Back in February when I reached 100,000 Twitter followers, I wrote a post in which I tried to capture many of my own impressions, reflections and advice about growing an audience on that platform. I just managed to add another 50,000 followers, and I thought this would be a good occasion to revisit that post and maybe write a few more of my points.
First, the big one: Twitter is now officially gone and that platform is known as 𝕏. This is Elon’s big nod to X.com, an “everything app”, that he has been wanting to build for decades.
𝕏 has now introduced many different monetization features. You can subscribe to many accounts, and if you are verified and meet a few other criteria, you can have others subscribe to you too. In my experience this has not been a very hot feature, and subscriptions and subscriber-only content don’t contribute much to the overall site’s viability.
More significant has been enablement of profit sharing for 𝕏 creators who meet a certain threshold in terms of numbers of monthly impressions. Based on my anecdotal impressions, this program seems to be truly astounding. Many top creators have been posting their bi-weekly earnings reports, and those seem to be significantly higher than for most other platforms. This is especially astounding given the really low barriers to entry in terms of creating content on 𝕏 - you can literally just share your thoughts and impressions, in smallest imaginable chunks, and you get paid for it.
As mentioned above, 𝕏 is trying to become an everything app. In regards to that, they are pushing other forms of content, and video content in particular.
Engagement for my own content has gone up and down over this period, all of which seems to be due to the changes in the underlying algorithm. I have not changed my own posts that much, still mostly come up with a combination of silly posts/memes, serious takes, and some informative in-depth material. I have not been able to do more in-depth takes, though, since I’ve been traveling a lot, going through a few personal and professional changes (including a major move), and just generally trying to stay above the water with my myriad obligations. The biggest change I’ve noticed, though, is that now video content is much more promoted by the underlying recommender systems.
In July I got a very pleasant surprise when Elon started following me and subscribed to my content! I am currently one of 470 people he follows, and 134 that he subscribes to. Needless to say, this has had a major impact on the number of peopel that followed me and engaged with my content, but after a while things have calmed down a bit and I am back to the “regular” historic trendline.
I still schedule the vast majority of my posts, but I don’t use chime.so any more. Unfortunately they had to shut down their service due to the new 𝕏 API prices. I now use typefully.com, which I like a lot, but still miss Chime’s layout and scheduling features.
Congrats on hitting 150K 🔥 What an amazing achievement. I always wonder what your secrets are. Will now go read through your prior article as well.
Bojan, to this day, I'm seriously confused why you blocked me (@aidan_mclau). I really enjoy your content