Brian Casel: [00:00:00] Hey, this is Open Threads. It's my podcast. I'm Brian Casel. Welcome to it. So today I want to talk about Twitter. It's the social network that I spend more time on than any other social network. I check it multiple times a day. I tweet every now and again. I like to connect with, with friends and, and folks in our industry, especially on Twitter.

But Twitter has changed a lot over the years. I've been a user for well over, I don't know, 12 or 13 years now. And I really want to kind of better understand Twitter and what it means to grow a following and why we spend time on Twitter and how do we separate the quality from the noise? So who better to talk about that with than Dan Rowden Dan has been on probably just as long as I have, but he has really [00:01:00] grown his follower count from a thousand up to like 40, 000 plus. So he's, he's talked about that and he's also built multiple products. I'll talk to him in a separate episode about building a portfolio of products, but he's been very public about using Twitter to talk about and build in public.

So we, we touched on that. He has a software product for Twitter analytics and writing Twitter posts. That's at ilo. so. We'll get all this stuff linked up in the show notes, of course. But it was a good wide ranging conversation all about what it means to use Twitter day to day, especially for folks like us, indie hackers, bootstrappers, software creators, startup folks.

And like, I always like to say, you know, I feel so lucky to be in an industry where so many of us are so open about sharing what we're working on and interested and curious about peeking into what other people are working on. And there's no better platform to do that still than Twitter. I've got some complaints about the tone and things that we're seeing on Twitter [00:02:00] these days.

I get into that some of that too, but overall, I still think it's a net positive for all of us. And I wanted to, you know, pick Dan's brain about how we can make our experience on Twitter even better. For now, let's talk to Dan about Twitter. All right. I'm here with, uh, and of course I should have done this before we hit record, but is it Dan Roden? Rowden. Rowden. Okay. So, you know, Dan, great to connect with you. As I said, I've been following your work for quite some time. At least most of the last year, I think you're one of these folks who is not only building in public, but building a lot of different, interesting things.

And so I think maybe in the next chat here, we're going to talk about working on multiple things versus, you know, focusing on one, but first one thing that comes to mind, or at least the product that I think is most well known, at least in my view, from what you've done is [00:03:00] your work with Twitter. You have an app called ilo.

so. That's like a Twitter analytics tool. I want to hear more about that. And then you have a book on growing a Twitter following, right?

Dan Rowden: Yeah. Well, yeah, it's kind of like a, a cool slash guide, but yeah. Yeah.

Brian Casel: Yeah. Very cool. So, I mean, I'd say Twitter is my go to social network of choice. I'm not very active on Facebook or don't use Instagram at all.

I use Tik TOK to show my kids some funny videos sometimes, but. Twitter is the one that I'm spending a lot of time on. And I guess, like, how do you think about your experience on Twitter these days? Here we are in like, you know, second half of 2022. I feel like the platform has evolved a lot over the years.

But where are we at today? Like, do you use Twitter for fun, for audience growth, for marketing, for all of the above? What do you like? What do you dislike about your experience on Twitter these days?

Dan Rowden: Yeah. So I joined Twitter [00:04:00] like very early on in 2006, so I've seen it grow from basically nothing to where it is today.

And yeah, like the beginning, it was, it was just people like spewing out random thoughts and you could actually see the whole world of Twitter, like on the homepage, which was crazy to see when you think about that now, but yeah, I think I probably started using Twitter for my web projects in 2020, the spring.

Before that, I'd kind of been tweeting about what I was working on, but more randomly and already kind of focused on audience building or anything like that. And I had about 4, 000 followers back then.

Brian Casel: I'm actually interested in that, like from 2006 up until 2020, all that time, I probably started following you maybe sometime after 2020, but like, what was different about looking at your Twitter feed before that compared to today?

Dan Rowden: Yeah, just kind of more of a casual user. I wasn't on it as much as I have been the last two years, because I've been on it like every day, [00:05:00] like for inspiration and talking to people and making connections and obviously like marketing my products and building things, but before then. Yeah, I would come on it maybe a few times a week.

Tweet what I was working on, if I was building something cool, I'd share it. There's a lot of also like personal stuff, like where I was or if I was doing something fun. But yeah, for some reason, I'm not sure what it was that triggered it to kind of come back to Twitter in 2020. But yeah, soon after that, I came back.

I launched Cove, or maybe because I launched Cove, I came back to Twitter, which is the ghost commenting tool. And then yeah, ever since then, I've just been kind of launching new things and just kind of. Being on Twitter a lot and being part of the IndieHack kind of group and that part of Twitter and obviously building ilo for all the Twitter analytics.

Brian Casel: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, and Twitter for me has always been a way to connect and Form and build relationships with, I have so many really good friends that I've met through [00:06:00] Twitter now, but they're all basically industry based, like early on, I started probably around 2008 or something like that as a web designer.

I was connected with mostly web design people and then a lot of WordPress people, and then more bootstrap startups, SAS people, and. I mean, I've also met a lot of people like at conferences and stuff, but then these people reconnect on Twitter throughout the year. And that's where we, uh, form these like multi year relationships.

Right. And I see Facebook as like the place for like friends and family. And I sort of have like a personal rule on Facebook. I don't friend someone unless I have actually met them in real life in person. And like Facebook is where I might post photos of like my kids and stuff like that I'm doing in my personal life.

But in Twitter. It's obviously much more open, so I don't share as much about my personal life, but I do develop really good friendships on Twitter, I think, especially in this. I think our industry is really cool and really unique in that way that, [00:07:00] like, I don't know too many other industries that just share so much about what we're working on and find it so interesting to peek into what other people are working on.

You know, I don't see like accountants. Or like real estate agents, you know,

Dan Rowden: yeah. Um, and this is just the image.

Brian Casel: I mean, maybe they're like boring conferences or something. Yeah.

Dan Rowden: Maybe not on Twitter, but yeah, since 2020 is when I've kind of made those connections and what you were talking about, like industry.

People and making kind of friends on Twitter before that it was, you know, wasn't really that kind of experience. But ever since then, obviously the, now I've, I've gone from 4, 000 to 40, 000 followers because of all the work that I was sharing and the connections I was making without really even trying to build an audience because that's not what I was on Twitter for.

But it just kind of exploded, although it was kind of very gradual. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting. I do want to hear more about that. I've been off Twitter a bit for the last week. Sorry, I think it's like a crazy delay.

Brian Casel: Just taking a mental, mental break from it. Well, you, you, [00:08:00] well, you, you were sick a little bit, but, um.

Dan Rowden: Yeah. Yeah. So I was taking a break and it's, it's interesting to kind of step away for a week for the first time in over two years. But, I mean, I just came back and it's the same as it was when I left. So, yeah, it is an interesting little experiment.

Brian Casel: Yeah, there are so many times where I feel like I'm painfully addicted to the Twitter feed and I want to take a break and then I don't.

I want to ask about the growth in following and. I think, I think it sounds like you would agree that like the tactics and what really starts to annoy me today are all the growth hacks and tactics that you see on Twitter feed, and this was not there in the, in the earlier years of Twitter, but it's definitely something that's come about in the last like year or two years where it's like, threads are very formulaic and basically like, like list posts, but in tweet form, [00:09:00] and there's also a lot more negativity.

And maybe like showboating and other things like that on Twitter that wasn't really around earlier, but people still are able to grow high quality. Follower and audience counts. By being authentic and honest, being constructive, being positive. Can you talk a bit about that? Like, like, what do you think actually worked really well for you?

Cause that's what I see from you, like in following you on Twitter. And you are one of these people who've been able to grow a really large audience while keeping it kind of quality and positive. So like, what do you think sort of clicked for you in terms of the audience growth? Uh,

Dan Rowden: yes, I didn't have a goal to grow the audience this big.

So it's kind of a bit of a shock to me that it's, it's got this large. Yeah, I didn't have any tricks or like, I wasn't planning to do anything. I was just sharing what I was building and interacting with people. Doing the same thing basically. And it's just kind of snowballed. And once I hit 10, 000 followers, the rate [00:10:00] of new followers is kind of very steady and constant.

It seems to be this at a certain point in most accounts that once you hit a certain level, maybe you're, you're shown to more users or you get like, I don't know, like pushed by Twitter in front of more people. Cause I can get 60 followers on a day that I don't even tweet. Like, where do those people come from?

Like, what are they seeing that make them follow me? But yeah, like tactics wise, I think today you could summarize, like, growth on Twitter to just write more threads. Like, if you write more threads, you'll get more followers. Which is a bit, like, cynical and a bit kind of depressing, but that seems to be If you had to do one growth hack, that's the one to do.

Um, and threads isn't something that I've personally done or like aim to do. I'm more about sharing my work and, or the cool things I've seen on the internet. But yeah, I think,

Brian Casel: you know, with threads, it's, it's interesting. I wanted to ask about threads because this came up for me yesterday. I have noticed that [00:11:00] when I write a thread and I schedule it, or I post it all out together at once.

Like, you know how you can draft eight, 10 tweets and then post them all at once. There are exceptions, but generally those don't get as much engagement than like single tweets that just have a really interesting idea. That's easy to get easy to share, easy to like. And then sometimes if I start with one tweet, post that and then add onto it and build the thread over time, that starts to do well.

I don't know if it's just my content or my audience who starts to tune out threads more than other users, but it's just something that I've noticed. And it's frustrating because sometimes I like the format of threads. Like it really, it's really a good tool. Like I love that feature because sometimes there's a thought that I do want to unpack over five or six tweets instead of just one, but I'm also like hesitant to use a thread because it's like people are tuning it out or doesn't get as much engagement.

It's hard to really understand what the algorithm is [00:12:00] actually all about these days.

Dan Rowden: Yeah, I think like the growth people have kind of hijacked threads and that's like the only way that they see growth, but it works. That's why they use that. But, um, yeah, there are a few different types of threads, as you say, like you could do like one kind of a blog post type thing in a thread, or you could, which is what, something I did today about cove, or you could do like a listicle in a thread.

They're quite popular as you mentioned, like you'd start with an idea and then kind of expand it over time or add updates to a thread over time. So the advantage of that is that you're reshowing the same tweet over and over again in the timeline. That's maybe why you're seeing more engagement. If you do one one off thread, I think it's a shame that threads are getting kind of seen as like a hack or kind of like annoying part of Twitter.

Because they can be useful, but I think the more, I think as soon as people realize that threads are like an amazing way to get new followers, then they're just kind of a bit ruined for, especially maybe people in our industry where, [00:13:00] like, we've been on Twitter a long time, we're kind of, we don't really want to see this kind of hacky style of Twitter usage.

Brian Casel: I do like threads again, because it's like, I, I think I've actually moved my personal blogging, like my personal writing. Away from my personal blog and just to Twitter. Um, uh, and, and that's because I find that the format of writing a Twitter thread, or even just a single tweet, I like the forcing function of it.

It makes me really edit down my thoughts to, to obviously fit in the character limit, but then in a thread, I have to make each tweet, uh, a single idea. That's and just, it just, it's a really good editing. You know, feature to like, maybe really like try to focus the concept, make it easy to digest. And that's just good writing in general.

So I just liked that better than like having like a blank page on my blog where I could just keep writing words and paragraphs and it goes on forever. Yeah.

Dan Rowden: [00:14:00] And people might not even see that. I mean, if you post to your blog, you kind of have to hope that people come across it. Whereas Twitter will show it to people.

Brian Casel: Yeah. How do you think about like choosing what to, Put out on, on Twitter, like, do, do most of, most of your ideas for tweets, do they come like spur of the moment, like, this is interesting, or I have, or I have a comment to say about this, or do you do any pre-planning? Um, or, or just choosing like certain topics to focus on and other ones just stay away from.

Dan Rowden: I typically tweet when I have an idea to tweet or I'll write it down in Hello and I'll just. Save it as a draft and save it for another time kind of thing if maybe I'm out of the shops or something and I Think of something or if I'm driving like obviously I can't tweet then so I'll just note it down as soon as I can I don't schedule tweets.

I like to post it and then be around if people have comments or like feedback I like to be around for like the next half an hour or something. So I tweet a lot when I'm at my desk working And yeah, for [00:15:00] topics, I do just stick around what I'm working on or anything related to the work I'm doing. So like Twitter or ghost or tech or other founders, that kind of thing.

It's good to have like a specific focus. Definitely. Like I like football, like soccer and running and other things, books and things. I tweet about books sometimes, but like, there's a lot of stuff that I would want to tweet about, but it just wouldn't, wouldn't make any sense to my following now that it's so big and it's definitely focused on a certain like idea.

This is, yeah, it's tweeting about that.

Brian Casel: Interesting. I feel like my Twitter following and just following in general has like, and we'll talk about this in the, in the other chat about working on multiple projects over, over your career. Like I went through all these different phases and my audience has reflected that.

So now whatever audience that I have, I feel like it's. Fragmented, you know, like, like at the very beginning, it was almost all about like music. I was getting like a lot of musicians and [00:16:00] producers. And cause that's who I was connecting with back in like 2008, 2009, and then web designers, and then a lot of WordPress people, and then there was a whole stretch there where I was talking about product high services.

So I got a lot of freelancers and consultants interested in product high services. And then in the last few years, I'm more into software and SAS and startups. So. I mean, it's like bootstrapper indie hacker community. So it's like, it's just a mix. And it's like, on the one hand, it's like, well, that's just naturally what happened with me and my interests have shifted and what I'm involved in has shifted, so obviously what I tweet has shifted, but it definitely has resulted in like, I think I get less engagement because a lot of the stuff just doesn't apply to the people who are interested in what I was into five or six years ago.

I think it's a strange dynamic that happens online.

Dan Rowden: Yeah. And I think, I think I was facing the same kind of thing like two years ago when I came back to Twitter. Cause again, I'd be posting about random stuff for the last 14 years, [00:17:00] but I think now because of the growth, like the large chunk of my followers now, I only know me as like a indie hacker dev person, whereas the first 14 years, it was a huge mix of different people.

So now it kind of outweighs it, but yeah, I totally get what you're saying because that was definitely what it was like two summers ago. Yeah.

Brian Casel: So, I mean, again, I, I still want to try to understand the growth that you've had. I mean, can you point to any points in the, from like 2020, 2021, like where sort of events or spikes or milestones that seem to like accelerate?

Dan Rowden: Yeah. So in like April, May time in 2020 was when I launched Cove and then I launched Gloat. And then I launched a theme business and then by the end of July, I was launching ilo. So, like, there was a very condensed.

Brian Casel: So, it was like launching a lot of products. That's like a lot of activity.

Dan Rowden: Yeah. So, when I came to launch ilo, I'd already amassed, I don't know, maybe a thousand extra followers.[00:18:00]

And they were like highly engaged in tech indie stuff that I'd been building. So then that, when I launched ilo, a lot of traction. And then that kind of kickstarted a bit. And then I hit 10, 000 followers, I think maybe in January. So all that time I was still building and sharing and people were finding me.

And then I had a viral tweet, I think in March, 2021. I think it's still my like, best ever tweet for impressions, which was, it was just saying that my side project revenue was higher than my salary, basically. And for some reason that took off and got huge. Reception and that kickstarted then from then it's been very steady and like the, the new followers that come every day is like incredibly steady.

If you look at my charts and then in the summer, I quit my job. So that was another kind of moment where I've got a lot of retweets and a lot of impressions on my tweets. I announced I was leaving my job for my side projects and kind of making that transition. But other than that, I don't think there's been, this is like three kind of.

Major things [00:19:00] I remember, but yeah, the rest of it is just showing up every day and just sharing what I'm working on or commenting on other things.

Brian Casel: Is there a consistency thing that that you think helps like just having something new to tweet at least once every day?

Dan Rowden: Yeah, I think like tweet every day is my like Twitter mantra or if I was to sum up Twitter usage, that would be it tweet every day.

I mean, it doesn't matter if it's you tweeting out an idea or if it's just replying to someone during the conversation or retweeting someone else's tweet with like a clever response or something to add, or even like a different opinion. Just kind of being there every day, being in front of people, showing who you are as a person showing, yeah, who you are, what you do.

What your thoughts are like, that's how you get a following online. It doesn't matter what platform it is. But yeah, just kind of doing that consistently over time.

Brian Casel: Another thing that's been on my mind, like an open question is whether or not to use scheduling tools [00:20:00] on Twitter. And I used to, and then I stopped maybe three years ago, because like you, I like to just do it like live when I'm actually active. And I, a lot of times I really care about the tweet that I push out has to reflect my current mood, like, or like, I have to be ready to either field replies or be able to like backup this stance that I'm tweeting about, whatever it might be.

And I remember in the past, I would schedule things in advance, maybe 5, 6, 7 days before it actually goes out and I'm in a totally different state of mind by the time it goes out. Yeah. And then, you know, there's also like the risk of like. Some big world event happening. And then you have a scheduled tweet that maybe not the right tone for the moment, but, but like at the same time, like now I'm questioning that again, because I'm so busy doing work every day.

I check Twitter a lot throughout the day, but I don't [00:21:00] have as much creative energy to really think about ideas that I think are worth tweeting about. I'd rather spend that time working on my product. So it would be nice to like. Batch and spend a few hours on Monday and line up some tweets for the week or something like that.

But I'm kind of on the fence about that. I don't know.

Dan Rowden: Well, I can say from my experience, it's just that when, yeah, I mean, I have the same thing. When you schedule things, you're likely to kind of mess up at some point because you're not in control of like, it was past me who posted that. And today, like today's me might not want that to go out.

And yeah, I think it's a good idea to sit down and write tweets and it's a good idea to like throughout the week, if you have an idea for a tweet, capture it and maybe not post it straight away, but just capture it. And then eventually you'll grow a list of like draft. You can maybe rewrite a draft a few times before you post it, or maybe you can expand one draft into four different tweets.

That's the way I have found that. It works best for me, sometimes I'll write a [00:22:00] tweet and I'll just send it straight away, but yeah, like I like sitting on tweets as well, especially if it's like a, one of those like thought tweets or kind of not necessarily what I'm doing, but like how I've realized something I'll capture like the first way that I've thought about it, but then maybe in two days time, I'll be like, Oh, and then.

I have a slightly different way of thinking about it and I'll rewrite the tweet, maybe it expands into more than one, but I think saving drafts a lot and then just manually posting them is maybe the best combination of kind of storing ideas as well as being in like in control of the posting. And that's how I've built, um, the writer tool into ilo.

It's kind of matches that workflow is very quick to capture things and it stores them all. And then you can kind of expand them later.

Brian Casel: I like that. I think I got to use it a lot more because you're right. Like, I like that idea of like kind of spending a couple hours, like writing ideas, maybe, you know, once a week or so.

And then it's a quick task every day to just send it out or do a final edit and then send it out. That's pretty cool. Actually, one of those like thought [00:23:00] tweets. This was one, and I think this can speak to a lot of, a lot of like the tone of Twitter lately in the last couple of years that I don't know about you, but it's been getting to me and it's been this thought that I've been wanting to tweet that I've been thinking about this for months.

I actually ended up finally forming it into a single tweet and getting it out this morning. And I think we see this a lot in, I'd say the indie hacker community, but maybe more so in like the. There's different segments of this software startup community, right? There are some that are, that might call themselves indie hackers, very much about like making and shipping kind of micro SAS products.

And then there's other ones that are like broader SAS. And so there's just this tone that I see in a lot of my Twitter feed that I follow other founders and other people in this industry where, how do I explain it? It's like, I think everyone means well, everyone's trying to be helpful and supportive of folks.

But then there's also this performative aspect of trying [00:24:00] to, to be the one with the best wisdom for startups and founders and how to be successful. Right. And a lot of that wisdom takes the form of, this is the way to do something. This is the correct way to do something, or you're not going to be successful if you do it this way or that way, or I'm seeing lots of founders making this mistake, don't do that.

Right. And I think the people who write that stuff, and I'm sure I've been guilty of it myself. They're, they mean well, and it's probably pretty sound advice overall, but I think what ends up happening when it's distributed on something like Twitter is that people read these and then they immediately go to, does that apply to me?

Is that person even speaking to me? Am I falling in? Am I doing things wrong? Now I'm second guessing myself. And so it has like the opposite effect. It's not actually helping. Right. And I find that it's much more constructive and this [00:25:00] is what I love about the build and public hashtag. Right. It's much more constructive to just say like, look, this is what I'm building.

I think it actually worked pretty well for me. I think it's pretty cool. Here's a thing or two that I learned that I didn't know before. Just want to share it out there. And then whoever's seeing that tweet. You can take it or leave it. Like maybe you find that useful. Maybe it sparks a new creative idea for you.

Maybe it doesn't at all, but it's not going to make you feel like you're making a mistake or you're in the camp of doing things wrong, or I don't know if that makes any sense, but it's just been a tone thing that I think has, has added a lot of like negativity and debate and stuff on Twitter. That's just kind of.

It makes me enjoy my time on Twitter a lot less. Yeah, well, I think you see any of that in your feed.

Dan Rowden: Yeah. And I'm sure I've written some tweets, which are like, just kind of like they come, it comes out. It's like a plain like fact, uh, when, and it's just kind of my experience, but I think people who write [00:26:00] those are either looking for people to engage with the tweet.

Maybe it's like a bit tongue in cheek, so it's kind of a bit like a joke, like it's a bit over the top, so it kind of should be funny, or like, yeah, I think you do have to be careful with Twitter with the tone, because it's not a video, and it's literally just like a few words that anyone reading based with, like, using their, uh, circumstance and opinions could read it completely different way from someone else, um, but yeah, I think, I don't see a lot of that on my timeline, or maybe I do.

And I just kind of ignore it. Um, but I think as proven from my account is if you share stuff or if you show your learnings or just kind of be more soft with your approach of like what you write about on Twitter, you can still grow a big audience and get kind of engaged people, yeah, looking at what you're building and what you're writing about and how you're thinking about things.

Brian Casel: You know, and that's another thing that I [00:27:00] constantly have to remind myself of, especially when I'm like. Editing like, the words that I choose are the phrasing things and like, that every single person. Are from far places on Earth and different regions and different cultures. I mean, I'm, I'm from New York originally.

And so, like, a lot of the, the ways that I would describe something. Maybe I'm using sarcasm, maybe I'm speaking in a certain way that, like, just not going to land the same way. With someone else, whether they're in the UK or California or India or wherever they might be, you know, at the end of the day, I still feel like super lucky that like, we get to connect with folks like in this way, you know, and that we are so connected on something like Twitter.

It's really been like opening and end of the day, like much more expanding for, for this industry, I think, you know?

Dan Rowden: Yeah. And like you said at the beginning, Twitter is definitely like the one. Network or tool that I'm on. I don't go on Facebook. I don't really go on TikTok either. And Instagram, I left [00:28:00] when I came back on Twitter basically, two years ago.

Yeah, I just think as an all round kind of personal business development inspiration tool, I don't think there's anything better than Twitter.

Brian Casel: Well, uh, well Dan, that's you know, this is a pretty cool um, chat.