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How I Gained 65,000 Twitter Followers In One Year

Emma Bostian ✨ on February 26, 2019

This post is in no way meant to brag; it’s meant to provide insight into quick social media growth. In the last eight months, I’ve gained about 42...
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Ben Sinclair

You seemed to have gained followers by making a couple of tweets that got retweeted a fair bit.

I attribute this to my top tweet of the month getting liked or retweeted by someone with a following.

That's it, that's all, that's the step one, that most people never reach. You were lucky to get those first couple of retweets, because there are a lot of people out there posting the same kind of thing who get ignored. I've read hundreds of tweets about poor job interview experiences, asking questions about imposter syndrome or similar, from people who are popular and from people who aren't - to my mind, these are not things that are "[don't] seem to be talked about much." I think it depends on who you are following whether you see these things or not.

I think there is probably a snowball effect where people are more likely to see your stuff because other people see your stuff and and and... what I mean is, if you started from scratch and came out with exactly the same tweets in the same order, chances are that the result would be very different.

cough and I like the way you use "250" as the example of a low number of followers...

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Emma Bostian ✨

Yes. I agree that I got lucky. I never denied that. There's no need to be rude about it. I'm not sitting over here bragging about this. I get asked this question a lot. And unfortunately the majority of my growth was luck.

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Ben Sinclair

There's no need to be rude about it.

I'm not trying to be; please don't take it that way.

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Alexander Holman

Try or not, it does come across that way, at least to the author and myself.

I would have personally apologized if I offended someone by mistake, as opposed to asking not to "take it that way".

How would you feel if you took the time to write out your experience, and then some random person, just replied "you got lucky, and if you tried again you'd probably fail"?

Someone wrote this great post: dev.to/moopet/why-i-like-devto-58jc, I'd recommend you give it a read, specifically the part on people sharing experiences and being nice.

Kudos on the brilliant post by the way.

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Scott Spence • Edited

Pressure To Create

I love creating content, but recently I've been feeling pressure to push as much content out as I can. Yet as a result, the quality can suffer, as well as my mental health. Learning to prioritize is something I struggle with each and every day.

👆 this resonates with me. What are you doing to prioratise?

I find that I go through cycles of almost burnout, then I find something motavating again and off I go. It doesnt really sound sustainable now I'm looking at what I've typed 😬

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Emma Bostian ✨

I'll post a blog soon on prioritization & productivity :)

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Prathamesh

This is great advice! In the same situation and frankly very stressful. Hoping to just chill and get discipline back 🙈

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Mainasara Al-amin Tsowa

Wow, never knew this was how you got your following. I personally thought "LOL, she is cool" and that was all it took for me to follow.

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Emma Bostian ✨

Thank you!!

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Suvansh Bansal

Extremely useful post, Emma. I have been trying to build my network over both Twitter and LinkedIn. And believe that the pointers mentioned by you are applicable to both or rather all social media platforms.

I have a question around that - how do you ensure you post content consistently? Do you build a content pipeline or do you post whatever you like/ have read on a particular day?

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Emma Bostian ✨

So by post consistently, I suppose I mean often. I never force myself to post on a schedule; it's just not realistic. But I'm active on Twitter every day and would guess I post blogs maybe one a week on average? But I'm not on a strict timeline.

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Suvansh Bansal

Cool! Guess this makes posting/ commenting on Twitter an organic activity. That ways it does not feel like work and is just a part of your day. Sounds good. Will try that :)

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David Joseph Kamer

"Interact With The Community"

Definitely true. I admit I'm guilty of spreading what could be perceived as negativity from time to time (maybe even to you by accident), but it's because I forget that people read things in a different way than they listen to them. Tone can't be parsed from written words (or I'm not a skilled enough writer to add tone), and sometimes when someone might seem negative or disagreeable, it's a different opinion that would be amicably expressed in person but sounds blunt in the comment section.

We all get detached from what we write online to "strangers". It's just the nature of it, and if you go to were 99% of comments are, you usually find no response. Think about a YT channel that has several million followers and how many comments are there. That means that a good portion of people leaving comments get caught in an echo chamber where no one responds no matter than tone or wording.

Best of luck, and glad to see your rise and how well documented you're keeping it!

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Emma Bostian ✨

This is so true! Often the things I post are taken in ways I didn't intend - and that's very difficult!

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Edwin Klesman

Great breakdown. Thanks for sharing Emma 🙌🏻.

On the negativity part; I think the best way to deal with this is seeing it as an indicator that you're on the right path.

If other people are willing to spend THEIR time on writing something - be it positive or negative - and responding towards you, this is a win.

The marketing sector always said it out loud: negative attention still is attention.

I v/blogged about it in a post on Shipharder.com: shipharder.com/five-indications-fo...

Although the indicator itself might be negative, the why of this happening and what it implies is positive.

Hope it helps ✌🏻

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Gabriele Cimato • Edited

Posting consistently is the biggest challenge for me. Not even that I don't have much to talk about, it's just being consistent that's really hard. I'm always surprised by how people stay productive and tweet non stop. Thanks for this post!

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Glenn Carremans

I would love to increase my twitter followers, currently only 18.

I am trying to be a more active poster (not that easy), any advice on tweet tags? Currently I have been trying to add a lot of (related) tags to possibly increase audience reach.

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Dominic Duffin

There's quite a lot of debate about the best way to use hashtags on Twitter - using lots of them may mean your tweets reach a bigger audience, but there are also quite a lot of 'purists' who don't like the use of lots of tags on every tweet, so it's a bit of a toss up. I personally only use hashtags when I'm participating in a Twitter chat or commenting on a topical event. (Twitter chats, by the way, are a very good way of increasing your following).

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Christophe El-Khoury • Edited

But remember whether you have 250 followers or 10,000, you should never sacrifice your mental health or values.

Gold.

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BjornHollander

Thanks for the tips! I've always had a passion for education and sharing knowledge and recently decided to join some communities and just start sharing. I'll definitely take these tips into account. :D

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Paweł Kowalski

Whats the reason you wanted to build a following?

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Ido Shamun

Keep the great content coming :)

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Gijo Varghese

I was about to ask you this! Thanks for the amazing post!

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João Vanzuita

I like the side effect of it, by your tweets I knew Coding Coach, and now I'm a mentor at Coding Coach, helping more people.

It's nice when we can see the whole picture :D

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Emma Bostian ✨

Thank you! :)

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Brandon Burzon

Fallowed 😀

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Emma Bostian ✨

Yass thanks :)

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Marko Bilal

I never knew that there were devs out there purposefully trying to gain a following...interesting.

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Maciek Chmura

And now you have +1 :)

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Emma Bostian ✨

Aw! :)

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Cyprian

I'm new here and youre already an inspiration toe.. thanks for all you do maam

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Lea Reimann 🦄

Hey Emma, don't pressure yourself :) your followers will still value you a lot, if you post less content. This post was very insightful :)

Keep up the good work 💪

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Florin Pop

Emma, any updates on this? I’d love to hear more about May and June maybe? 😃

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millan123ta

Thanks Emma..! Your blog is interesting and generally useful for social media marketing. It will help us to get more social connection and engagement.

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Adrian Mejia

Nice article! What tool are you using to get these tweet highlights?

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alassadi7

so hexopoxiahexo is negotitable or followers