What type of X/Twitter content has actually worked for you to grow from 0?

Not looking for generic advice like "be consistent", I want to know what specific content format or type of post got you real traction when you were starting from zero or near zero.

For context: I'm building a SaaS and doing freelance work, and I'm documenting the process publicly. My audience would be founders, indie hackers, and small business owners.

What worked for you? Threads? Single tweets? Replies to bigger accounts? Hot takes? Vulnerable "here are my real numbers" posts? Something else entirely?

Comments

AutoModerator•3 months ago•1

If this post doesn't follow the rules, please report it to the mods.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

TomTeachesTech•3 months ago•1

I was actually in a very similar situation mere months ago. Documenting the process publicly in a community like build in public is massive for gaining traction. At least one post a day will take you far and it makes it easier to draft if you are following the format of building in public. It's a perfect match for your audience.

All those are good for different types of content. What's worked for me is focusing on replies and engaging more over drafting many posts. I work on a tool that is specifically for finding reply opportunities so let me know if you would like further advice!

Comments are king for accounts under 500 followers

Fantastic-Rub3200•3 months ago•1

I went through this last year with a SaaS from literal zero. What moved the needle wasn’t format first, it was angle + proof.

I ended up rotating three types of posts:

  1. “Pain → fix in public” posts: “Client churned because X, here’s the exact email + what I changed.” Short, concrete, no fluff. Those got saved and DMs came from them.

  2. Mini case studies in a single tweet: one screenshot, one metric, one sentence of context, one takeaway. No threads until a single tweet proved people cared.

  3. Replies where I added a tiny framework or template, not opinions. I treated replies like free consulting. A couple of those got picked up and drove more followers than my own timeline.

Hot takes did nothing long term. Numbers worked when tied to a decision (“went from $600 → $2.1k MRR after killing this feature”).

For ideas, I pulled questions from Indie Hackers, Reddit search, TweetHunter, and Pulse for Reddit, which kept surfacing threads I was missing where people were already asking about my niche so I could join with something useful, not just drop links.

Fine_Fox_1305•3 months ago•1

Honestly anything in the problem to solution genre is good positioning. It shouldn’t always be product centric. Try to target industry pain points strategically offering some sort of insight/tips to other founders. And position yourself as someone with authority/knowledge instead of a startup

Independent-Ant-7230•3 months ago•1

early on, replies usually work better than posts

jumping into conversations on bigger accounts gets you visibility faster than posting into the void

once you get some traction, then your own posts (threads, insights, progress updates) start working better

xsnpr•3 months ago•1

a lil mix between build in public & be a reply guy :) x pushing more articles

Budget-Lawyer4129•3 months ago•1

Replies to bigger accounts is what actually moved the needle for me early on, and I think people underestimate how much that still works in 2024. Not spammy replies, just genuinely useful ones. I was running growth for a B2B SaaS in the HR tech space and we were sitting at maybe 200 followers after two months of posting threads that nobody saw. The thing that changed it was spending 30 minutes a day replying to maybe 5 or 6 accounts in our niche who already had audiences. Not "great point!" stuff. Actual takes, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes adding context. Followers from those replies converted way better than anything we got from our own original posts at that stage, because they came pre-qualified from an account they already trusted. On the content side, the "real numbers" posts did outperform everything else once we had a small base to amplify them. We tested a lot of formats using Buffer to queue content and later moved some accounts over to TweetHunter specifically for the inspiration library, which helped us figure out which hooks were working in our niche without guessing. But the tooling was secondary. The reply strategy was doing the heavy lifting. For your situation specifically, building in public with real SaaS metrics is probably your strongest angle. Founders and indie hackers respond to specificity. Not "we grew 20%" but "we went from 14 to 31 paying customers in 6 weeks and here is what broke along the way." That format travels. The vulnerability is less important than the precision.

More like this

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE INSTAGRAM ALGORITHM IN 2026

When you post, Instagram doesn't evaluate your content all at once. Distribution is continuous and adaptive. The system is constantly re-ranking your post based on signals it collects over time. Early engagement matters a lot, but posts can pick up hours or even days later, especially Reels. It's not a single batch test. It's an ongoing one. What you need to understand is that the algorithm is always watching the same core signals, and most people are optimizing for the wrong ones. **What actually moves the needle** Instagram's CEO confirmed this year that three signals are driving distribution more than anything else right now. Watch time is number one by a significant margin. Viewers decide within about 1.7 seconds whether to keep watching. If people are dropping off in the first 3 seconds, your post dies. If they make it past 50%, that's a strong signal. If they rewatch, that's explosive. Your retention curve is more important than your like count, full stop. Second is likes per reach, meaning the percentage of people who actually liked your post out of everyone who saw it. This matters more for reaching your existing followers than for growing to new audiences. Third, and this is the one most people are underestimating, is DM shares. When someone sends your post to a friend, Instagram treats it as a stronger endorsement than a like or even a comment. It signals that your content is worth recommending to strangers. Every post should have a built-in "send this to someone who needs it" moment, intentionally. If you're still optimizing primarily for likes in 2026, you're behind. **The format breakdown** Reels are for reaching new people. Carousels and photos are for your existing followers. Stories are for keeping those followers from leaving. They're not interchangeable. They serve completely different purposes in the algorithm. Carousels are underrated right now. Instagram does re-rank posts over time, which means a carousel that didn't land on the first impression can get another shot. The takeaway: make every slide worth stopping on, not just the first. Stories aren't optional if retention matters to you. Accounts that post consistently to Stories see meaningfully fewer unfollows. Stories keep your existing audience warm while your Reels pull new people in. **What you should actually be doing** Forget posting volume targets. Quality is the prerequisite. High frequency with low quality lowers your retention metrics and actively hurts your distribution. Run this instead: Every day: one high-quality Reel with a hook in the first 2 seconds and a clear share trigger built in, plus 3 to 5 Story frames to stay visible and keep your audience connected. Three to four times a week: a carousel optimized for saves and shares, something educational, useful, or worth returning to. Every single post should pass three checks before it goes out. Does the hook land in under 2 seconds? Is there one clear idea? Is there a reason someone would send this to a friend? **On niche consistency** Your last 9 to 12 posts define how Instagram categorizes your account. The algorithm rewards tight topic focus and punishes accounts that drift between unrelated content. Whatever angle you've built your account around, stay in it consistently. It's not about being in a broad niche. It's about having a distinct point of view within one. A hundred fitness creators exist. Only a few have a perspective that's immediately recognizable. That's the real differentiator. **Where I've seen this work** I grew from 100 followers to 360k using these principles. Grew 10+ accounts from 0 to 10k and sold most of them. The process was the same every time: understand what the algorithm is currently rewarding, make content that earns retention and shares, stay consistent for months not weeks, and adjust based on what the data tells you. It's not exciting. It's a system. Systems win. **TLDR** This post blew up last time so I'm bringing it back with answers to the most common questions I got. Before anything else, few things I wish someone told me earlier: 1. **Consistency** is the only thing that actually matters. I know everyone says this and everyone ignores it. That's literally why most people fail. The people winning are not smarter than you, they just didn't quit. 2. Video quality matters more than most people admit. Drop CapCut, get Adobe Premiere or hire an editor. Skip Fiverr, find editors in **Discord communities** instead, way cheaper and actually good. 3. Stop wasting hours on scripts, hooks, and hunting for content ideas manually. I use **SocialHunt** for all of that. You can train it on viral content in your niche and it handles the research and scripting side so you can just focus on filming. 4. Use **Superflow** to handle distribution, workflows, and repetitive ops. If you’re doing things manually, you’re capping growth.

3 months ago
255

Any people that runs 100 to 10k followers pages (any social media)?

Hey all, I own a business that involves many clients that promote their product, art or website with TikTok (also Instagram, Youtube and Facebook). I want to offer them a way to post their content, or to get content created and posted for them on existing TikTok pages. Basically you got pages in a specific theme (sport, anime, cinema, culture, memes...) and you rent it for a specific period of time. You get paid every month, and all you have to do is basically connecting the account once to our system. You can opt-out anytime you want, you keep the full ownership of the account. That's basically a way to monetize your pages passively. For now I'm doing it myself with my own pages (3 tiktok pages with 500 to 3k followers, and 1 6k subscribers Youtube channel), I made around $800 renting these for less than a month. If someone is interested, please comment or DM!

3 months ago
222

Everything dying at 300 views for so long before I finally caught the problem

I've been absolutely obsessed with short form content for the last two years. Like people have staged actual interventions about my health level of obsessed. I'm talking 11-14 hour days breaking down what separates successful videos from failures, experimenting with different hook variations, rewriting scripts until my brain hurts, testing every editing approach I could possibly get my hands on. Why this level of obsession? Because I'm absolutely certain short form video is the backbone of everything right now. Growing followers, selling anything, generating opportunities, creating brands from nothing. Every part of it depends on whether you can hold someone's attention for 30 seconds. But here's what nearly made me quit entirely: despite the constant daily grind, nothing was hitting. I'd pour 7-8 hours into crafting one video only to watch it crash at 300 views. Tried every tactic from every person claiming to have figured it out. Bought their courses. Applied their "proven" methods. Still going nowhere. I seriously started thinking maybe I'm just not the type of person who can make this work. Like maybe there's some fundamental ability I'm completely lacking. Then something clicked. I'm grinding constantly, but I'm operating completely blind. I don't actually know what's broken. I'm essentially just trying random things hoping something eventually works. So I stopped hunting for some mythical viral code and started analyzing actual data. Analyzed my last 50 videos second by second, documented every retention drop, and discovered 5 consistent patterns that were systematically killing my performance: 1. **Vague mysterious hooks are totally invisible** "This will transform you..." gets scrolled past every time. But "I used resistance bands for 55 days and my shoulder mobility actually decreased" stops people mid scroll. Specific concrete details destroy vague teasing without exception. 2. **Seconds 5-7 are where everything gets decided** Most viewers leave between 4-7 seconds if you haven't proven it's worth watching. I was creating slow buildups like a complete amateur. Now my strongest visual or most compelling number arrives exactly at second 5. That's where the hook that genuinely holds people. 3. **Any gap beyond 1 second absolutely kills your retention** Tracked this obsessively, anything past 1.2 seconds makes people think the video stopped. What feels like natural comfortable pacing to you reads as complete dead time to someone scrolling. Cut significantly tighter than feels normal. 4. **Visual variety is absolutely critical** If nothing changes on screen for more than 3 seconds, attention vanishes without warning. I started constantly rotating camera angles, cutting to b-roll, moving text placement, literally anything to maintain constant visual movement. Went from losing 50% at the halfway mark to keeping 70%. 5. **Rewatch rate is dramatically more important than most people realize** Videos people watch more than once get pushed exponentially harder by the algorithm. Started planting subtle details that aren't obvious first viewing, editing faster, adding elements worth discovering on rewatch. Rewatch percentage jumped from 8% to 31% and reach went completely through the roof. Honestly the biggest shift was abandoning all guesswork and actually measuring what was happening at every second. Came across this one app that goes way beyond showing where people drop off, it literally tells you why and exactly how to correct it. That's when everything transformed. Went from averaging 300 views to hitting 18k in about 4 weeks. Regular analytics show you people are leaving. This one shows the exact second, the actual reason, and what to adjust before your next post. If you're uploading consistently but stuck below 1k views, your content isn't the problem. You just don't know what's genuinely working versus what you assume is working. Listen, I'm sharing this because breaking through was honestly one of the hardest things I've tackled. I really wish someone had just explained exactly what needed fixing when I was stuck there. Would have saved months of confusion and doubt. So that's what I'm doing now for anyone who needs it.

4 months ago
221