How to tweet bangers (casually)
Without any growth hacks or writing garbage threads with the '👇' emoji
Lately, many of my tweets have been doing numbers & to put in twitter terminology, I’ve been tweeting ‘casual bangers’. Which has led to my friends and strangers asking me largely two things:
Why did something blow up?
How am I consistently doing this?
I’m mildly offended by the first one, as people cannot accept my world class shitposting abilities to be the primary reason of why things are blowing up and assume there must be a secret sauce.
For those of you, who’re expecting this to be one of those Twitter growth hack reads, prepare to be terribly disappointed. While a lot has been spoken about growth hacks, I feel not enough has been said about — simply writing your tweets in a way that gets them more engagement and reposts.
A kind thank you to the 163 new subscribers who joined since last time, let’s dive in.
Don’t just push words, evoke emotions
Your words are meaningless and bland if they don’t make people feel things. Humans are highly emotional creatures.
I can’t believe I’m about to use the words “smart” and BuzzFeed together in one line, but the people at BuzzFeed figured out a really smart concept called as “Culture Cartography” & I know what you’re thinking isn’t this that company that made those dumb quizzes about which Disney princess are you today?
Love them or hate them, you can’t deny they are monstrously viral repeatedly. Culture Cartography is essentially these circles where each circle represents a feeling and obviously when your tweet makes someone feel things, they are more likely to share it with friends.
Tell stories that have high re-tell value
Think about the last 3 things you shared at a dinner table conversation. Every idea you re-told was because it was interesting and positioned you as smart/funny/insightful. Every story in the world has a re-tell value, some have been going on for decades, some might not even make it post this week.
To craft a highly re-tellable story you must look back into all the ‘aha moments’ in your life, but the most important thing is to keep this tale incredibly simple to tell. If it’s too many things to say or too complex, people won’t be able to re-create it.
Remember it’s always great to land a single funny joke vs have three or four mediocre ones.
Talk like how you’d text a friend
People want to connect with other humans, not yet another marketing threadboi who throws a couple of jargons and is eventually going to sell them a $5 course.
The simplest test is to read your tweets aloud. If that’s not how you talk in real life, nobody is going to feel what you want to share. The number of times I read people’s tweets and think “who tf talks like that?”
Writing casually and in simple language propels the level of authenticity and people can get to paying attention to what you have to say.
Reach Escape Velocity
Tweets don’t get viral suddenly. First a few people like it then a few more and then eventually everyone else. Just like a rocket needs to overcome the earth’s gravity to get out of the atmosphere. Your tweets need some initial love to get picked up by the algorithm.
Now all you geniuses who’re thinking to hire a clickfarm in Bangladesh or Indonesia. Please don’t, it doesn’t work. Send me the $10 I’ll like and retweet your tweets.
I know this feels obvious but the key insight here is, don’t write for a million people, write for the first 2-3 retweets. Whenever I’m tweeting something I always keep 3 of my friends in mind, that at-least these losers will enjoy what I’m saying. (shoutout to @paarugsethi, @pratikdholani & @abwshek)
Just companies every story and idea has a market-cap. Start by infecting patient 0 first, then a few more and then world domination.
Optimise for a scrolling experience
The last internet post you highly enjoyed might not’ve been that great but it’s comment section would be the reason why you found it hilarious. Hence, make people scroll beyond the first tweet.
Remember a tweet is not just a bunch of texts on a feed. It’s a little gathering of people who’re also excited about something you are. Everyone is a sucker for some good banter, make sure you engage with your early replies and have a scrollable experience and not just one tweet.
Tweet when you have high bursts of energy.
If you sit and think “what should I tweet?” you’ll probably go crazy and come up with bad ideas that are forced reverse engineered versions of popular tweets
Tweeting when you have this burst of energy from a real life experience, thought or whatever it is that you’re feeling translates into your writing. Authenticity cannot be recreated at will. Not only that, it will also solve your “when should I tweet” problem.
Retweets are outsourced opinions.
A retweet is a reward for saying something that people always wanted to say but couldn’t really find the words. If more people agree with you, you’ll see retweets, if they disagree with you there will be quote tweets.
Who cares, both are great for engagement.
Speak your truth
Don’t try to appear bigger than you are, keep your head down and be truthful. I know social media seems like you should fake it till you make it. But would you rather want people that are following you for your fake credentials or the people who were with you since day, even when you weren’t a big deal.
It’s better to write about things you have experienced first hand than become the leading expert in the world about the newest hot topic. I’d always follow someone who doesn’t know anything about a topic but is willing to share their experience with everyone in real time vs someone who’s pushing threads full of jargon.
Naval puts it the best:
Ship in prod
Tweet whatever comes to your mind. You need to exhaust your ideas to get new ones. Don’t let mediocre content, just not be in the notepad. Share it with the world and spread it, why suffer alone?
You cannot sit and ponder about how well will something do? There is only one way to find out and it is by hitting the publish button. You can always delete the ones that aren’t so great.I often tweet the most basic thing like what I’m eating, just to get things out of my system and kickstart my brain to get my creative juices flowing.
Remember tweeting is a muscle, not a puzzle. You have to train for it everyday to be fit versus figure out some puzzle code after which life will be easy.
Tweet like the backspace button doesn’t exist.
Conclusion
Broadly speaking, you will not become good at twitter if you’re not clear on why you want to do so? For me I really love the clout and the joy of being internet famous for something dumb I said. For you it can be creating more distribution, awareness for your product and what not. But have some intention, it will help you to keep going even when you have 0 likes.
And to re-state the obvious, your engagement is directly proportional to how well you can express your thoughts. This has two parts — knowing what you feel, You can journal often to keep track. And expressing it out with clarity, Which is improving your writing skills. This Dilbert blog from 2007 is still golden.
I hope what I wrote made some sense to you and got you thinking beyond the growth hacks. My final word to you is, experience more things in real life and then tell them on twitter. People who are great at twitter often are great at real life too, not vice versa. peace.
Later losers,
Yash
P.S: A bunch of us are hanging out tomorrow ( 9PM IST) to discuss the principles in this essay. I’m calling it Bangers Only. I’d love to have some more people there. Feel free to join — https://lu.ma/bangers-only