I went (kinda) viral on Twitter — here’s how that was
After ramping up my activity on Twitter these past weeks, I have finally gotten my first taste of fame. However, due to the ephemeral nature of Twitter, it’s more like 15 seconds than the usual 15-mintues.
As the boys of Lonely Island might say, “Doesn’t matter, had fame.”
That being said, my growth on Twitter has been going slowly but consistently.
I’ve been dipping my toes into the Twittersphere by posting about carnivore and health related ideas and questions.
However this week I experimented with more comments on general things that I liked and enjoyed.
That’s when this post hit the jackpot.
I had about 120 followers when I made this post. To then have 486 people like this, as well as 18 retweets and 23 comments was quite incredible. It was also quite out of the ordinary, considering my other posts were averaging 3 likes, 0.5 comments and 0 retweets.
That’s why I say this was my experience of going relatively viral. I had an engagement rate that was extremely out of bounds for a typical post. More so, the amount of likes far exceeded that actual amount of people following me.
But then the question is, how did my post reach more people than actually follow me? How did I speak to people who didn’t even know my name, let alone chose to hear my thoughts?
The secret is… replies!
My tweet was actually a reply to a post from a way larger account. Check below.
Massimo had 55k likes on his post and 9.6M impressions. Really massive. But, that’s because he has 1.6M followers. That’s about 12,500 times larger than me right now.
He is a celebrity and I just walked in behind him and got in the club, for free.
This is the power of Twitter (X) specifically.
I posted a reply which was more of a sentimental feel. It turns out others agreed with it, because so many who follow Massimo saw his original post.
What was the experience like?
1 — It was distracting
- It was hard to concentrate when I was getting desktop notifications of likes, retweets and comments on my post.
- By the end of the day, I disabled these so I only know whats happening on Twitter when I want to know
2 — It was exciting
- Naturally, seeing engagement and interaction triggers positive feelings in the body.
- I took breaks and breaths to maintain composure and not let the event detract from the rest of my work for the day
3 — It was nerve-wracking
- There were people who disagreed with me. Some posted negative comments in general.
- I worked on distancing myself from the reactions — it was about playing the game. Any engagement is good engagement and I didn’t have to respond to everyone.
That being said, the event generated a small amount of stress and by solving and handling the issues, my systems have been upgraded to the point that I can handle this kind of event again.
More so, this stress upon my mental state has been like going to the gym for the mind. Now I am stronger and less likely to be triggered by negative comments and people who are rude or disagree with me on Twitter. I also will be less thrown off course the next time a post goes kinda viral.
Building mental fortitude is about getting in those reps in the mental gym of life.
What’s been the result?
Well my follower count has increased, and is sitting at about 42% higher since a month ago. Pretty good growth and I hope that can last.
At the current rate of growth, I will have over 500 followers in 4 months, and over 1,000 followers in 6.
Impressions are through the roof (15,600% is some crypto level gains). But that’s because I started from close to zero. We should see this number getting more reasonable and stable over time.
Deeper analytics show that my reply garnered me 97 profile visits. Based on that, I have definitely converted about 5–7 of them into new followers. It seems that stat is broken on the dashboard above.
Okay, so what is the meaning of this? Why do these stats matter and why is it important to grow my Twitter account and following?
All roads lead to Monetization (on Twitter)
The aim of all this is to eventually make money on Twitter. This is done by generating content that people find useful, informative, engaging in some way.
The likes, retweets, views metrics all signal movement towards that direction.
But how much is needed before I (and anyone else) can earn money?
Well, after my success, I was ready to cash in the rewards for my “hard work”.
I went to Twitter’s Monetization section and received a firm “Not yet”
Okay, so 1 kinda-viral post is not enough.
But hope is not lost. The targets are now at least clear. I know the path to money in my pocket.
- Get to 500 followers
- Get 5M impressions over the past 3 months
Based on the stats of my mini-viral post, I need to get that level of engagement 40–50 times over 3 months, or ~15 times a month, or every 2 days.
If I put in just 5 replies to big accounts a day (minimum), then I’ll have 10 chances every 2 days.
And from those 10 chances I only need 1 (a 10% success rate) to win to get good engagement and convert that to followers.
The takeaway?
1 — Replies are the single biggest way to get exposure when you are a small account.
2 — Your profile is then the second biggest converting factor. It is your landing page that showcases why people should follow you.
3 — More replies to bigger accounts, more impressions on your profile, more growth.
P.S. ✍🏻 Let’s connect
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