How to get your first 10,000 followers

ABOUT THIS ARTICLE

Gym World comes from Kilo co-founder John Franklin, who shares lessons about making money in the fitness industry.

Today, I am going to show you how to get your first 10,000 followers on Twitter.

By following this process you can build a personal brand that grows your business and creates new opportunities for you.

Unfortunately, most people don’t approach audience building in a systematic way. Because of that, they don’t get traction and quit.

Audience building is a necessary skill in 2022.

If you’re an entrepreneur or growth marketer you need to know how to get attention. Developing an engaged audience is one of the hardest parts of business building.

That’s why there are 9-figure funds that pair creators with D2C brands and top VCs saying that creators will put major brands out of business.

So how do you stand out amongst the millions of people competing for attention?

Here’s how I did it, step-by-step:

Step 1: Develop a rhythm

Starting is the hardest part. You don’t know what you’re doing, everything takes a long time, and you’re not getting feedback on your work.

For the first month just focus on developing a consistent rhythm that you can maintain for 5 years.

For me it’s:

  • 2 tweets a day
  • 15m of commenting a day
  • 2 threads a week
  • 1 networking call a week

You can screw up a lot of stuff and still grow if this is all you do.

Step 2: Reverse engineer your brand

I know a lot of creators that have a large audience but aren’t able to monetize it because they didn’t put much thought into their brand.

You don’t want to just build an audience, you want to build a valuable audience that helps you reach your goals.

To do this, get clear on the following:

  • What problem are you solving for people?
  • What is the cause of that problem?
  • What is your solution?
  • What makes you unique?
  • What are your core beliefs?
  • What outcome will people experience if they listen to you?
  • Who is the common enemy?

Once you have the answers to these questions, you should identify the 2-3 pillars of your personal brand. These are the things that people go to you to learn about.

From that point forward, only tweet about stuff that falls into one of your pillars.

Hat tip to Gianna Cara for teaching me this process.

Step 3: Build a feedback loop

Once you are consistent and on brand, the fastest way to grow is by getting honest feedback.

I accelerated my feedback loop by doing 2 things:

  1. I started a Discord with 2-3 creators in my niche. We talk daily and provide each other with candid feedback. We also share analytics so we can get feedback 3x as fast.
  2. I hired a professional editor with a Twitter audience. They give me feedback on how to improve as a writer. They also help me structure my tweets so they’re more valuable to the reader.

This shaved years off of the learning curve. A pro editor & a good peer group will have a better ROI than a cohort-based course.

Step 4: Don’t stop

Inconsistency is the #1 reason why people fail.

There are days you’re not going to feel like writing or publishing.

People are going to say mean things to you and hurt your feelings.

You’re going to suffer from imposter syndrome.

You’re going to feel burnt out.

These feelings are normal and every creator I’ve spoken to has experienced them.

Don’t let them stop you from showing up every day.

And that’s it.

Building an audience is simple, but not easy. If you follow this process for a year, I guarantee your life will change.

If you’re curious about what I wouldn’t do if I was starting over, check out this thread:

Until next week,

John

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