Ideas to grow on X the everything app (formerly Twitter)
Contents
- Recommended readings
- The 80-20 basics
- Post regularly
- General posting tips
- Algorithm nuances
- Conclusion
Intro
I often get requests on how to grow on Twitter in general. Having spent 4+ years posting, I have got a bunch of ideas via experience and iteration that have worked for me and my mutuals. These ideas are more focused towards making "connections" rather than building an audience.
By connections, I mean making friends with like-minded people or people you vibe with. Over time, having fun with them online discussing ideas, collaborating with some and meeting some eventually. I have met 50+ mutuals so far. A few of these I am guessing would result in a longer term friendship and interaction. An internet version of pen friends if you will (it's more than that haha).
Recommended readings
I recommend a couple of blogs on growing on Twitter/making connections.
How To Twitter Successfully by @nearcyan. Nearcyan is one of the best posters and he writes really well. There are a lot of nice ideas and I also like the range by range treatment to growing.
Guide to This Bird App — I wrote this back in 2023. There are some good ideas in here which I picked up by fucking around and finding out and observing other posters. Also some good ideas from mutuals like @amuldotexe and prolific poasters like @visakanv. Maybe I don't agree with a small percent of it now but it's still largely relevant.
Twitter Article on How To Tweet - I was talking with Ojasvika and she sent me this article. I think it covers a lot of core ideas on how to craft a good tweet and also very relevant if you wanna build an audience. I liked the coverage on "recognizing your style"
Visa's thread with lots of universal ideas:
1/ 🔥 MASS TWITTER THREAD about how to mass twitter 🔥
— visa is mass tweeting (@visakanv) February 10, 2019
👏 let's 👏 go 👏
The above pieces are pretty exhaustive. I still wanted to briefly discuss a few core actionable ideas that above articles boil down to (hint: not hacks but actually posting regularly and interacting with people)
The 80-20 basics
Get Twitter Premium/Premium+
People without Twitter blue get lesser reach than ones with Premium. If you want to grow, get atleast Premium. You get boost on the timeline and in the replies. Using Twitter without it is playing on hard mode. Most people underestimate network effects.
0 - 1000 range
The 0-1000 range is the hardest and you need to reply guy and interact with relevant people regularly. You need to find some relevant people. Obviously tell your friends to follow you. Find terminally online friends. You will be doing some grinding and spending a chunk of time on the platform for this.
How to find relevant people? Both recommended readings 1 and 2 cover this. In short, interact with people who seem naturally interested in you and who seem to reply/interact/pay attention to people. I know such people up to 50k following who actually interact well with mutuals/replies. Avoid audience builders here as they don't really prioritise to pay attention to you. Prioritise people who pay attention to you when you put some effort (or once they start paying attention).
Look into following or lists of people you think have good taste. For example, if you are interested in AI, maybe look into the list that I have created and lurk around those people.
Also, I'm pretty sure many of you have already lurked around for a while and have an image in your mind of who you want to follow and interact with those people. So what's stopping you? Start interacting. Just don't be spammy.
Once you interact with folks, some follow back. Some may DM etc. You may even get added to group chats. Interacting in GCs makes it more likely you will appear on their timelines. Over time, as you gain momentum, you can switch gears to more posting and less reply guying.
Here are some posting ideas I told to a "founder" persona in sub-1k range. These also apply once you reach 1k-2k:
Post regularly:
- Things you find interesting
- Something from founder life
- What you are building
- Something you want to teach or valuable
- What you like about certain products
Once you post, you will automatically start building some momentum. Writing and posting leads to more thoughts often.
Post regularly and observe the meta
The most important thing is to post regularly. At least 1-2 times a day otherwise you fall off for a while until you get momentum again. This applies to all follower ranges (but it's easier to get back once you have larger following obviously).
Observe the timeline. What's in the discourse? Can you add or participate in it in a meaningful way? Any funny meme ideas to post? This is the most important thing to do. Being familiar with the meta.
Time your posts based on meta. My viral Claude Code 2.0 blog was already in works but when I saw Andrej Karpathy (who is a big figure in the AI world) posted about Claude Code, I accelerated writing my post and posted it as early as possible and basically rode the wave (great content + presentation + timing).
Twitter also allows you to see Audience and timings in Analytics so try looking into it and running A/B tests.
returning to posting has reminded me how much you have to be tuned into the meta to really be in a posting flow state. cant take days off. can't be on here once or twice a day and expect to be doing numbers or posting consistent bangers. has to just be second nature, unconscious
— sophie (@netcapgirl) May 27, 2025
Sophie has 100k+ followers and even she has to stay tuned into the meta.
Identify some of your favourite posters. Observe how they post. Maybe even try copying them. If you are an AI engineer or into tech, post around that. Chime in. Memes are a way to take part in the community. Once you post enough, you will eventually find or develop your own style as well.
General posting tips
Some things I have picked up from being in the poasting trenches:
People like posts that add value or make them feel something. Humour works really well on Twitter. Getting better at writing (posting helps with that). Say something true in an interesting way. Combine ideas, media (images), memes, quote tweets to create interesting posts.
Make your posts easy to consume. Writing well scales here. Think how will the reader perceive your post. e.g If you are quote tweeting a post, it might be better to convey your thoughts in a few sentences or like plug a meme or say 2 sentences instead of writing a wall of text. Why? The reason is the reader first needs to understand the quoted tweet's context post which they will read your stuff (order could be reverse) but you get the point.
It's a good idea in general to double-check if you are setting the context clearly for the reader otherwise it's hard to understand/relate.
Say something true, in an interesting way.
— Naval (@naval) November 3, 2025
What has worked for me
- Built a couple of side projects in public — two of them had actual utility (they utilised the Twitter archive) — this was my 4k-8k follower era, my 2nd fastest growth arc
- Posted blogs ranging from non-technical to technical over the last 3 years
- Stayed up to date and commented accurately on AI tools
- Some memes that I sort of solidified / whimsy / levity / humour and entertained people
What I've seen work for others
(Sorry biased to tech and AI)
- Continuously post niche and valuable content based on daily experiences — topics like CUDA and inference optimisation. Maharishi does this well. The posts feel more visceral when they come out of your daily experience.
- Post experiment logs, post-training experiment details. kalomaze, tokenbender
- Build a real product/startup in public and document it well. (Several people of this archetype are there but most post slop)
- Post research paper threads
- Post interview content (fast following gain but fewer friends) — I don't recommend
Sorry my observation was biased to tech people but in general, once you cross 2k+, you can post more targeted content if you have decided on a niche and want to gain followers fast. Usually I see people struggling initially and when 1-2 posts get good traction, they grow fast.
Big accounts like Lenny and Dwarkesh have posted deeply researched and valuable content. I am just mentioning this although it's not a good idea to compare yourself with them (as they are sort of full time content creators with teams etc.)
The common pattern
Frankly as I write this, I realise that all these people were doing something IRL or have done and they micro-blogged or put real effort to document and present their ideas online. This is also the most sustainable way to do things as you don't have to "prepare" content — rather you are documenting. People like narratives and real-life stories. Henrik writes about this in context of blogs in A very long and complex search query to find fascinating people — what you write determines who you attract. This applies to tweets as well.
Do cool stuff IRL and talk about it. You will be surprised over time how many people will be interested. People like stories and can derive motivation and guidance for themselves. Another common example is people posting about health and fitness.
Algorithm nuances
Once you post regularly, you will start to understand the trending discourse and nuances of the algorithm. It keeps changing all the time but if you post regularly, you will get an intuition and grasp the changes fast (based on my posting experience and friends' experiences)
For example in the current algorithm (since last few months), if you post about some topic often and an adjacent or similar topic is in discourse, you can tweet similar things and it's more likely to catch traction. Similarly, there was a period where algo was sensitive to this phenomenon where if you quote tweet a viral tweet with something interesting or valuable, it's highly likely you would get the traction as well. (Only condition again is it shouldn't be too out of distribution of your usual topic range)
You will figure out stuff like how to warm up the algo (before a blog or product launch) by reply-guying and posting a few times a day before actually posting the blog (universal strategy tbh).
You will have to re-gain momentum multiple times in the future as well haha.
i'm in a posting drought. figured it would happen after taking some time off, trying to post through it. feeling real unc rn. out of the loop, not caught up on the meta. no other choice but to post some flops, happens to the best of us. never know when the next banger will come
— sophie (@netcapgirl) January 7, 2026
Netcapgirl is a 100k+ account — even big accounts have to re-gain momentum.
Conclusion
TLDR
- Post regularly. You will figure out most things I discussed over time.
- Experiment with interacting with people via the different ways X offers to you. Reply guy more if you are growing, post more as you grow larger but interacting with people is important at all stages and I think it's the most fun element of the platform too. To have genuine discussions.
Lastly, it's a good idea to reflect on why you want to grow - any specific goals you want to achieve. Adjust your posting accordingly. Think of it as a long term game and don't forget to have fun!
If this post helped you, please like/RT/share! Thanks for reading!