I'm Blake. I took Float to $14k before launch & gained 49k Twitter followers in 10 months. AMA!

@magarrent It's definitely a lot harder to do without any audience or community. I would definitely focus on building that up so you can understand what topics and ideas people ACTUALLY care about in your audience, before putting time into building a product blindly. I will say that your audience does not need to be as big as you think to sell digital products. I've seen small accounts do tens of thousands in sales quickly because the product was amazing. I've seen big accounts (myself included) put out products that completely flop and make no sales. The audience is a leverage point, but the quality of the product is everything. A lot of folks on Twitter actually grow their audience BECAUSE of the product, not vice versa. If you build in the open and create great things, people will take notice.

@blakebemal but what about b2b sales. You can't build a community of companies, or am I wrong? Thanks!!

Yes. How do I do this?

@sacin13 Hey Sachin! Here is my best advice for you: - Post an insane amount of content - Don't take it personally when a tweet doesn't work - Analyze what works and doesn't for every tweet - Build genuine relationships with other tweeters - Do NOT rely on being a "reply guy" - Make your account about THEM, not yourself - Start with short-form content to find what topics interest your audience, then expand them into long threads - Give away 99.99% of what you know for free with no expectations

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@gabe__perez Yes and no. I had been posting on LinkedIn for years before diving into Twitter, so I actually owe a lot of my success to LI. It all ties back to content creation, though. When I consistently create content that is helpful for other people, I see cool opportunities come my way. I try to give 99.99% of everything I know away for free. Twitter growth has accelerated my ability to sell digital products and it is a huge benefit in getting opps like podcast interviews, AMAs (hint hint), conference invites, public speaking gigs, etc. The process is pretty simple: - Start posting content on a topic you could speak about for days on end - Analyze if your audience cares at all about this - Create even more (insane amounts) of content - Analyze what works and what doesn't without ego or hurt feelings - Double down on what works, scrap the bad stuff

@blakebemal Awesome Blake, thanks for sharing with the community! The formula is much like content planning for Social and it makes 100% sense. Thanks for the great tip!

@gabe__perez @blakebemal i post a lot for years on LI but i get nothing.. i wonder what method did you use there

@andrewbaisden Howdy Andrew! I use Typefully to schedule my tweets. I use Buffer to schedule LinkedIn posts. I don't automate at all outside of this. I've tried that a bit before, and found it to actually be harder and more time-consuming than manually doing what I do. I don't automate idea generation or engagement at all. A couple of tools I use for my social game include: - Typefully for tweet scheduling - Buffer for other platform scheduling - Brandbird for graphics - Tella.tv for screen recordings - Notion for thread compiling - Command browser for highlighting interesting things on the web

@verygoodcopy Congrats Eddie! That's awesome. Truth of the matter is the the word "productivity" changes when you become a parent. You'll have to decide on a few things professionally that you are willing to let die to make time for your new, better responsibility. Thankfully, newborns can't really do that much except eat and sleep and poop. So you have a little bit of time to adjust and get into a good spot before they really start requiring a lot more from you. Take more breaks. Time block religiously so you can stick to an agenda and move on when it's done. Don't feel bad if productivity looks different for you going forward. Your life is about to change for the better, but there will be some bumps and bruises along the way.

@kunalmishra We haven't used the account much on Twitter because it's really hard to create brand content that is helpful. I tend to rely on my personal account to drive awareness to Float instead, and it has worked better for us. I also focus more on unscalable things like DMs and engaging with others for Float to form partnerships.

@fitzmaro Hey Fitz! Thanks for hopping in here. That actually wasn't me, but I super appreciate you taking some time from your day to post here!

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@blake @mishra_mayank I had tried Twitter a bunch of times before, but just never stayed consistent. So my 0 to 1 was just committing to tweeting at least 5 times per day for 6 months. I far exceeded the amount of tweets AND time streak, but this is what I needed. You don't need perfect ideas in order to publish. Share what you're learning, where you've failed, where you've succeeded, and provide helpful tips along the way.

@blake @blakebemal wow, I have always been wondering if spending time on Twitter is productive or counter productive as a founder, seems like you've done a really good job with Twitter!!

@simon_barker1 Some things may take a bit longer, and if you have a full time job (like me) it can be super tough to ship quickly. The cohort is all about pushing and challenging, as well as mentoring. You tend to complete things in a shorter timeframe if you just set a shorter timeframe.

@anshulsojatia Content Ideas: A lot of what I generate as ideas comes from personal experience and spontaneous thought. I'm pretty good about writing ideas down right when I have them. I've definitely done competitive research at times, but actually my favorite way of discovering new formats to post in is by searching viral tweets in completely different niches. Maybe I search for real estate, design, or gardening tweets that went viral and dissect WHY and what format they used. This usually works out pretty well. Twitter growth: - I posted an insane amount of content - I didn't take it personally when a tweet didn't work, I just analyzed WHY and tried to make it better next time - I built genuine relationships with other tweeters - I did NOT rely on being a "reply guy" - I tweeted in ways that people weren't used to seeing - I tried not to make my account about ME, but about THEM - I started with short-form content to find what topics interested my audience, then I took what really worked and expanded them into long threads - I gave away 99.99% of what I know for free and with no expectations

@blakebemal Cool. Thanks for detailing your approach. I will try to think how can I incorporate those points into my way of working. Cheers.

@espreedevora Not gonna lie, managing Slack communities is super hard. I already use Slack for 100 other things, so it isn't necessarily great to be in there 24/7. But, it is really convenient. I don't rely too heavily on plugins and ultimately I'm learning that the quality of the group needs to come more from the engaged users than the mod. I still have to be active and start conversations, but the real power is when the members take initiative themselves. Using Circle for the Float community and it's really nice, but same thing happens where it is easy to get burned out responding to messages so often. Probably about time to consider hiring someone part-time to tackle some of those responsibilities!

@blakebemal Thank you for being transparent. Connect with writershour.com btw, they have a super engaged slack. it's amazing. Oh Iman Gadzhi Facebook group is highly valuable as well. I have a slack and other communities too and it's really tough so didn't know if you found the treasure trove of how to do it with ease. Was hoping! ha. I'm thinking about setting an expectation for my community that I only personally engage once a week, not sure.

@eugenehp I haven't officially started the first cohort yet, so I'll have to let you know after! But so far, cohorts are a lot more work, but have higher upside.

@alexander_moen the real answer is you should be in both places, but not necessarily right away. If you already feel comfortable on LinkedIn, I would keep going there until you really feel like you are in control of your growth and have a system for gaining followers. After that, you can expand into other platforms. If you aren't sold on LinkedIn, you can definitely try Twitter out. A couple pointers: - Focus on learning to write better - Communicate way more simply than you think you should - Don't ask them to buy anything for a while

@ar_aaradhya Definitely more spontaneous. I've gotten a lot better at having a quick capture, future scheduling approach but my ideas usually come through almost exactly as they end up on paper with little editing. The process is basically this: - Idea comes to mind (or I find a cool format from another niche and use it for a marketing idea) - Quick capture into Typefully (my tweet scheduler) - Leave it there until the end of the night - Review worthwhile tweets at the end of the night - Remove any that don't hold up after several hours of thinking on it - Schedule the winners

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@dawidzamkowski Posted above about Twitter growth a couple times so I recommend looking through those answers! For Float, it was a problem I personally experienced. I had a full course draft built in Notion, and was looking for the right platform to publish the polished version on. Everything was either way too expensive, too complex, or had a "meh" UI. And since I already had a full course in Notion, and had used site builders like Super.so in the past... I figured it was possible to make a course builder on top of Notion! The full story is written out here BTW: https://blog.float.so/the-story-...