January was a great month for my growth, and I had some great wins as well as some frustrations which I’ll take you through in this post.
Overall in terms of growth it’s been pretty good in terms of my personal brand – with Twitter leading from the front, and that’s where I have focused so far.
What I can also say is that I’ve LEARNED A LOT! – Check this out, and I share the tools I’ve used just after….
January Overall Statistics
- January was good, well compared to December (which wasn’t!)
- When I Tweeted less at the end of the month I got less growth
- I had a good number of Profile Clicks, but didn’t have a way to convert them into something useful
Daily Impressions
- Despite more variable changes in follower growth, profile clicks or replies received my impressions were stable between the 500-1000 Impressions mark.
- I hope that these impressions increase as followers and the quality of the content improves.
Consistency and Engagement
- I posted everyday during January, which you can see is much better than December and speaks for the growth I’ve seen.
- If I had content that was worth sharing I’d share it but I found that some of my quick on the spot Tweets – like my success or failure on Wordle weren’t popular!
- My Audience tends to be European or American and hence engagement hours tend to be later in the day – so I changed when I’m posting to align with those hours.
Top Twitter Connections
- Well unsurprisingly Tiago from the Wannabe Entrepreneur Podcast is my most engaged connection. Tiago is incredibly supportive and I’m bought into his co-working space so it makes a lot of sense
- Roberto is also incredibly supportive of what I’ve been up to and I’ve been an user of Katlinks for sometime now.
- Sharon is a really old contact, having met personally in Singapore through a British Chamber of Commerce event – I love her Tweets, always very amusing!
Most Popular Tweet of January
- Ok so this surprised me about how this Tweet took off. I wrote it because I couldn’t use the Black Magic tool on Edge – but apparently you can!
- What I took away from this is that sharing struggles can provide you with solutions
- It also showed me how helpful the Indie Hacker community on Twitter actually is!
Importantly this growth came without two key things:
1) Proper personal branding – I haven’t really figured out how to pitch myself to the world yet….
2) A lack of anything real to share from a “build in public” perspective
These two factors have meant however that my Indie Hackers growth has been awfully slow, unlike Product Hunt where replies are sufficient I think I’ll have to really work on providing some useful content to grow a following.
What I’m not sure of is how to engage with my new followers. I went through a period of thanking them for following me publicly – which did generate some decent engagement. But I wasn’t sure if people would find it annoying or not. Then I thought I could DM those that have just followed, but again I wasn’t sure about how annoying it would be found.
What do you do with your new followers?
Tools I Use to Track my Progress
I mentioned a couple of tools above that I’d like to share with you. The main one being Black Magic which is a relatively new tool that enhances your Twitter experience through a browser extension.
If you want some more information or want to sign-up then please use the following link and use code: MAXWELLCDAVIS_7186760F
The other two tools I mentioned are TweetSerp that allows you to check on your most engaged connections and Katlinks which is Roberto’s amazing SEO tool.
Product Hunt
Growth on Product Hunt was again steady as it has been since I started being more active towards the end of the year in 2021. I grew from 123 to 150 followers – so my target of 200 might have been set a bit low!
January saw the launch of the Golden Kitty Awards, the annual event to celebrate makers and community members alike. I’m hoping that next year I can in some way play a part in it. I’m also hoping that this time next month I’ll have some exciting news to share on this!
Overall good progress and thanks to everyone that gave me a follow!
Indie Hackers – Tough Nut to Crack
The toughest area that I’ve found to get a following is on Indie Hackers. So on Product Hunt I’ve mainly gained followers from just being generally helpful and supportive on the forums and Product Launches.
On Indie Hackers that doesn’t seem to work – I think you actually need to either share your progress or have some proper stories to share from the trenches. I don’t think that I’ve got either really, so as February progress I’m hoping that I can start sharing posts from here to Indie Hackers to get some more growth.
If you have any ideas I’m all ears! This is my profile here if you want to give me a follow!
Projects
Personal Site
January was a big month for my projects. Firstly I managed to launch this site – which I’ve been procrastinating on for years, so I’m so happy it’s up and running. I’m keen to hear any thoughts on it so please feel free to leave a comment here.
Project “T” – Twitch Extension
I also made some good progress on the Twitch Extension – working mainly on the email setup. Including how we’ll reach out to customers when they sign-up for the waitlist, the regular onboarding emails as well as the newsletter. What I didn’t realize was how much is involved in email setup these days. I even Tweeted about it and took part in several conversations on Twitter – it does seem to be a problem!
CollabClub
The biggest thing for January though has to be the launch of the community project within the Wannabe Entrepreneur called CollabClub.
So this is being run by me as a Hackathon/Design Sprint with a total of 9 us from around the world, all Indie Hackers. I don’t have much to share at the time of writing this but I’ll be regularly updating on Twitter and elsewhere!
What About You?
I’d love to know how your January went – did you achieve your goals for the month? Are you making progress – leave a comment below!