My 100-Day Tweet Streak Challenge. The Results May Surprise You.

When I started this challenge, I did it with the notion that Twitter could have a lot of potential as a distribution platform for my podcast and YouTube channel.

Content creation for Twitter is relatively efficient compared to other social media platforms such as Instagram, Tiktok, or YouTube. It's also comparatively easy to share links via Twitter and - perhaps because of that and the predominantly text-based nature of the platform - in my experience, Twitter users are more apt to click external links (e.g., to podcast episodes) shared via Tweets than on other platforms. 

All this made me want to know what would happen if I really doubled down on a Twitter growth strategy. And to do that, I took on the 100-Day Tweet Streak challenge, where I committed to Tweeting once per day, every day, for 100 days.  

In this episode, I talk about what I learned and how it went.

The results may be surprising. 

Music licensed under Storyblocks. Opening and closing track: Disco Danger, by Jon Presstone.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:26 Lesson 1: What you prioritize gets done
• 1:26 Lesson 2: Manageable work packages are your friend
• 2:49 Lesson 3: A content bank can save the day
• 3:41 Lesson 4: Get yourself an accountability partner
• 4:57 Result 1: Better Tweets
• 6:07 Result 2: Follower growth via content
• 6:55 Result 3: Follower growth via engagement
• 8:20 Conclusion

Transcript

[00:00:00] Tim: Over the last hundred days, I've sent out more than a hundred tweets, including at least one per day. And in this episode, I want to share the results and what I learned with you. What happened may be surprising. So let's get into it.

[00:00:11] Okay, so we'll talk about the results of this exercise in a few moments, but first I wanna talk about a few things that I learned throughout this process that applied not only to Twitter but also to social media strategy more generally. 

[00:00:26] The first lesson from this challenge is that I got it done because I made it a priority. As content creators, we're often trying to keep up with a variety of different things at the same time. You've got research, content creation, content distribution, engagement efforts, and maybe you've even got some product development going on in addition to that. Essentially, there are often more things going on than you can keep up with and do well at the same.

[00:00:50] But if you select a few items, prioritize those and get those done first, then those items you will make progress. And that's exactly what I did here by making my daily tweet, either the first thing I did in the morning or the last thing I did at the end of each day. 

[00:01:05] So although it is tough to choose sometimes it's important to do just that and identify a small number of things as your strategic priorities and focus on those things first. Otherwise, what happens is you can end up in a very reactive kind of cycle where you're making a little progress here, a little there, sporadically, as your mood dictates, but you're not making meaningful, consistent progress anywhere. 

[00:01:26] The second takeaway I had from my tweet streak was that I managed to get this done because the amount of effort could be broken down into very small, manageable chunks. Ideally, it should take only about five to 10 minutes to come up with a tweet and send it out. And even when we're super busy, we should be able to find five or 10 minutes somewhere in our day. 

[00:01:47] This is a strategy that I've used as a writer for many years. Back when I first started out, I used to think that I needed a big chunk of time in order to do the deep thinking required of good writing. But as I gained more experience, what I found was that my best writing was not the stuff I was producing in marathon writing sessions. My best writing was the stuff that I had produced bit by bit in multiple sessions over a period of time. 

[00:02:11] The fact is that ideas need time to marinate, and good writing takes several drafts to produce. Also, writing is something you can chip away at doing just a paragraph or even a sentence or two at a time, or in this case a tweet or two at a time. You really don't need to do like a month's worth of content in one huge setting. For many of us, it can be hard to find those big chunks of time on a consistent basis, which means that things tend to get put off. You don't make consistent progress and you lose momentum. The flip side of this is that doing a bit each day does provide consistent progress, gives you that sense of momentum, and ultimately enables you to continue growing your account.

[00:02:49] This brings me to the third lesson learned, which in some ways contradicts the second, but hear me out here. Although you don't need to work like a month in advance, it certainly does help if you have a small content bank to draw upon in cases of emergency. This can consist of two or three posts that you develop, but then don't actually post and instead hold in reserve for when you need them. I used these to take a break now and again, especially if I knew there was a tough day coming up in terms of my schedule. And a couple of cases, having the bank saved the streak! Because I really didn't have the time or the mindset to create new content that day. 

[00:03:22] The software I used to batch create and pre-save my tweets is called Tweet Hunter, which some of you may recall was covered in episode three of my podcast. It offers the ability to preschedule tweets in advance or save them to a drafts folder. But you can also preschedule tweets in Canva or any number of other social media tools. 

[00:03:41] Speaking of tools, lesson learned number four was that having an accountability partner was another factor that supported my success in this. When I started the challenge, I signed up for the Twitter streak tracker on Product time. It's a free software tool that tracks how many days in a row you sent out a tweet. And the key thing here is that it records and displays that number right on your Twitter account. So as a Twitter user, your status in the challenge is right there for you and everyone else to see as a reminder. 

[00:04:08] My counter is stuck at 96 right now because of Twitter Blue, but that's a whole other story. For our purposes here, let's just say it was a motivator to keep going. Once you see that counter going up, you really don't want to see it going back down again. It may sound like a silly thing, but it really works and I think the reason is just basic human psychology.

[00:04:30] We get a little reward when we see that counter going up and we want to keep that going. You can do the same for yourself with anything that you're trying to become more consistent. Just get yourself a calendar, a notebook, a habit tracker, or what have you, and then check off each time you do the activity you're trying to reinforce. But I will say this works best if you can share the progress you're making with other people through the type of tool, like the one I was using in this case. We even had a leaderboard. 

[00:04:57] So now let's talk about the results. First and foremost, I just became a lot better at writing tweets in terms of efficiency, structure and results on Twitter. Part of this was just through plain repetition, because if you do something often enough over a period of time, you're bound to see some kind of improvement. But another part of it was actively paying attention to what makes for a good tweet. And to do that, I accessed the free resources that were available on the Tweet Hunter blog. And I also tried paying close attention to how some of the top tweet writers in my niche were writing and structuring their tweets. 

[00:05:33] And in addition to that, I was getting daily feedback on how my tweets were doing via my analytics. One thing I found was that tweets with a visual element, such as a graphic video or set of emojis, tended to do relatively well in terms of impressions. In terms of engagement, the best performing posts were those that offered tool recommendations. Celebrated milestones asked a specific question or included an inspirational quote or statement. In the future, I'm gonna use these insights to help grow my account by creating better content. 

[00:06:07] This now brings us to the follower count. As of day 100, I had reached about 70 followers. Which was short of the goal that I had set of reaching 100 followers by the end of the challenge. However, this number does represent a 37% increase of where I was before having started at 50 followers. 

[00:06:26] And importantly, I think it exposed a significant gap in my efforts to grow my Twitter account. I was leaning way too heavily on a content-heavy strategy. And when you're just starting out, that's just not gonna work. The problem is you don't have any social proof connected with your account. So even if your content is good, once people visit your profile and see that you've got less than, let's say, a thousand followers, they're not gonna be likely to hit that follow button because you're not gonna be seen as having a lot of authority within your niche.

[00:06:55] The antidote to this is to start creating a connection with people before they visit your profile, by commenting on their posts or their comments on other people's. This way, even though you may not have a lot of followers, they're gonna be more inclined to follow you anyways because you've already engaged with their content.

[00:07:12] The other way active engagement can help grow your account is by getting visibility via other people's tweets. In other words, when you comment on someone else's posts, that comment can be seen not only by that content creator but also by their audience. And if they have a large audience, that's potentially a large opportunity for you to connect with other like-minded people within your niche. 

[00:07:32] Two keys to success in this are, one, make sure that you are commenting on posts related to your niche so that you're attracting the right kind of audience and you're training the algorithm in the right way in terms of what type of account you represent. And two, make sure that you're leaving meaningful comments. I mean, if you're just dropping a bunch of likes and emojis around, that's not gonna cut it. 

[00:07:54] If you're looking for help with this part of your strategy, the Tweet Streak app at app.Tweetstreet.com is one tool I found to be useful. You can see that it helps you to track the number of tweets you've sent, the number of comments you've replied to on other people's posts, and whether you've hit your daily target or not, whatever that may be. And you can see that within the last month, it's helped me to grow my account by another 35%. 

[00:08:20] I hope you found these tips helpful for growing your Twitter account. One question you may still have is why Twitter as opposed to other platforms? And for me, the reason is that I think that Twitter offers a great, uh, opportunity for a distribution platform for my podcast and YouTube channel.

[00:08:37] Unlike a lot of other platforms, it's also very easy to share a link directly within your posts on, and because of that, in my experience, people are more apt to click those links as well Time-wise. I would also say content creation for Twitter is less time-consuming than on platforms such as Instagram or TikTok.

[00:08:56] If you've ever tried one of these challenges before, let me know how it went, and also follow or subscribe for more tips about content creation and social media strategy. 

[00:09:04] Until next time, we'll see you around. 

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