WORKWEEK

No fancy intro. You want to go from 0-1000 followers on Twitter. And I’m gonna show you how to do it.

No cheesy growth hacks needed.

Shall we?

Step 0: Decide whether you even NEED a brand account

Lmao, seriously

For lots of brands (going to assume you’re a newer brand if you don’t already have a Twitter account), a brand account on Twitter is a waste of time.

It’s hard AF

So if you’re a solo founder or don’t have the resources to hire a social media manager…

You’re better off building your personal account than trying to get a brand account off the ground.

Now, what if you’re an SMM tasked with growing a brand Twitter presence from ground zero?

Brand accounts are so, so ,so much harder to grow than personal accounts.

Especially if you’re a new brand. Nobody gives AF about you.

Growth requires a lot of repetitive, unscalable, mind numbing stuff.

But, it can be done (and you get paid to do it), so here’s how…

Step 1: Again, decide whether you should be on Twitter

Here’s a checklist:

✅ Is your target audience on Twitter?

✅ Are there no other platforms where it makes sense for you to focus more on? ✅ Do you have influencers to amplify your content?

If yes, let’s do it:

Step 2: Establish a CLEAR reason why someone in your target audience should follow you

Truth: nobody gives a sh*t about your brand account.

What angle can you take to give them a reason to care?

Clarify that.

For most brands, this angle will be some combination of entertainment and education.

In my experience:

Entertain first (memes, engagement questions, witty comments), THEN educate (threads, podcast clips, etc).

Education only can work, but a lot of brands just end up sounding boring.

Education, with a splash of personality, is what wins on Twitter.

Step 2: Write 2-3 tweets per day

Here’s a simple routine to follow:

• One meme
• One engagement question
• One miscellaneous post

(Or pick your own formats, but this is a good starting point)

Your tweets will likely perform like 💩 at first, that’s fine.

You don’t have an engaged community yet. You’re just getting the reps in & testing.

Eventually, some tweets will stick.

Look for topics, content formats, anything that shows outsized performance.

For example, if u normally get 2-3 likes per post and a meme topic gets 25 likes.

Woah 😳

Do more of that. Your audience is telling you what they want more of.

Here’s a hilarious example from the Triple Whale account:

Hasbulla memes. You know… the little Eastern European legend that’s taken social media by storm?

Yeah. I’m serious.

9 times out of 10, a Hasbulla meme crushes.

It’s a button I can push to get more engagement.

And here’s another example of a killer pattern I found in my testing…

People love engagement questions that end with “(wrong answers only),” like this tweet:

So I use those pretty often.

The lesson?

Recognize patterns. Double down on what works.

The best part is the compounding results that occur once you identify multiple winning patterns. They don’t just stack on top of each other — they multiply.

And eventually, you have a content machine that’s firing on all cylinders. It’s great, but it takes a lot of mess ups to get to that point.

Also, to clarify:

The ‘2-3 tweets per day’ isn’t gospel. It’s just a framework to help you establish consistency.

I know someone is gonna start yelling “quality over quantity” in the replies … but here’s the thing:

→ the algo rewards consistency

→ consistent posts means consistent experiments

Here’s where I’d start though… 👇

In the early stages of Twitter growth, the focus is NATIVE content.

Don’t try to link off-platform often.

Why?

It will slow your growth and engagement

You don’t even have an audience to move yet LOL

So, refrain from the incessant blog links (looking at you, SaaS companies).

How do you you come up with these native content ideas from scratch though?

→ If you wanna source content & meme ideas for Twitter, this thread takes you through how I never run out of ideas: [link to thread]

→ And here’s how I’d approach educational + product related content, instead of spamming blog and podcast links: [link to thread]

My biggest piece of advice here is to give your BEST stuff away for free, and on-platform.

As you grow, you can start to move your audience across platforms.

But the FIRST goal is to create as much engagement and momentum as possible to feed the algorithm.

You can’t influence an audience you don’t have. Be patient.

Step 3a: Spend time engaging with other accounts

I need you to listen to me here.

Spend MORE time doing this than writing those 2-3 foundational tweets.

Outbound engagement is THE most important step in the process.

Without it, you’ll be shouting into the void forever.

Wanna ignore me? Have fun tweeting to your 13 followers (who probably won’t end up buying, like ever).

We on the same page now?

Cool. So who do you engage with?

👇👇

Step 3b: Engage with two types of accounts

There are two categories of accounts you should be engaging with every day.

A) Your target customers + people talking about things relevant to your product

B) Influencers + meme/theme accounts in your industry

Your brand’s tweet replies function as a billboard.

🚨 IMPORTANT NOTE 🚨

Don’t be an idiot in the replies. Please.

Best practice to keep you out of trouble is to reply to accounts in your niche only – and avoid problematic stuff.

I’ve seen brands (especially on TikTok) try to comment on posts that have nothing to do with their niche. This can work, but it can also go horribly wrong. High risk, (maybe) high reward.

I’d recommend playing it safe here. Plenty of opportunity within your niche.

Also, try not to be self-promotional. AKA don’t be thirsty.

People can tell.

And look. You might not grasp the nuances of the reply game at first. Don’t sweat little mistakes (I trust you to avoid truly problematic situations LOL).

You’ll get better at this w/ time.

Plus, the goal with the reply strategy is NOT to get customers.

It’s to get profile visits

⬇️

And then followers

⬇️

And then… maybe… they might sub to your email list

⬇️

Oh, then they’ll buy 💰

My point? The priority with your replies is to add value and drive profile visits.

Transparently, the outbound engagement piece is why Twitter growth is so hard.

Outbound engagement is not scalable at all, and it takes skill to do right.

It’s also mentally exhausting (after replying to 50-100+ tweets, your brain feels like mush).

But, it is the way to creative initial momentum.

Again, spend more time here than on your own content. Once you hit 1000 followers, the priorities shift a little (but not much tbh).

Now, for step 4 (the secret sauce for most brands) 👇

Step 4: Activate any influencers you have at your disposal

Not every brand has this luxury…

But if you do, have influencers amplify your account and drive traffic to it.

Make sure to have a clear, concise bio + pinned tweet so you can convert as much of that traffic as possible.

Don’t have big influencers?

Cool – what about employees who are active on Twitter?

Employee engagement and activity is one of the best ways to get a young account off the ground.

Also, your employees personal brands become powerful assets.

You have no idea how many people tell me they see mine and my coworkers’ accounts more often than the actual Triple Whale brand account.

At first I was a bit frustrated by this. I put so much work into the brand content! I want people to see it!!

But then I realized — I might as well lean into this trend rather than fight against it. And that’s one of the reasons why we dominate Twitter.

Now, we’re not starting ‘from zero.’

But if you are starting from scratch… even more a reason to tap into employees as ‘influencers.’

Not convinced? Watch this.

Step 5: Build relationships with other SMMs in your industry

Behind every other brand account, there’s a person like you.

When you can connect with other industry SMMs and riff of each other for content + engagement, it helps everyone involved.

You see this happen a lot in the esports industry.

All the SMMs know each other, and what seems like banter back and forth from competitive brands was actually planned behind the scenes.

But this doesn’t have to be limited to one industry. Use it in yours (I do it in B2B SaaS lmao).

Here’s the truth about rapid Twitter growth:

On Twitter, inflection points in growth occur when the right person starts engaging with your account.

This is what ‘engagement pods’ try to hack.

But it’s best when it happens organically (that means your content resonated with the right people – and it’s not fake signal).

Now, for the final (and most-often-f*cked-up step) 👇

Step 6: Wash, rinse, and repeat for 6-12 months

This is the hardest step.

You’ll want to stop, and won’t think the strategy is working.

But…

If you show up and engage, refine your content based on the data you see in testing (maybe I’ll do a piece on this in the future), and leverage influencers + employees.

You’ll grow your Twitter account.

It’s not sexy, but it works.

Oh… and don’t buy followers via ads on Twitter.

Every brand account I’ve seen do this has sh*t engagement.

They’ll have comparable follower count to us, but engagement is in the drain.

Play the long game.

TLDR

Step 0: Does your brand need Twitter?

Step 1: Why should people follow you?

Step 2: Post 2-3 tweets per day

Step 3: Use outbound engagement (a lot)

Step 4: Activate influencers to amplify

Step 5: Build relationships with other brands

Then Step 6… 🔁 again and again

Got it?

Cool.