Most people fail to grow on X because they have the wrong mental model. They think of X as a stage, where you come up and make a speech to an audience.
The right mental model for X is a party. When you walk into a party, you don't just go to a corner and start talking into the void. You find an existing cluster of people, listen to what they're already talking about, and join the conversation.
This mental model is the basis for all my following tactics:
1. Tune your feed
Think of this as "figuring out which parties to join and which crowds you wanna hang out with". If your feed is full of slop and clickbait, you won't be inspired to post. You'll be participating in the wrong conversations.
Before I even started posting regularly, I took a couple weeks to deliberately tune my X algorithm. Specifically, every time I saw clickbait or topics that I didn't care about, I clicked on the three dots -> "Not interested". Every time I saw thoughtful and useful content, I engaged with it by liking, retweeting, replying, or bookmarking. Over time, the algorithm learns to push more of the high-quality content to you. My X feed is now full of inspiring and educational content about AI, new product launches, and thoughtful discussions that I actually wanna engage in.
2. Reply authentically
Do not use an AI bot to mass reply on your behalf. I repeat, do not use an AI bot to mass reply on your behalf.
Replying for replying's sake is useless. When I see replies under my posts that are clearly AI-generated and just paraphrasing what I said, I actually feel offended. It feels extremely sloppy, insincere, and lazy.
If we go back to the party analogy, replying is like poking your head into a circle of people and participating in their existing conversation. You need to say something actually interesting so that the people will pay attention and welcome you into their circle.
Let's say you're person A and trying to engage with person B - who has a much larger following - by replying under their post. When you engage meaningfully and sincerely, person B will engage back with you - through liking/replying to your reply, or following you back. This tells the algorithm "these 2 people like each other; now let me push more of person A's content to person B". Then the next time you say something on your timeline, it's more likely to appear on person B's timeline, and there's a chance that they'll retweet. This is how you grow.
3. Post consistently, reflexively
This is the most important rule. If you don't follow this rule, everything else doesn't matter. I made a goal of posting 3 times a day.
This is not a matter of time management. Extremely busy founders, CEOs and investors manage to post 5-10 times a day. It's a matter of lowering the barrier so much that it becomes a reflex. It needs to become a natural extension of what you already do every day. Do not overthink.
What are those reflexes? Here are several habits that have really helped me stay consistent:
1. Learn in public: I regularly consume video podcasts and newsletters about AI and startup building. Every time I see something that resonates, I take a screenshot and post the quote on X. Importantly, I make sure to tag the person who actually said that thing. This is both a nice gesture of attribution, and also makes that person notice you. There's a chance they'll retweet (people love hearing nice things about themselves) or follow you. If you learned something new, share that knowledge with the world. I use X as a public notebook.
2. Give feedback in public: As part of my job, I try out lots of new AI products. Every time I come across a product/feature that impresses me, I write a public shoutout or feedback post on X, and make sure to tag their official account and the founder. Startup founders - especially early-stage ones - LOVE product feedback. In my experience, if you share thoughtful feedback as a user, 90% of the time the founder will reply/retweet/DM you.
3. Build in public: This year I got into vibe coding, and many of my most viral posts were demos of products that I vibe coded. X LOVES product demos. The head of developer relations at all the major labs are actively looking to see what people are doing with their technologies (Two of my projects were featured by Google AI Developer's official X account). Use tools like Screen Studio to record your screen and yourself at the same time, and make 1-2 minute demo videos. Doesn't need to be fancy. Especially when new models drop, build something with it quickly and share it, even if it's a rough prototype.
Don't just come in and promote your product or company. For all these habits, I'm giving value to the community without expecting anything back. People need to see you as a sincere individual who can offer value before they in turn engage with whatever you wanna say or sell in the future.
4. Don't use AI until you develop your own taste and voice
Using AI to write isn't inherently bad. The danger is using AI to write before you've developed your taste for what is good content. If the AI produces slop, you won't even recognize it as slop.
X values authenticity above anything else. Raw beats polished. It's not about having perfect grammar or using flowery words. **Just write like how you talk in real life. **
Read a lot to figure out what good looks like. Post a lot to know what your voice sounds like. Only then, use AI to help you write, but make sure it actually sounds like you.
The goal isn't to grow on X per se. It's to grow while still being yourself.
P.S. I just launched a product mysay.ai that helps you post consistently on X while maintaining your own voice; check it out here: