Finding Your Signal

When I first started writing online I kept hearing about “Follow the data”. “If you want to grow you need to be listening to the data”.

They’re right, your audience is voting every time you post something.

They’re voting with their time and it’s up to you to figure it out.

But none of them tell you how to follow the data or what type of metric you should be following.

So today I’ll show you the 2 types of data to track (you’ve never heard about the second one),

At the end, I’ll show you my routine on how I follow the data which has allowed me to gain more than 250 followers in less than 2 months.

Before we start, think of data as signals that you can spot, track, and amplify.

Signals to look for:

1)  Likes

"Wow, so obvious Hussain."

I know, but I still see many people do it wrong.

This is what most people do:

A post gets a lot of likes, they take note of it and then forget about it.

What’s the point of you seeing if your post has done well and you don’t do anything about it?

What you want to do is create your Hall Of Fame.

These should be your best-performing tweets (top 10% – 20% of your tweets).

At first, you might only have 1 or 2 tweets there, but as you keep posting and iterating on them your Hall of Fame will get bigger.

I'll show you how you can do it in the next section, but first, let's go over the second point.

2) Profile visits

Wait what? Is that a metric that’s worth tracking?

Of course, it is!

And I don’t mean seeing your daily visits like what Black Magic does.

I’m talking about seeing the profile visits from every individual tweet.

If you’re using Hypefury then you can easily track profile visits.

Ok, but why profile visits?

Think about it.

What are the steps people take before they follow you?

They see your tweet → read it → like → comment → click on your profile → follow

So you see how the profile visit is the last step they take before deciding to follow you or not.

Some of the tweets that have gotten me the highest number of followers didn’t have the highest likes.

Side note:

Micro-story tweets always have higher profile visits than advice, but more on that a later day.

Boost your Signal

After tracking your data and seeing which posts are performing well, it’s time to double down on them.

You can do so by posting it again, but with a different format.

Here are some of the ways I do them:

• Advice

• Listicles

• Public enemy

• Micro-story tweets

• Platitude-style tweets

• Threads or long-form posts

Btw you can mix and match them together to come up with something unique.

Let me show you some examples of my tweets.

See how I did it?

They’re similar but not the same.

That’s how all the big creators do it.

The first was a micro-story mixed with some early fear that my One True Fan has, and the second was a micro-story mixed with platitude advice.

Also, the second tweet is much punchier and straight to the point. That’s just due to becoming better at editing and posting a ton.

The Routine:

My routine is very simple.

Every Monday morning, I open Hypefury and start looking for signals.

Get the 2-3 highest-liked tweets and add them to the Hall of Fame.

When I first started the bar for a post to enter the Hall of Fame was 13 likes, and after 2 months of constantly improving the signal it went up to 20+ likes.

But not just likes, I also look for profile visits.

The posts that have performed well in profile visits I write them for next week’s tweets.

It’s a simple routine but very effective.

PS:

I got this strategy from Kieran Drew when I was taking High Impact Writing, but I modified it to fit my needs.

The doors to High Impact Writing are closed at the moment, but when they’re opened again. The course is going to be $397 for the first few days, then it’s getting raised to $497.

I’ll make sure to let you know when he’s opening the doors for High Impact Writing so you don’t miss it.

That’s all for today.

- Hussain

Btw it’s 12:40 now and that’s after taking a break to drink tea. Now I just need to edit it for a few minutes.