Tiny Twitter hacks I learned & love, part III

Part 3 of tiny yet cool Twitter hacks that I’m slowly accumulating over all the daily practice and observing how others do it:

Part 1 and Part 2 are here.

• Using ASCII characters vs emoji. Went back to black & white ASCII progress bar for better editing, as Twitter editing doesn’t support yellow square emoji
• Inspiration is perishable. Use it immediately. New idea from @Winkletter: occasional but regular ‘hardcore days’ to push on the limits of a goal/habit like tweeting/writing threads/engaging 80x, especially when I’m feeling inspired/strong/motivated.
• Alt text, your secret algo hack. Write alt text for images. Hunch is the algo bumps your tweet up, plus it’s great for accessibility!
• Draw more on my business consultancy experience. What if I drew the usual consultant frameworks that I’m familiar with, but for Twitter?!
• Repurpose visuals. How about repurposing old visuals for new tweets?!
• Update your pinned tweet. My pinned tweet is from Dec 2020 = outdated! I need a new and better one, that best describes what value I bring on Twitter. A thread just for the pinned tweet? Or an existing thread I sent?
• Update profile banner. Improve on design of Twitter banner image? Add more text.
• Visual anchors for 1st tweets to stand out in people’s feed. Add images/gifs/memes to your tweets/first tweet of thread for visual punch. Use Unsplash, Giphy, gifs from Twitter, or memes from the internet
• Provide ‘unrolled’ version of thread by linking the Lifelog post (therefore more backlinks). "No need to unroll this thread. Here’s the original post about… over at @golifelog 👇 "
• Curse with intention. swear words usually attract unfollows. Use with f**king intention
• Repurpose old tweets in threads. Pull old tweets together into a thread, based on a theme eg marketing
• Typos work too. Typos are fine. in fact, more human! See exhibit A
• Shitposting trends. Tweet a spiky POV, or shitting on some popular trend/habit (e.g. dark mode, web3, NFTs)
• Tell my story. Lean into my story of building a tool to solve my problem, share more of my origin story
• Curate a meta-thread from others’ threads. Curate other people’s tweets/threads into my own thread. Decide on 1 theme, and pull in other people’s work. Research viral ones
• Thread inspiration from Bookmarks. Scan through my Bookmarks and curate a thread outta them. The content is there, just have to wrap a theme around them
• Scrappy sketches are real. Post poorly-lit, hand-drawn, scrappy illustrations instead of polished ones. More authentic.
• RT for different timezones. Auto-RT every 6h to catch everyone in EU, US timezones. My new tweeting schedule looks like this, with RTs every 6-7h:
  • 16:00 - indie hacker/BIP tweet
  • 18:00 - writing tweet with Lifelog plug
  • 22:00 - 1st RT (auto) of 16:00 tweet
  • 00:00 - 1st RT (auto) of 18:00 tweet
  • 06:00 - 2nd RT (manual) of 16:00 tweet
  • 08:00 - 2nd RT (manual) of 18:00 tweet
  • 10:00 - 5am club tweet
  • 12:00 - 3rd RT (manual) of 16:00 tweet
  • 13:00 - 3rd RT (manual) of 18:00 tweet
  • 14:00 - RT (manual) of old tweet from ~1 month ago
  • [16:00 - new tweet cycle starts]
• Auto-RT multiplier. Need to look for a Twitter scheduler that allows me to auto-RT multiple times based on a pre-set number of hours!
• RT reminder alarms. I need a Twitter alarm reminder (Chrome extension?) to remind me to manually RT now that I’m experimenting with RTing every 6h through the day
• Old tweet retweeter on schedule. Twitter scheduler should also allow for RT queues for old tweets. Been doing a lot of manual RTs. I need an app that allows me to drop in the URL of a tweet (mine or someone else’s) and allows me to schedule the datetime of the RT and how many times. Anyone knows if these exists?
• Twitter swipe file Chrome extension. I need a Twitter swipe file web app that has a bookmarklet Chrome extension, where I can paste the URL of a tweet I like and it extracts the text into text field that I can copy and paste elsewhere easily. Ideally I can categorize, search and sort the swipe file too.
• Twitter support groups for learning. Joined a Twitter marketing group for support and learning, started by @ayushtweetshere
• Painting with emojis. Use emojis to paint visuals within text field, like Wordle shitposts
• Repurpose past tweets in the week to make a weekly thread. Crawl past daily posts for weekly thread ideas on Twitter - repurpose!
• Bookmarks collections. Is there a way to categorize bookmarks, and then after bookmarking say 10 tweets of one category, make a thread out of it? tldrip allows for walled bookmarks…
• More building in public, less axioms. Don’t just tweet axioms, also building in public stuff. What’s something interesting I did this week? Marketing, developing, systems. Or something I’m thinking about for my products, questions I have…
• Less is more. Get comfortable with punchy short 2-3 liner tweets. High info/insight density!
• Consider making your own Twitter tool. Had to manually RT at night 9:30pm just before bed due to wanting to leverage on Alt Text feature on Typefully which tldrip didn’t have. I need a tool that does it ALL!
• Tweet a thread at 1min delay. Manually tweeted out each tweet in a long thread, with 1 min delay in between. Apparently, the algorithm doesn’t like it when sending an entire thread in one go (looks like spam perhaps?). Trying the 1 min delay on this thread to see if it helps.
• Unified tweet swipe file. I need a unified swipe file that selectively pulls links from Twitter Bookmarks, Telegram saved messages, FB, IG, Chrome, Overcast (or any podcast app)
• Threads are spam? I get more unfollows when posting threads. Interesting pattern to observe. Are threads over-done now? To the point that it turns off some people?
• Following my energy and inspiration. I either don’t write threads, or I write 2 threads in 1 day 🔥🤣❄️
• Threads collections. If I’m gonna write threads, I better start having a collection of my best threads. Looks like time to start a page on www.threadsby.me
• Screenshot tweets for IG. Fastest way to repurpose a tweet: by screenshoting it, white highlighter to white out other elements, and post right away on IG, TikTok, LinkedIn. Just screenshot and post them. Takes just a few min!
• Simplicity is the ultimate flex. Often the simplest and most mundane of tweets do the best
• Distribute everywhere. Advice to focus on 1 platform makes sense in the early days. But once you got content flywheel going, time to repurpose. The sooner the better.
• Coloured circles as progress bar. Started using coloured circles instead for MRR progress bar on Twitter profile. More stand out!
• More direct, less wit. Feeling more comfortable in my Twitter skin these days, been trying more straightforward tweets than overly-crafted witty ones. Seems to be working!
• Batch writing will save your life. Need to GET ON with batch writing tweets for the whole week!
• Useful > viral. Your audience don’t need it to go viral, but they need it to be useful
• Write today, edit tomorrow. Not publishing the same day I write a tweet made a huge difference. I often draft a tweet, leave it there and come back to it the next day or many days after. I keep tweaking it from time to time until it feels right.
• Plug your viral tweet, for god’s sake. Set an auto-plug tweet if original tweet goes viral (currently set to if post receives 150 likes)
• Engagement tactic. Find active followers of high follower accounts in my niche, and engage them in replies to their tweets, then in DMs
• Always backup. Got Revue newsletter set up on my Twitter profile page to collect emails as backup (not intending to email regularly, if much at all)
• Allow for serendipity. Thinking of adding an extra timeslot at 11am as a safe slot for random experimental tweets (increase serendipity and experimentation to increase surface area for luck), eg today tweeted about web3. Can also use for RT/QT-ing other accounts.
• Know your followers and followed. Followerwonk.com looks like an exciting new Twitter tool! Can see segments of followers by map, track follows and unfollows, give you a overview of who your followers are, who you are following.

What other tiny Twitter hacks do you know?