How important is Twitter?
I see everyone talking about Twitter as the "most important" thing and discussing "audience building". Wouldn't that time be better spent directly marketing or selling your product, or building your product?
All I see on Twitter is people selling their newsletters and talking about how to get a Twitter audience etc., seems like a huge echo chamber to me.
I can imagine certain kinds of audiences would hang out on Twitter, but I personally never got the hang of Twitter, I always found it pretty weird.
If I'm building a product for people running yoga studios, surely Twitter doesn't matter for me?
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For what it's worth, i built stockalarm.io to 20K MRR & 170K users before i ever made a twitter, i don't think it's required but it sure helps!
Do you mind briefly explaining what you did/the tactics used to acquire your first set of users? I imagine most of the growth was word-of-mouth but even before that started taking place, what did you do as a consumer tech product?
Cheers!
Yeah this is what I wanted to know. I’ve got this Twitter course anyway but this kind of self promotion is way outside my comfort zone. In VC funded startups I don’t see the founders trying to market themselves, nor in most bootstrapped businesses but indie hackers seem very invested in Twitter.
Well
If you share your journey, people will follow you. You will get 2 audience:
Having an audience is always interesting. You engage, you create a network, and people will tend to help you
I think that that is legit the only reason i want to be active. It is also like a small diary to look back :)
Thanks for the reply Pauline, I see you have a Twitter as well, and I understand your product has something to do with interior decoration. Has Twitter helped you gain customers?
No IACrea customers came from Twitter but it gave me a huge visibility today (I launched on product hunted), I posted my analytics today you can see (I can't send link).
However I got customers from Twitter with my previous SaaS, Unrealme that I sold. About 30 came from Twitter
I think 30 out of x vs y would make a huge difference here. But yeah probably for driving traffic to your PH launch it helps.
:)
Twitter isn't a must-have for every business. Understand where your target audience is and then pitch them accordingly by promoting your product/service on that platform. You can surely look out for some communities in Twitter about Yoga which can help you find and interact with your targeted audience.
if you build in public , most of the follower maybe indie developer or coder. no the target user.
While Twitter can be beneficial for certain businesses, it's not essential for everyone. If you're targeting yoga studio owners, platforms like Instagram and Facebook may be more effective. Understanding your audience's preferences and engaging with them directly on their preferred platforms is crucial for marketing success. Twitter isn't a must-have; focus on channels that align with your target audience. Diversify your marketing efforts for optimal results.
Does building in public help even when your target audience is not other indie hackers?
I've been wondering this myself. Never been big on social media but being an entrepreneur has forced me to do things I was never big on this is on my list as well. Thanks for posting this, some valuable insight here.
I know right, recently started learning about marketing and actually I’m enjoying learning about it though, it has made so many things make sense about why my previous products failed, I’m glad I failed my first launch that set me on this learning path.
It is like you spoke my mind. Plus, I am feeling this added pressure of engaging on twitter+reddit+indieHacker (although I love that), other than building my product, to build audience.
I agree on engaging on social media platform such as Reddit, IndieHacker, HackerNews, etc. Finding the right channel is the key. Identify where your audience are. I recently build a tools for myself to monitor topics/keywords on these platform. I convert it into a product hoping it will help others.
Gooluck with your new product! lets all grow together 💪
I also want to use Twitter as a source of user acquisition. However, I wonder whether I should use my personal account or our business account to build awareness for our product. Any advice?
The opinion I got is that if you are building a saas or product for other indie hackers or B2B, twittering and building in public is the best way to sell.
But if your product is intended for a final "consumer", maybe it's not a good method.
Why do you think Twitter is important for B2B? Wouldn’t LinkedIn be a better choice in that case?
I think Twitter is better if you need to sell a specific product, the indie community is more active there, also through advice and discovery of new other products or product marketing methods.
Linkedin IMHO is better if you want to build a network of clients as a consultant or find work as an employee/freelancer.
Different direction (outside of audience building), I find Twitter most useful in writing at low fidelity. It's the speed that Twitter moves that I find most useful when I commit to writing every day. I use Twitter as my writing lab. Then I refine the ideas that stick somewhere else (e.g., LinkedIn).
I know what you mean I've thought the same thing about Twitter. But I think it's important to remember that, for some people, Twitter is an audience-building tool.
If you're trying to get more people involved in your business or product and interested in what you have to say, then it makes sense to use Twitter as a platform. And if you're planning on doing that, then I think it's worth putting some time into learning how to use it effectively.
I think of Twitter as a way of getting in touch with the right people who might be interested in what you have to offer.
It's not just about selling newsletters or promoting yourself it's also about making connections with other people who are doing similar things and can help support each other by sharing information, advice, and resources.
I feel finding the right subreddits and engaging with the right people helps me more.
Specifically, I am building tools for SEO and 99% of indiehackers on the #buildinpublic hashtag are NOT my target audience. You'll likely get a lot of traction by posting controversial pop-culture tweets, but then again i'd argue that these are not your target audience (=no value to you if they are not in your niche).
It does make sense to engage with accounts in your niche on twitter, but I feel it'll take years to grow it to a large following by posting great content. I'd see it as a long-term branding exercise (but possibly not great to validate an MVP).
Subreddits are great because people (sometimes) post "I am struggling with X - how to fix it". Then you come in and give a solution and say BTW I am building this and that. Don't be too spammy and make sure you have a good number of non-promotional posts.
For feedback on your product, I run google ads to be laser-focused on people with that particular issue. For example, I am building metatagmagic.com and I (almost) exclusively bid for the keyword "metatag generator". People who click on the ad, have this need now and you can probably get feedback on your particular product (do people use it? and whether people are willing to pay for it?) within 2-3 weeks.
Amen! Grow your Twitter audience is the new Enlarge your Penis. I also feel Twitter has become less fun/relevant post Elon (for a variety of reasons), a place I'm less interested engaging with.
I agree with the Elon part totally!
I’d say it depends on your audience, Twitter tends to be important if you are a software developer for example or launching a dev tool of some sort.
But it depends who you are building it for. If it is for devs, your audience will be devs. But lets say if I build a webshop for sneakers, only sneakerheads will follow me..
Most devs at my day job are not on Twitter
That's actually true for me as well, most of the devs at my day job are not on Twitter as well. I guess devs who are active on Twitter are mostly from the US and the EU
And Canada
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A large part of indie hacker Twitter is indie hackers selling to other indie hackers.
Building an audience with your core market always makes sense. What we see with indie hackers is they build an audience of indie hackers just because they are one and want to chat about indie hacking. They need to sell stuff to make money and they have an audience so they sell to that audience. Basically, Content Inc in practice.
Ok but for instance most products I buy I don’t think I was ever part of their audience in terms of Twitter or a newsletter or anything of that sort.
It help a lot to connect with the whole world. News updates and interesting stories sharing in twitter
What platform would you say your audience is mostly on? The same principles can be applied from Twitter to Tik Tok, IG, reddit, and facebook groups.
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Was this written by ChatGPT?
I would assign a high probability that the following text was written by ChatGPT. The passage demonstrates an understanding of Twitter's significance, its role in contemporary society, and its impact on communication, information exchange, public opinion, politics, activism, and business. These topics are within the scope of knowledge that ChatGPT possesses, making it likely that it generated the text. Ha!
lol, it surely is.
Haha! Definitely a copy-paste reply from ChatGPT. 🤣