I started Twitter right about the same time I started Coffee Times (CT) Substack last year. I didn’t pay much attention to it initially, only sharing my Substack writing and letting it grow naturally.
Now that I have built sufficient subscribers on Substack, I am looking for ways to improve the engagement for my writing, and Twitter is where I placed my bets. I have been paying attention to the engagement level on my Twitter account and I have been researching how other people do it and the content they share on the platform.
I have seen many people on Twitter with a massive number of followers. It wouldn’t be difficult to find people with followers exceeding 80-100K. What surprises me, though, is when I click into many of these high profiles, I see little engagement. Don’t get me wrong, these accounts are alive and posting regularly. But every one of their posts has zero or only a couple of likes, comments or retweets despite the fact that these accounts have a massive number of followers.
What is wrong? Why do so many high-roller profiles (and still growing, mind you) have so few engagements? If I had 100K followers and every one of my posts was less than 1K likes, I would already be questioning my purpose on the platform. It is humiliating and simply doesn’t make sense.
I regularly post quotes and share my Substack writings on my CT Twitter account. With the small number of followers I have, the current engagement on my tweets averages 5-10 likes per post, which from what I’ve observed, is already doing better than some of those profiles with over 100K followers.
“Quotes help us understand, inspire, motivate, clarify and show our approach to things around, this is why people and I love quotes.” — Takyou Allah Cheikh Malaynine
The question I asked myself is, do I want to invest the effort to grow my Twitter account to 100K followers only to have hardly any engagement on my tweets? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? I might as well pay for the 100K followers and save myself the trouble of growing it.
With Elon Musk shaking up Twitter, it is hard to predict how Twitter will evolve. Will it remain a micro-blogging site, or will it become an all-in-one platform? I have no answer. The only thing I am concerned with right now is how to increase the level of engagement on my tweets and, eventually, on my Substack posts.
“You will die, but the words you speak or spoke, will live forever.” — Auliq Ice
But first, let me share how I have used Twitter to increase my Substack subscribers.
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