Thread by @svpino

Do you want more people to read your Twitter threads?

Here is something you can do.

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I'm glad threads have become popular, and more people are publishing their content that way.

I've been experimenting with threads for a while. I've learned a ton of what works and what doesn't.

Keep in mind that this advice is based on my experience. It may not work for you.

The advice is simple: Don't scare the reader on your first tweet.

If you announce that your thread is "huge" or that it is a "mega-thread," people will tend to shy away from it.

The same happens if you start your thread with something like "1/25."

25 tweets???!!!

People's common reaction when they see this:

"I ain't got time for that!"

Most people come to Twitter for a quick hit of dopamine, not to consume 10-minute long, hard-to-follow content.

The best threads are those who hook people on the first tweet.

Give the reader every reason to continue reading. Take them on a ride they'll enjoy.

But don't ask anything from them before delivering. Surprise them!

A well-known Twitter hack to collect likes is to publish large lists of links.

This is a measuring context where the one with more links wins. These threads will get a lot of likes, but very few people will read the content.

My advice doesn't apply here.

You can measure the ratio of engagements between the top tweet and the other tweets on the thread.

In my experiments, this is how it works approximately:

• Poor threads: 0.01 - 0.10
• Good threads: 0.10 - 0.20

These values represent the average engagement across all tweets compared to the first tweet of the thread.

(Keep in mind these numbers don't come from controlled experiments, so take the results with a grain of salt.)

Lately, I've measured the quality of my threads differently.

This method is very subjective, but it aligns much better with what I want.

(And I cannot automate this, unfortunately.)

Here are the five questions I ask:

1. How good were the responses I got?
2. Did people seem confused after reading it?
3. Did I get any relevant feedback?
4. Did I learn anything new from the replies?
5. Did I attract any prominent accounts?

This helps me learn and iterate.

A simple framework that will help you succeed with your threads:

1. Experiment
2. Learn something from it
3. Repeat

Hopefully, this helps get your message further.

Feel free to use this very same thread to measure the ratio of likes between subtweets and the first tweet.

Anything over 10% is pretty decent in my book.