On the 22nd, I (finally) published my retrospective on how Now I Know went from 0 subscribers to 10,000 in 13 months.  As part of it, I said that Twitter wasn’t so great for newsletter growth.  Specifically:

I have gotten some great endorsements from twitter users with tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands followers.  None of them have been gangbusters in terms of growth, at least not quantitatively.  

All of that is 100% true, but note the qualifier at the end — “at least not quantitatively.”  There’s a reason for this.

In general — and there is, maybe, one exception to this — not a single tweet has netted me more than 20 new subscribers.  Twenty new people is nothing to shake a stick at, but it’s also relatively speaking, small.  It’s a lot less than a similar endorsement on a blog or email newsletter, even one of relatively smaller size.  As I mentioned in the post prior, Brain Pickings’ mention lead to hundreds of new subscribers (maybe even breaking four figures), and they have about 10,000 visitors a day.   

But twitter’s a valuable tool for the newsletter for a different reason — it creates and strengthens connections.  

Two — or, I guess, two and a half — examples:

1) Ed Shahzade (and Clay Hebert).  @Ed is perhaps the ultimate Twitter connecter.   When he tweeted about Now I Know, I was honestly surprised to see only a dozen new people sign up, until I later realized that people with 10 times his follower count drove just as much (if not less) registrations.  I pointed this out to him (I think, memory fails a bit here) and he tossed me a piece of advice: I had to make Now I Know a two-way street.

If you’ve ever replied to one of my NIK emails, you know I do exactly that — I reply, and substantively.  It doesn’t even take that much time*.   And, in part due to Ed’s urging, I actively seek out readers and thank them on Twitter.  It’s pretty simple.  I punch in searches which are about that day’s email — key terms, words in the subject/title, etc. — and if someone talks about the email, I say hi.  

This isn’t going to gain me subscribers, but it is going to strengthen the relationship between me and those subscribers.  In a dry, formualic way, this is a good way to retain readers.  More importantly, it’s a good way to find more interesting people to talk to and get to know.

* On Now I Know’s one-year anniversary, I sent out a “thank you for reading” email to about 25% of the list at that time.  I received about 500 replies.  In that case, yes, replying to all of those (and I did) took a ton of time.

Which brings me to Clay Hebert.  Clay found out about Now I Know and me via a tweet from Ed, and after reading for a month or two, reached out to me via twitter.  Ed noticed, and reached out to me independently to say hey, I should pay attention to this — it’s a pretty significant event.  And it is, because it demonstrated that I was actually connecting with readers, not just writing stuff for them to read.  In fact, I’ve gotten to know Clay over the last few months.  We were taking a train back from a Mets game a few weeks ago when he pointed out just how incredible it is that a perfect stranger (at least to me) — Ed — has mastered twitter to the point where he can connect two people who are also strangers.

With the exception of known brands/celebrities (even niche celebs), if you’re using Twitter to drive traffic to an email newsletter — or, honestly, to anything — you’re probably doing it wrong.   On the other hand, if you’re using it to create connections and pathways, as my conversations with Ed have shown, it can be outstanding.

2) Craig Newmark.  Craig the founder of craigslist.  I am… not.

However, Craig is incredibly approachable on Twitter.  I’ve thankfully gained an introduction to him (via email) from a mutual friend, but even so, I am astounded by how often and readily he replies to people, even people with absurd comments.  For example, I was giving a presentation on how easy it can be to connect with people on Twitter, so I sent him a tweet asking for a reply, just to demo this fact — and he replied.

This isn’t anything particularly incredible (except for his volume of replies, to seemingly everyone), but at #140conf in June, I had the opportunity to meet Craig for the first time.  And all of a sudden, the conversation we had online — which was just a series of tweets, 2 or 3 here, 2 or 3 there — became a rather long, interesting, and in-depth one offline.  Online, we exchanged maybe 10-15 tweets and 2-3 emails.  Offline, it was a 20-30 minute conversation, none of which would have happened but for the twitter chatter.

* * *

Danah Boyd (and sorry, but I can’t get myself to spell her name without capital letters) argues that the tweets which many term “pointless babble” are actually fundamental to our understanding of each other.  Craig retweets stuff about squirrels.  Ed rallies against politicians in Massachusetts.  I fume about the Mets.  Each of these things may be total garbage, who knows.  But it allows us to understand better who the other is.  Some people ignore these things, treating them as the garbage they are termed, and thinking, “well, this isn’t going to drive traffic to my website, or help me gain twitter followers,” etc.  

But the great ones really try to connect.  I am not so good at it, truth be told; but I can try.