How I Grew to 199k Followers on X

I started posting online back when X was still called Twitter. Had about 300 followers.

Within 6.5 years, after writing lots of posts (77.7k), I grew my audience to 199k followers (soon to be 200k 🤞).

Growing an audience isn’t as complicated as you might think, but it’s time-consuming and can feel uncomfortable and slow at times.

Here’s everything I learned that actually matters if you want to grow an audience:

If I had to pick one main thing, it would be: Consistency.

Post more. Post consistently.
It sounds boring, but consistency beats every fancy strategy.

Think of every post as a lottery ticket.
The more you post, the more chances you give yourself to hit something that resonates.
When a post finally pops, study it, understand why it worked, and double down on the format.

Most people fail because they simply stop posting before compounding kicks in.

The beginning is hard.

It can take months before anything happens.
So you have to learn to enjoy the process.

It took me almost a year to hit 10k followers, and even that felt like luck.

The trick is simple: Show up daily, even when nobody’s listening.

If you treat X as a long-term game, you’ll outlast everyone who treats it like a passion project and gives up after a few months of posting.

Especially in the AI world that we live in today.

Use your real name.
Use your real face as your profile picture.
Share your real story. The ups and downs.

People connect with other people, not logos, not mascots, not AI-generated slop.
They love it when you are real and transparent.

Authenticity is your unfair advantage because nobody can be better at being you than… you.

Reply to every reply you get on your posts. Seriously.

I know it’s time-consuming, but it shows people that you value the time they spent writing a reply.

You can reply to the original post and then also quote-post it to your own audience for an extra boost.

Find the top creators in your niche and follow them.
Study what they post and reply when you have something meaningful to add.

Here’s a trick you can use:
Turn on notifications for top creators in your niche.
Being early in their replies increases your chances of being seen by their audiences when their posts go viral.

But please, don’t spam! And especially… Don’t use AI to reply!
Be human. Share your own take on the subject matter.

There is no single “best format”.
Different things hit for different creators.

Try:

Every format teaches you something about how your audience thinks.

And just to be clear:
Hashtags don’t work. Stop using them.

If you're just starting, communities are a cheat code.
They give you extra distribution early on.

Find the communities where your posts get traction and double down.

Photos, screenshots, videos.
Posts with visuals get more attention.

We are visual creatures, and adding media will increase the likelihood that someone sees the post and engages with it.

People love numbers. Especially nerds like us. 🤓

Adding numbers makes your posts more interesting.

If something happened to you today, post it.

Someone could learn from it, or get inspired by it, or simply get amused by it.

This creates authenticity, builds that human connection, and makes posting daily much easier.

Whenever you have a piece of content that works well, save it.

You can repost the same idea a few months later.

Most of your followers didn’t see it the first time anyway, and those who did, most likely forgot about it.

X doesn’t love external links. They want to keep people on their platform. Which is normal - that’s where they can serve ads and make money.

So if you need to share a link, put it in the first reply instead of the main post.

You can still have links work in the main post if it’s a huge moment like a launch or something super valuable like an article, video, etc.

Promoting all the time doesn’t work.

Use the 90-10 rule: 90% value content, 10% promotional content.

Also, focus on sharing the results your product creates.
That sells far better than just saying “Try my product.”

Speaking of selling, use your pinned post to sell your product.

Write a good, valuable post about your product, add a link to it, and pin it to your profile. This way, every time someone checks out your profile, they’ll see the pinned post first.

Tbh, I never personally followed a posting rule like this, mostly because I was posting like a mad man (77k posts in 6.5 years), but as I know most of you are nerds (yes, you! 😁) and like rules, and structures, here’s one you can follow:

Do this for 6 months, and growth becomes inevitable.

Growing on X isn’t magic.
It’s not about hacks, algorithms, or being “naturally good” at content.

It’s about showing up, experimenting, being a real human, and letting time do its job.

If you take one thing away from this email: you don’t need to be special - you just need to be consistent.

And if you ever want a personalized plan or someone to look over your content and point you in the right direction, I do consulting too.

Here’s where you can learn more about it:
👉 https://florin-pop.com/consulting

This ended up being a different kind of newsletter than usual, but I put a lot of effort into writing this guide, and I really hope you enjoyed it! ☺️

Next week I’ll be back with a full update on my $1M journey - and trust me, there are some exciting things to share. 😄

See you in the next one 🫶,
Florin