How I gained 8000 followers on Twitter

Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome, 1301 readers to the Learning Lab.

A weekly newsletter that helps you build your learning systems and become lifelong learners

In the last week, the learning lab has gone through significant growth, crossing 1300 readers, and a primary reason for this growth was subscribers coming from Smoul’s newsletter, “Decoding Solopreneurs”.

So, as a way to say thank you, if you’re into solopreneurship, philosophy, and productivity and enjoy long, medium posts, subscribe to her newsletter here:

Back to the lab!

This week’s post is quite different.

As I approach my first anniversary on Twitter, I want to share five important lessons that helped me gain over 8,000 followers and make money online as a full-time student.

These lessons are more related to audience building, so if this is not something you’re interested in, feel free to close this email.

These lessons below are curated through the lens of 80/20, meaning that if you follow these five, you can easily cross 1000 followers on Twitter.

Tip #1: Start a mastermind group.

This has single-handedly been one of my best decisions regarding building an online audience. When I was starting, I sent out a bunch of DMs to my friends, who were all building an audience.

Then, we used when2meet.com to find an expected time block to meet weekly. First, it was hosted on Discord, but then we switched to G Meet and Zoom, and for about six months, we hosted them as a weekly Twitter Space.

The purpose of this group is to have an extra level of accountability and smaller feedback loops, and make the journey more enjoyable.

Twitter is a social network. If we don’t make friends, then it’s impossible to grow. Especially when starting, having 5–10 friends who always support you makes all the difference.

Action step:

1. Message 10–20 creators who you want to grow with

2. If you are interested in the idea of a mastermind, send them the when2meet link to find the common timebox.

3. Be the host and schedule the calls.

4. Structure the call however you want; I prefer to include hot seats and live accountability sessions.

5. Get to work and come back the following week.

Tip #2: Focus on your uniqueness.

I am so bored of creators teaching creators how to become creators.

Most of my timeline is filled with creators making money, sharing copywriting tips, posting generic advice, etc.

This is not what the market is missing. They are missing you.

Creating a band that fits in with everyone else is very tempting. But what is the point of that?

In my case, it’s learning how to learn. And it wasn’t like I found it from day one; I went through multiple stages of refinement to create the brand we have today.

But the critical lesson I want you to take away from this is not to get stuck in the process of “finding your niche”. Just be YOU. Create content around your interests, share behind-the-scenes information, and share your stories.

Just like the Ikigai…

Tip #3: Don’t aim for clarity; just start.

Touching on the last point, even with 11 months in this game, there is still A LOT I don’t understand about this platform. Initially, it’s tempting to buy courses and take on coaching, but most of the information you need is already on your timeline.

But if you’re still unsure, here is just one thread to give you just enough clarity to get started:

After you read this thread, get to work.

Create something. Try something. You won’t blow up overnight.

But it gives you the skills to become a better creator.

Tip #4: Focus on the SKILL, not the number

Even if audience building doesn’t work for you, the skills you gain are invaluable in other areas of life.

• Empathy

• Resilience

• Authenticity

• Storytelling

• Reading analytics

• Attention grabber

• Building relationship

You don’t have to master all of these to be a great audience builder.

You will naturally pick up these skills if you stick with Twitter long enough.

If you want to learn more about skill building quickly, read my last newsletter:

Tip #5: Expect everything to fail.

Lastly, I want you to expect failure by default. Audience building is initially complex, shady in the middle, but fulfilling at the end.

Focus on the first four tips and constantly experiment with your new ideas.

Focus on the most critical areas, don’t overthink this too much and finally, don’t become complacent with your results.

Some more experienced creators reading this may criticize this advice as being too generic and not actionable enough. If so, this is for you:

• Be a genuine person.

• Jump on more calls.

• Focus on one platform only.

• Get good at creating long-form content.

• Model the hooks of successful content.

• Delay the monetization.

• Build an email list once you start to gain traction.

• Start sending the newsletter when you are ready.

• Launch free digital products to learn the skill.

• Don’t compare yourself to others.

🎯 Takeaway

1. Start a mastermind group.

2. Focus on your uniqueness.

3. Don’t aim for clarity… start.

4. Focus on the SKILL, not the number

5. Expect everything to fail.

For more tips on building an audience, I recently did a Twitter Space with Smoul covering this topic.

🧠 Brain Puzzler

(A question, riddle, or problem to mull over.)

Congratulations to Ben Do and Ondřej Šmída, who solved last week’s puzzle.

“What is unusual about the following words: revive, banana, grammar, voodoo, assess, potato, dresser, uneven?“

There were some possible answers:

1. Like Ondrej mentioned — Each consonant in a particular word is followed by the same number of vowels.

2. As Ben mentioned, The second and third letters are the same as the last and second to the previous letter, almost like a mirror.
   

3. But I was hoping to get the real answer: switching the first letter to the last position would be an identical word.

   R e v i v e = e v i v e r

😁 Life Update

Recently, I’ve been focusing on improving my learning skills in the IcanStudy learning course. I am in Ascent 3 (60% done with the course) and expect to be in Basecamp by sometime next week. Other than that, I am becoming way more active on Discord, helping students, and sending feedback to people. I hope for better things to come. ❤️ 

That’s all for now.

Thank you for reading til the end.

Toan.