How I did Twitter for Indie Hackers

In August 2019 I took the lead on posting to the Indie Hackers Twitter account from a community perspective. I did about 95% of the tweets that went out.

This is my story, I published it originally here.

I’ll tell you the truth. I was worried at first. Maybe I would post the wrong thing. Or make some stupid mistakes. I was apprehensive about representing the Indie Hacker brand. 😬

Turns out it’s been alright.

• I started with 20k+ followers, within 18 months it got to around 65k.
• We were averaging around 600k impressions per month. In May we hit 3.5 million.
• I don’t really track anything else specifically, though I do keep an eye on number of comments and likes.

I’m pleased with the progress, I haven’t measured it against anyone else, but I did a talk on it recently, so I thought I’d share how I’ve done things.

Twitter can be an extension of your community

I went into Twitter with a pure community focus.

It matters how you look at something. I threw my so called ‘marketing hat’ far away and focused in on what I could do to help the community. I didn’t want it to be about ‘marketing’ and pulling people into the Indie Hackers websites.

I decided I would reflect the Indie Hacker community from here onto Twitter. I had a vision of conversations, people helping one another out, ideas being shared, people being connected, and (new) voices being amplified.
I wasn’t sure how, but that was the focus in my mind.

I wanted people to feel the Indie Hacker vibe on Twitter, so that whenever they do end up deciding to come over here then they’d feel right at home.

Clicks, conversions and traffic was something that I decided not to measure or focus on at all. I have no idea how much traffic Twitter drives. It doesn’t really matter to the work I’m doing.

Over time I found a flow in certain types of Tweets, as follows.