Thousands of new Twitter followers (and a response to Elon Musk)

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Here are a few things I think you'll find interesting: tips for getting Twitter followers, a response to Elon Musk, and a list of founder salaries.

🐦 How to grow your Twitter followers

Nathan Barry gets tactical about growing your Twitter on this podcast episode.

Nathan outlines a few good Twitter growth tactics that have worked for him:

• Get engagement in the first 10 minutes. "Everyone you see growing quickly on Twitter has a group of 5-10 friends who will immediately respond (engage) with tweets they post. [The Twitter algorithm] seems to really respond to replies, or engagement, in the first 10 minutes."
• Twitter's algorithm is looking for evidence of engagement. "Twitter is looking to surface the tweets that drive the most engagement: the tweets that keep you on the platform. This is why they highlight replies, quote tweets. It's also why threads are performing really well."
• The secret to writing good Twitter threads. "If you look through my threads, the little pro tip is that they're all reposts of my blog posts. Every single one of them. I pull a blog post out, make that its own thread. Many of these threads are getting 400-500 retweets, and adding thousands of followers."

🎧 It's definitely worth it to listen to the whole episode.

🗣️ Elon Musk, Twitter, and Free Speech

To understand Elon's desire to buy Twitter, you need to understand his underlying motivation: explicitly, he believes he can unlock more "free speech" on the platform.

He isn't, for example, trying to make Twitter more profitable or increase revenue.

If Elon Musk bought Twitter, would it be a better place for free speech?

​I did a deep dive here 👉

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💰 What do indie founders pay themselves?

I've been collecting examples of what different founders and startup CEOs pay themselves (gross income, salary, dividends):

• ​How Michael Taylor's salary changed (employee to founder)
• ​Daniel Vassallo​'s gross income (last 5 years)
• ​How much Marie Poulin earns (per month)
• ​Patrick Campbell's salary​
• ​Joel Gascoigne's salary​
• ​Noah Kagan's salaries​

I debated whether or not I should share these links at all.

On the positive side, sharing founder salaries gives us a sense of what's possible (which can be encouraging). On the negative side, it can lead to comparing ourselves to others, jealousy, and feeling crappy.

Do you think public numbers like this are helpful, or unhelpful?

Hope you're doing well.

(Hey, if you enjoyed this issue, could you share my newsletter on twitter? I'd love to see new people subscribe and benefit from it)

Cheers,
Justin Jackson
​@mijustin​

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