A 15-Day Thread-Writing Challenge on X Didn’t Get Me Many Followers. Yet It Was a Success. Here’s Why.

The not-so-obvious lessons I learned.

Photo by Rubaitul Azad on Unsplash

Growing on X has been a sweet struggle. It was the longest journey and the most frustrating one on some days.

But as they say, the easier the path, the harder the life. The harder the beginning, the easier the life!

Of course, crossing 1000 followers isn’t the end. But it’s the sweetness of this first-ever milestone on X that keeps me going. Momentum does crazy things to your confidence and creativity. I was so motivated by this number that I decided to do a thread-writing sprint in November 2023.

I planned to do a 30-day sprint but gave up on the 8th day. The reason? My dental clinic was flooded with patients and I hardly managed to engage every day on X.

But I’m a stickler for creating content. So, again, in January 2023, I tried starting this sprint, and again, I failed. This time, I gave up on the 11th day. So much for progress!

These 2 failures left me deeply demotivated. But I took my time. On March 1st, I dived again into a daily thread writing challenge. This time, I opted for a 15-day sprint and kept 15 thread topics ready even before I started the streak. Thankfully, I completed 15 days of writing one thread daily this time.

Okay. Wait. If you think I went viral with my threads and grew fast because of this sprint, I’m so sorry to disappoint you. I had made peace with the fact that I may not go viral and grow fast, as I don’t have a premium X account and don’t engage enough, thanks to my clinic.

But the lessons this 15-day sprint taught me are far more valuable than a chance of virality.

1. Authority by association works well

My threads in the beginning were not about me. They were about big personalities that I learned a great deal from. Mostly, these threads showed my curation skills rather than creation skills.

Be it this thread about Jefferey Archer or this one about Naval Ravikant, these worked slightly well because I created authority by associating my brand with these credible personalities.

If you’re a complete beginner on any platform, this concept of using authority by association can help you a lot in grabbing attention fast and making your reader hooked.

A few things to remember-

• Share accurate information about the personalities you’re writing about.
• Write about anyone whose life fascinated you, but create content about them that’s related to your niche. I didn’t write about Jefferey Archer’s fiction writing lessons, but about the way he has built his writing habit, because that's what resonates the most with my brand.

2. Hooks are in your driver's seat

This is true for any form of content on any platform. If you can’t grab your reader’s attention with the first 2–3 sentences, you’re wasting your time creating the rest of the post.

While writing threads, here’s what works well in terms of great hooks-

• A bold statement
• Using credibility numbers
• Controversial takes
• Juxtaposition

Using these in my hooks has helped me immensely in improving my reach.

3. Be clear and concise

Thread writing is like a crash course to learn copywriting. You need to be clear, concise, and valuable in the least amount of words possible.

Optimizing my threads to make them skimmable has been the biggest lever to increase my reach.

Here’s how you can do that-

• Use pointers wherever possible
• Use white spaces
• Use simple and powerful words
• Use interesting analogies
• Ask questions

Position yourself as a guide rather than a guru while writing. It makes your content far more authentic than your competition.

Lastly,

The purpose of starting this challenge wasn’t to get thousands of followers. I knew my free X account had its limitations. Not getting time to engage enough didn’t help either.

The intention was to push myself to where I have to create a new thread daily and see if I can do that.

The scary part? To make sure I commit to it, I announced this challenge publicly in a tweet. I also mentioned how I’d failed twice before.

This one tweet held me accountable for 15 days and is the only reason I could complete this challenge.

If you’ve to learn one thing from this article, let it be this-

Build in public.

No matter at what stage you are and what you’re up to, announce it to the world.

And then, go all in to keep your word.

PS- Have you tried such an experiment on X before?

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