Our path to 5,000 (real, unpaid) Twitter followers in 30 days

If you can't do it, coffee's on us. ☕

I wish we had some magic eight-ball to drive Twitter growth, but driving user behavior is totally unpredictable. It’s even more unpredictable if you’re a B2C product. Just ask Quibi.

Mix a new technology like web3 into your marketing flour, and it gets even harder. You can have a great recipe and still not know what to expect when you finally open that steamy content oven.

Web3 growth requires (at least) one of the following to succeed:

• sweat work

• word of mouth/compelling product experience

• targeted distribution (network effect)

• artificial (paid) hype

For this exercise — the road to 5000 in 90 days — let’s assume…

• our product needs some extra work

• we don’t have a solid network

• we don’t have money to generate meaningful hype

To be successful, we need to earn some sweat with some scrappy growth marketing.

What we don’t want to do…

Crypto Twitter is exhausted by promo messages and bots. Retention is low in market downturns, let alone acquiring new users.

Let’s avoid unsolicited DMs and spam. And we aren’t following anyone hoping they’ll follow us back like a 17-year-old boy praying his crush will notice him before Prom.

Here’s how we’re approaching 5000 followers:

Days 1-3

• Optimize your profile for max engagement!

• Compelling bio, clean banner, consistent branding, clear CTA

• Draft a week or two’s worth of quality content (announcements, stories, features, shower thoughts) ready to deploy when needed

Here’s some examples of Twitter accounts we like:

1. OpenSea: clear demonstration of what they do, compelling branding, link speaks to their #1 complaint. Their content is very creator-focused, also a complaint of a centralized platform that takes high fees. Highlighting your weaknesses allows you to control the conversation.

2. ONE37PM: clear CTAs, top links without clutter, strong keywords. A banner that inspires and stays on-brand. Limited hashtags, content is very grassroots even as a mature account.

3. BFF: you know if they match your vibe immediately. clear target audience. doesn’t feel spammy. shares their founders, which can tell a more personal story if your founder has a compelling twitter game. their pinned tweet is extremely recent and is a product launch, showing me that their brand is relevant and current.

Days 3-7

• curate a list of 50-100 accounts with followers you want.

• audit their audience using a paid tool like Sprout or Upfluence. If you want to go cheap, just scroll through their engagement and follower list — look for bots, low-quality accounts, and who’s liking it, not necessarily obsessing with how many.

• narrow that list to 30-40 accounts.

Days 7-10

• now’s the hard part, we know who we want, but how do we convert them?

• yes, you can follow/unfollow and DM individually, explaining how great you are. but we’re going to do something different.

• From the 30-40 accounts we targeted, we probably have a nice 300k-2m audience size to pull from. But that can be overwhelming. To start, I want to create a list of 1,000 high-quality, bulletproof Twitter profiles worth engaging with.

Download followers from target pages and filter

1. There’s a free tool called BirdIq that lets you download up to 100 Twitter followers (or more if you pay) from any Twitter user.

1. We can pick ten accounts and easily download 100 accounts from each.

2. To make things move even faster, let’s create a twitter URL for each profile so you can click one after another and start engaging.

3. create a column with “twitter.com/” and use the following excel formula, =ARRAYFORMULA(C2:C&D2:D) to merge the Twitter handle and create your twitter URL.

I like having my target followers in Sheets cause you can do cool stuff like filter by total tweets or most used words like “nft”. Let’s say we only want to target users with at least 100 tweets.

If you want to really put in the extra time (less automated), you can go through each target account’s last five Tweets. Who liked, retweeted, and replied? Click on their profiles. Look for active accounts we created at least a year ago with some original thoughts as tweets (or lots of recent retweets). Add them to your list.

Use your instinct. Is this a real person? Do they pass the human sniff test? Add these users to your list.

Days 10-20

1. Now we’re loaded with ammo, time to shoot.

2. Schedule 2 weeks’ worth of high-quality Twitter content. The best you got. Mix in promotional, educational, interactive, and action-oriented content. At least 1-2 posts/day.

   1. Need help creating compelling Twitter content? email us at gm@layer15.io for a content call.

3. Click on each profile you added. You have two options to prompt a response from your targets:

   1. Craft an original reply to a recent tweet — be creative without spending too much time. Use funny GIFs (faster than text), compliment their viewpoints, and respond directly to their Tweet to show that you really read it, are taking your time, and aren’t just copy-pasting. Avoid generic language. Provoke a reply. It will get easier as you get into a groove.

      1. Example: “I need a break from crypto twitter so many toxic people here”

      2. Reply: always good to take breaks and focus on what really brought you to web3 in the first place 🧡

   2. Retweet something they retweeted that’s relevant to your vertical (and shows why they’re on your list of target followers in the first place). Get your name on their notification alerts without committing anything.

4. This strategy has gotten us 10-20% success rate — you should now have at least 200-400 new followers familiar with you.

Days 20-30

1. Time to turn those 200 audience members into forever ambassadors. Twitter growth is not linear. It is exponential. 200 loyalists can easily → 5000 soldiers.

2. NOW we can be more direct. Target those wonderful 200 humans-behind-a-Twitter-account-that-we-already-audited and DM them like the shilling shillsters we really were all along. Only this time, it’s not unsolicited. They know who we are and will likely respond and interact with us.

3. WAIT AT LEAST A DAY TO DM OR REPLY TWEET. This is not one of those “take ‘em while you got ‘em” situations. You don’t want to come off as desperate or spammy.

4. “Hey [profile], appreciate the follow — we’re working on xyz and excited to bring you on our journey. As a thank you, here’s a(n) [resource, discount, free nft, product] you might find useful ;)”

   1. Need help coming up with your thank-you gift? Email us at gm@layer15.io to schedule a call.

5. If you want to reply tweet, make sure to include something specific to what they posted. Make it interesting. Don’t just respond, “Nice insight!” Provide color to something they shared. Reply strategies only work on accounts that have content. Alternatively, you can like one of their old tweets or retweet something they retweeted already to get to the top of their notification feed.

6. RINSE AND REPEAT TWO MORE TIMES.

Optional

• Launch a Twitter campaign encouraging users to engage with your tweet in exchange for the same freebie. you can also use premint (web3 native, costs more) or gleam (web2 native, costs less) to launch a giveaway that maximizes social engagement.

If you don’t have at least 5000 real followers after 90 days…

• Reevaluate your product-market fit: does web3 need you? why does no one care?

• Reconsider your branding: is it clear what we offer? do we look credible? is our copy compelling?

• If you think you pass the first two bullets, let us know. coffee’s on us. ☕