Twitter is, by far, the fastest way to build a high-quality audience.

Why?

It's quicker to write insightful tweets than it is to produce 10min YouTube videos or 1400-word blog posts.

Here's a thread of actionable tactics from studying the fastest-growing Twitter accounts.

THREAD: 10 significant lies you've been told about marketing:

On email marketing, ads, and referrals.

"Send a welcome email immediately after signup"

Don't. People will reflexively discard it as spam.

Instead, delay your welcome email by 15-45 mins.

The delay removes the subscriber's mental connection between signup —> your email, bypassing the reflex to ignore.

More opens.

"Only highlight your best product reviews"

Imperfect reviews can generate MORE sales than 5-star ones.

When a review weighs cons versus pros yet concludes the product was worth purchasing anyway, people see it's authentic & REAL.

So don't bury slightly negative reviews.

"You have to send a newsletter every week"

Most newsletters shouldn't be sent weekly.

High cadences force newsletter writers to rush and publish lower quality information.

Instead, consider only sending when you truly have value to add.

"Your startup needs a great referral program"

The referral programs that grew Airbnb & Dropbox don't work for most companies.

Instead, find your *social loop*:

E.g. An eCom pet store should get dog owners to post photos of their dogs on IG w/ you tagged.

We found 6 startups that are growing way faster than everyone else.

We figured out their unconventional growth tactics.

This thread walks you through how to repeat them for yourself.

1/6 Experiment with timing.

Here's a clever example:

@brooklinen "leaked" a time-bounded discount and had one of their *best* revenue days of the year.

Great startups experiment not only with copy/creative, but also framing.

2/6 Get people to FEEL the problem your startup solves.

Here’s how Muzzle (notification hiding tool) uses their site to visualize the problem:

• Shows cringey notifications
• Makes them super vulgar
• Points out how Muzzle puts an end to this during Zoom calls

3/6 Poach potential customers from competitors:

• Create landing pages that compare you against them
• Address customers' biggest objections
• Show your product in action

Then, when people search for you versus your competitors, you'll show up on the Google results page.

4/6 Improve your attribution.

It's often unclear what drives a purchase.

So try this:

• Add a post-purchase survey asking customers how they found you
• Remove friction—limit choices. Make it super easy to quickly select the right one

Attribution helps you double down.

THREAD: How to get users to use your app 👇

Most SaaS apps lose 95% of new users within 90 days. That's insane.

They tend to lose those users during onboarding—when a first impression is made.

Here's how to avoid this.

After reading this thread, you'll know how to welcome users into your product in a way that motivates them into being lifelong customers.

Here's the 80/20 on onboarding:

Start by visualizing your user's journey toward experiencing value from your product—this is the reason users sought you out.

Then:

• Identify the obstacles that come up along the way
• Address those obstacles in your onboarding flow

How to identify obstacles:

Some obstacles will be known to you. They're onboarding steps that:

• Require a lot of work
• Are boring

Record these.

Other obstacles are hidden. To find them, observe users using your product:

• For SaaS apps: Record users' in-app activity using Hotjar
• For physical goods: Run a study. Watch customers use your product

User behavior reveals the NONobvious broken paths taken in onboarding

THREAD: Read this if you're new to ads. Here's how to make each ad channel work.

E.g. Facebook, Instagram, Google, Snapchat, Pinterest.

(from our experience running ads for 400+ startups)

IMPORTANT. We're growth marketers. We believe that you should test most channels (in time). This is an 80/20 to help you prioritize which you might want to test FIRST based on your business.

2 types of ad targeting:

Behavior: Serves ads to people searching for your product. Better for conversion, but audience size is limited to ppl searching for you.

Profile: Uses social profiles/engagement to serve ads. Conversion is lower, but audience size is less restricted.

Top channels ordered by average cost/click for U.S. audiences (LinkedIn being most expensive)

1. LinkedIn
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. Facebook
5. Google Ads
6. Pinterest
7. Snapchat

We'll dive into each (and a few more)

LinkedIn offers uniquely granular company and employee targeting (firmographic targeting)

Clicks are expensive. Most companies won't be able to afford LinkedIn ads.

Good fit: B2B companies earning *thousands* per customer.

Poor fit: anyone earning < $10,000 USD in LTV

THREAD: How to grow your startup through referrals, and word of mouth.

(Actionable tactics from working with 400+ startups)

Here's the truth: Your startup most likely won't make a video and go viral like Dollar Shave Club.

So instead of trying to "go viral," focus on acquiring customers through fans who already love your product.

There are 3 ways to grow through your current customers:

1. Product-led growth: Your product is built for sharing.

2. Word of mouth: Users proactively recommend your product to friends.

3. Referrals: You create an incentivized reward program.

Let's dive into each 👇

Product-led growth.

It's powerful: You don't have to artificially incentivize users to refer—you simply empower them & get out of their way.

E.g. To pay someone with PayPal, the payment recipient needs to first join PayPal—they're incentivized to sign up to receive their cash.

Product-led growth is possible when ppl use your app to:

• Transact or collaborate w/ others (PayPal, Dropbox, Zoom, Slack). These products are only effective when others use them with you.

• Create content intended to be shared w/ others (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Cameo)

It is past due time we talk about microaggressions on interviews (a thread #MedTwitter #AcademicTwitter):

First, microaggressions are harmful! Despite their name, they signal “you don’t belong here” to marginalized groups.

Second, interview days are already nerve-wrecking.

One comment or experience has the ability to undermine an interview day. Applicants may not have the ability to report immediately and anonymously or may fear retribution for doing so. Interview day microaggressions put applicants in an awkward spot in addition to the harm.

They are also not rare experiences. As a Black woman, I have experienced them at multiple institutions and different levels. I’m sharing my stories as examples of what happens, but I have no doubt there are many others, even within your institution, that need to be responded to.

College: I had an in-person panel interview for a full-tuition scholarship. One POC on the panel repeatedly asked, “where are you from?” I was 17 and eager to please, but also knew I didn’t have to share that my ancestors were traumatized thru slavery. I got flustered and bombed.

Med school: A diversity website wrote, we need more physicians of color because they are more likely to serve in underserved communities. While true, the reason we need more representation in medicine is because minoritized groups have been kept out. PERIOD. I didn’t apply there.

Happy new year!

Long thread.
Someone in or behind twitter gave me a "this account violated the twitter rules..." supposedly for this reply (image 1 at bottom of thread). I appealed with "A question is hate?" They upheld their decision with: "Our support team has

determined that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision."

To proceed I deleted / removed the reply as prompted and was informed of a temporary limit of tweets, replies, likes, etc. for 6 hours (image 2). I could still access twitter and

see content. To test the restriction, i clicked the like button on a tweet and then was immediately greeted with the limit page but it increased 11 hours (image 3). After that i was then unable to browse twitter content and was met with the same "we've limited your

account" message every time i re-loaded it or clicked "continue to twitter" (image 4, @ 1am est)

In my experience, when a construct like a clique, fraternity, employer, or another attempts to elicit an emotional reaction or accept some aimless quest to divine the actual

cause or just toil in fear of a whipping for an unkwon reason at some unkown time, it's time to look elsewhere to maintain interest as who knows when, why, what, and how it will impose next. And that experience tells me accepting such nonsense terms brings more nonsense.

@GuerinGreen Saluti, please find the unroll here: Bringing Fusion to the Grid 'tweetstorm' Nat'l Academy of Science on bringing #fusion to the grid #fusion would be key… https://t.co/DHIqTnjOGr Have a good day. 🤖