My 90-day twitter experiment

Do we really need social media?

Some of you might remember that in June, I posted about social media, and whether we need to be on it 24/7, to promote our work.

I decided to launch a 90-day experiment on twitter, going all-in on the channel to see if I could grow my puny following there. And to see if that had any impact on my coaching business.

Why twitter? Because I’m a writer, and can create words far faster than visuals. And also because it’s the social media channel I’ve neglected most, where I have the smallest following. 

Before I share the results, it’s important to say that this experiment was about finding what works for me, not telling you what you should do.

We are all different. We all need to find our own ways of expressing who we are, sharing and selling our work. Try some experiments of your own rather than seeing this as any kind of instruction manual.

That said, here are a few thoughts about my far-from-scientific experiment.

This is what I did:

• Posted four times a day, keeping to the theme of creative work
• Added a thread of information useful to creatives, most weeks
• Actively looked for people I felt aligned with, commenting, liking and interacting with their posts.
• Tightened up my bio to make it clear what I do, and who I help.

And this is what I didn’t do:

• Paid ads
• Pay Elon Musk for the pleasure of creating for his platform, or for an ego-boosting blue tick
• Send out cold DMs to other creatives, even though most people who have grown rapidly on twitter advised me to
• Interact with as many people as I should have. I know my tribe is on twitter. But the algorithm is so intent on serving up ads and clickbait that it’s become much harder to find them. 
• Finish any of the overwhelming number of courses, workshops, and foolproof systems for growing on twitter that I signed up for.

My timing was terrible.

Shortly after I started my experiment, Meta launched Threads as a direct competitor to twitter, and almost everyone jumped over there to play for a while. New owner Elon Musk then announced that twitter was no longer twitter, but X. He also amplified the voices of climate-change deniers and misogynists by retweeting their posts on his feed, which led more people I know and love to leave the platform. 

On a personal level, I also took August off work. I wrote and scheduled posts in advance for most of the month, but I’m not sure you could describe that as being fully committed. 

None of this is an excuse, by the way. 

Lots of people did successful launches on twitter/X during these months, and grew their followings. And despite all these obstacles, posting more regularly gave me 90 new followers. As I started with only 661, that’s pretty good going. 

This would probably gain momentum if I continued posting consistently. Besides, other good things happened from being on the platform more often. 

I made new connections.

By posting more often and actively looking for accounts to follow, I met more coaches working with creatives, and will definitely stay in touch to see if we can help each other, or refer clients. 

I discovered Alison Moyet‘s delightful tweets. The regal Kathy Burke continues to share potty-mouthed good sense as well as make me laugh out loud. And I connected with a few authors whose books I’d been reading, which led to some interesting offline conversations. 

I found new resources.

I will keep going to the regular Thursday freelance chats hosted by PR consultant Michelle Garrett, which are lively and fun. If you’re a writer, Kaitlyn Arford regularly posts useful freelance opportunities. For marketing/content writing, Erica Schneider‘s posts are always interesting, and often also hilarious. And Josh Spector continues to offer useful advice on marketing for creative entrepreneurs (that means you, by the way). 

I got some new ideas.

Having to produce to deadline is rarely a bad thing, for me. I posted random thoughts that I’m now developing into longer articles. I shared ideas from books I was reading, which helped me to retain the information better. Every morning, I posted “Five ways to be more creative, today”. I’d intended to do this for a couple of weeks, but managed to think of five new ideas most days, and I may well do something else with them, later. 

It was good for me, having to write more. So where was the downside?

It took time – and money.

The time I spent tweeting – or looking for things to tweet about – wasn’t wasted. But I often felt it could be used better elsewhere. 

I used Hypefury, a (paid) tool to help you write and schedule on twitter/X, which definitely made it all quicker. Their templates are useful, and definitely gave me a head start in posting more often. But I didn’t enjoy writing to a format, in a voice that didn’t feel my own. 

The curated lists of influencers to follow and interact with should have been helpful too. But Hypefury’s suggestions turned out to be almost all male and fixated on the idea that more is always better. More money! More clients! More followers! More workouts! More cold showers! I found it exhausting. 

It also occupied far too much attention.

I checked my feed more often, spending too much time scrolling, looking for people to interact with. Once I’d found a few, the algorithm should then have presented me with more of the interesting, engaged creatives I love.

Instead, it just flooded me with more tech bros; more coaches or courses promising to help me get more clients/10x my income/grow my twitter following; more men posting pictures of their workouts and bragging that they get up about 10 minutes after going to bed. 

Most of all, I didn’t like how it made me feel.

Obsessively checking my likes, commenting on random posts in my feed just to boost engagement, shouting 280-character statements about creativity into a void. It’s not the way I normally communicate. It just didn’t feel right or authentic to me. 

It also made me more far more prone to compare and despair. Why haven’t I done a $100k launch this week? Should I be going to the gym every day? Am I really a loser for watching TV? Or for taking a break? And if I can’t be witty in 280 characters, why can’t I at least seem wise?

To be clear, this is about me, not about twitter. I have friends who are endlessly entertaining and inventive in their tweets. I also follow Miranda Keeling, whose acute observations of everyday London life are like haikus and became a beautiful book.

There is still much to love on twitter. But it’s not where I want to live.

Did it help my business?

This is the key question. There was no noticeable boost in sign-ups to my mailing list. I ask everyone enquiring about coaching or my group courses how they heard of me. Over the past three months, many mentioned workshops I’d done, articles I’d written, personal recommendations. Not one said twitter. 

This is too short a period to judge definitively, of course. It takes time, patience and persistence to gain traction online, whatever channel you choose. I’m sure these results would change if I continued to post consistently. And if I’d enjoyed it more, I would have extended this experiment for at least another nine months. But it just wasn’t fun, for me.

So will I stay on X?

Yes, unless the new owner starts charging all users, as he recently proposed. Though I’ll continue to call it twitter, and to use it in a retro way too.

I like interacting with writer friends there, and I enjoy reaching out to creatives whose work I enjoy. Sometimes, this has led to interesting conversations. Even when it doesn’t, it only takes a moment to do. And I know how much a bit of random praise can mean to any creative, on a bad day. 

But I’m going back to posting as me.

Sometimes that means I’ll talk about creative process, share my blog posts, or whatever else I have going on at The Creative Life. But sometimes I’ll just tweet about what I’m reading, listening to, or watching on TV. 

I’ve learned a lot in these few months, and I’ll might post a little more often than I used to. But I don’t see it as an important way of attracting new clients, and I’m no longer bothered about growing my following. 

As for Hypefury, it’s an excellent tool if you do want to use twitter/X as your main marketing platform, but it’s too costly for casual use. So I’ll also go back to scheduling my tweets on later.com, along with the rest all of my social media. It takes less than an hour a week, and I rarely think about it again. 

This is not optimal. But I’ll leave optimising to the tech bros. It seems to make them happier than it made me.

So what next?

What I’ve learned is that I enjoy personal interactions much more than shouting into a void. I think it’s why I don’t mind being on TV, but find it hard to record videos to post online. I can answer questions or chat easily when there’s a crew or audience present, but find it impossibly weird sitting alone, talking at myself on a computer or my phone. 

I’ve also been invited to guest on more podcasts recently, and really enjoyed the conversations. So if you’d like me on your podcast, please get in touch! 

Finally, I thought of some new ways to support and connect with you, the people who visit my website. Sign up for The Creative Companion, and I’ll let you know about those soon. 

That’s what I learned most from this experiment. 

My social media experiment led me down the rabbit hole of the creator economy. These are people who largely make money online by showing others how to make money online. Some of them – Justin Welsh, Jay Clouse, Ash Ambirge, for instance – make excellent, solid work around this, and good luck to them. But they’re not really my tribe.

I’m interested in the makers and the doers. The people writing books, poems, scripts; taking or making pictures; designing new things; making buildings, furniture, art and music. Those of you who are grafting, crafting, performing, entertaining and creating. And probably procrastinating quite a lot, too. Because we’re only human. Which is what I love most about us.