extent but I’ve decided recently I really want to break out my content. I want it to be unique and interesting. I’m trying to take it to the next level. So I have to be hugely mindful of my consumption.

I find it’s much easier to come up with unique and insightful ideas from reading books, listening to interesting podcasts and spending time in my own thoughts rather than reading other people's.

Most of Twitter is like junk food for the brain. It’s cheap easy dopamine. It’s the obvious stuff that’s written in 5 minutes flat that gets regurgitated over and over again. It’s the stuff that I don’t want to be writing but spending more time on the platform makes it easier and easier to fall into that trap.

So here’s the deal, I wanted to go deep on Twitter but not spend a lot of time on Twitter, so it lead me to study some folks that I thought were doing it really well.

Step 2: Studying the Greats

My favourite creators on Twitter? Billy Oppenheimer, George Mack, Codie Sanchez. All are incredible at finding non-obvious content and telling the world interesting stories.

What do we see time and time again from these incredible creators? Well, I have a few thoughts:

1. Quality over quantity

Big swings are important. In the content creation world it’s easy to get sucked in by volume. More is better. Posting each day is essential, you must churn content if you want to get ahead. I’ve recently started thinking differently as I’m starting to get better at writing content.

More is better up until a point. There is a tipping point then when it’s worth spending more time on fewer pieces of content so that you can nail them and tell stories that are so good people can’t help but read them.

Once you get to the point where you’ve got a decent amount of followers, big swings are better.

1. The ‘Climb’

What sounds better out of these two examples:

a) Pay attention to what you pay attention to, if you do that you’ll find the path you’re meant to walk.

b) ‘After the final episode of “Seinfeld” in 1998, Jerry Seinfeld didn’t know what to do next with his life. With the success of the show, he had options. “What do I do?” he asked a friend. “Well what’s been the best experience you’ve had so far?” the friend asked. Seinfeld said, Two things: First, writing — “I just see something and I write it down — I like a big, yellow legal pad — and once I get that pad open, I can’t stop…the next thing I know, the day is gone.”… Takeaway 1: “For anyone trying to discern what to do with their life,” the author Amy Krouse Rosenthal said, “PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. That’s pretty much all the info you need.”’ — Billy O

It’s obvious, right? Both are saying the same thing but one takes you on the journey. The one just sort of hits you with the information and doesn’t give it a second thought. This is what I call the ‘climb’.

Let’s say you’re walking up a lovely big old hill in the Yorkshire countryside. You have two options to get to the top. You could stick your head to the ground, focus on the steps ahead, hit record pace and as the beads of sweat roll off your forehead you keep repeating to yourself ‘I’ll be there soon’. 

Or you can take your time. You can soak in the country air, you can stop every now and then to look at the view, laugh at the sheep, and pet your dog. The first you get there in record time, the second you get there in record enjoyment. The destination is the same. The climb is important.

1. Research first

Writing is just thinking expressed. Ideas are everywhere, junk food tweets are everywhere, and the people that stand out are the ones that have interesting stories that are researched well.

So it means finding the story is way more important than writing the story. In fact, 90% of the writing is done before tapping out a single word on the internet. The stories are found, thought about and built from.

Step 3: My experiment

A few months ago I felt like I wasn’t happy with my Twitter efforts. I loved the platform but I felt I was just pumping obvious content into the void. I wanted to level up my craft. I wanted to tell better stories. I wanted to give it more time and attention but I didn’t really have much of that.

So instead of writing single tweets, I thought I could commit to one thread a day and level up the content in those threads. I’d learned a load from my non-obvious thread review so I decided that I would commit.

The rules: 1 thread, per day.

I’m writing fewer tweets but those tweets are more in-depth, they are about anything I’m interested in and now I want to analyse them all so far…

• 19.5k Thread (topic: business, character: me, time: 12:01pm)

• 16k Thread (topic: business, character: Alex Huberman, time: 9:56am)

• 54.5k Thread (topic: copywriting, character: none, time: 7:40am)

• 37.7k Thread (topic: famous study, time: 9:56am)

• 4.5k Thread (topic: solopreneurs, time: 6:12pm)

• 79.9k Thread (topic: business, character: Twitter famous, time: 6:32pm)

• 2.3k Thread (topic: creator economy, character: nobody, time: 5:39pm)

• 25.4k Thread (topic: writing tips, character: famous writer, time: 6pm).

Some of the most successful hooks:

• “6 months ago I started selling digital products. After $20k in sales, I’ve come to ONE conclusion: Copywriting is THE most important skill to master. In 1990, world-class copywriter Gary Halbert wrote this sales letter. Here’s 10 step breakdown (it’ll transform your selling):”

• “The world's longest study on human happiness (that cost $20 million)… …found out something weird about being rich & famous.”

• “The most underrated ‘soft’ skill in the 21st century? Self-belief. Yesterday @Codie_Sanchez sat down with @StevenBartlett & distilled 1.5 hours of business wisdom. The insights are must-reads for entrepreneurs, 9–5'ers & creators. The 12 biggest takeaways (in 2 mins):”

• “Stop reading bad writing advice. Here are the 7 BEST pieces of writing advice to make you a better writer (in 2 minutes) from Robert Greene:”

Least successful hooks:

• “I used to be addicted to my phone. It killed my productivity & kept me a ‘wantrepreneur’. Today I run a $5–7k/month business part-time. Here is how your break your phone addiction (backed by science) so you can ACTUALLY work on your side business:”

• “Solopreneurs are taking over the creator economy. Top solopreneurs quit these things (in this order) to become mega-successful:”

• “The creator economy could approach half a trillion dollars by 2027. And 66% of content creators have a 9–5. I’ve been creating content alongside my full-time job for the last 3 years. Here’s the 7-step process that helped me out-earn my day job (and how you can too):”

Step 4: Discussion

Before we get into the discussion there is just one thing to mention: Stats aren’t everything. I listen to impressions, likes, and RTs but also to comments and conversations. Arguably the comments and discussions are more important but aside from that I don’t want to be completely led by stats. Knowing what your audience likes is great and hugely important but it’s not everything. It has to align with what you like to write about and what resonates with you.

So whilst stats are important, they’re not everything. 

With that in mind let’s talk about what I’m seeing in terms of what is working and what isn’t:

• All the least successful threads are very broad topics: creator economy, solopreneurship and productivity. My hunch is that these are too broad and because they lack specificity they bombed. Better is to get specificity in a topic. Copywriting > sales. Soft skills > business. Human happiness study > productivity. Going deeper into the topic adds a layer of interest. 

• Certainty sells copy. Look at those four successful hooks, you’ll see how declarative they are. There is no room for being unsure or areas of hesitation. I’m very clear in those hooks. I state things as a fact. That gives confidence to the reader. You’ve got 3 seconds to impress. It’s why it’s important to be sure of what you’re saying. 

• Superlatives matter. You see in the most successful tweets I use words like ‘most’ and ‘longest’. Superlatives. They are the highest degree of something. They allow comparisons for the extreme of things and make people feel like they are getting the highest degree of answers to their questions. You have to be careful that the rest of your thread meets the bar though. Clickbait kills credibility.

• A clear character (named) makes a huge difference. If you are talking about a celeb or someone that has inspired you, the best bet is to name them and make them the central character in your story. 3/4 most successful tweets did that. None of the least successful hooks had a character involved.

• Get specificity on time frames. “6 months ago I started selling digital products.” vs. “I used to be addicted to my phone.” One transports you there, one feels kinda meh. Go deeper into the story as we learned from Billy O. 

Step 5: Next Steps

So what’s next? Well, next I’ll use all of this as fuel for writing better threads. All of the lessons learned here will be pushed into next week’s threads to understand if these assessments were right or wrong.

I’ll then review and see what is working and what isn’t. As ever I’ll keep iterating and keep spilling the beans here on what’s working and what isn’t.

Until next time.

Much love,

Eve

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Each I divulge an experiment I’ve been working on in the Part-Time Creator Club to show you what I’m learning.