I Tried Going Viral On Design Twitter

I’ll keep calling it Twitter, not X

I had a goal. I had a plan.

But most importantly, I had a lot of inactive followers on Twitter.

And I think, that kinda derailed my mission of going viral.

Which is okay, because now you guys get to read this article and take notes from my learnings.

So what was the said plan ?

To post as many UI designs as possible, go viral and generate leads for my services.

But also not any kind of UI, I was designing mostly components as entire websites/product UIs are hard to do and time-consuming.

This also aligned with my target audience…

Early stage SaaS founders looking to build MVP
SaaS Founders looking for redesigns of existing products
Studios looking for new website designers to outsource work

And did it work ?

Yes, for just a couple of tweets.

After that, the momentum fizzled out.

Here’s everything that happened, in order …

The preparation

I updated my profile and added a clearer bio and a CTA (with calender link) for potential leads to reach out.

I wanted to be as easy as possible to reach.

Planning my designs

I didn’t wish to wake up every day and then decide what to make.

So I made a big moodboard of various UI styles and components on Pinterest even before I started.

Then picked which ones I wanted to design, and chose their styles.

And then just designed them and made a dribbble-ish shot ready for Twitter.

Breakdown of engagement

Here’s all the designs I posted (a couple missing)

One tweet got 300+ likes and 0 leads
Two tweets got 50+ likes and 1 lead
All other tweets got less than 25 likes, and 0 leads
95–100 followers in the duration

This happened over around 4 months.

I wasn’t the most proactive, I’ll admit.

Watching others get 10x of my engagement, I felt very demoralized.

But what I got a lot of ? other designers and agency founders dm-ing me to sell their services.

Like buddy, I’m a designer too. Read the bio before reaching out :/

Now here’s what you came for.

Everything I learned about the new algorithm of Twitter that you should know, and plan accordingly …

Only premium users are seen

It’s very-very-very hard to grow an account from scratch and have your work seen now.

Especially when the perk for buying premium is “more visibility”.

Yeah, say goodbye to authentic reach and pay money to get seen.

The real free-speech utopia.

Not all design styles are appreciated

Design Twitter is the home of the top 1% of designers.

Their visual skills are superior to you, me and the rest of the industry.

And that’s where I lacked.

I was using a lot of shadows, gradients, and cleaner typography but still wasn’t good enough like the other more experienced ones.

This may have caused me to get lesser reach.

It’s a never-ending treadmill

Once you start tweeting, you simply can’t stop anymore.

Unlike Medium, where my articles from 2022 are still getting me views, Twitter requires active efforts every day.

You miss a week of tweeting, and BOOM, engagement falls down by 25%.

There’s no stopping, and this happens because people here have smaller attention spans than even reels & tiktok audiences.

A lot of these people don’t even know your username or name, they recognize you by your profile picture.

Not a good sign.

You only stay relevant as long as you tweet numerous times a day.

”nEtWoRk iS NeTwOrTH”

This was THE BEST PART of Twitter.

The once unreachable people were now readily sharing their work updates over here.

Making it easier than ever to reach out to them for anything.

Tech Twitter thrived for this very reason.

Networking had never been easier.

Like someone’s tweet ? Like their vibe ? Slide into their dms then.

But now you can’t message someone without buying premium.

This can of course be changed in default settings, but that’s dark UX to get more money 😉

Wrong audience, oof

Around 90% of people who liked my designs were not CEOs or founders, but other designers.

They were engaging with my designs for inspiration purposes.

And that’s fine, but they are not my target audience.

They aren’t going to hire me.

2k impressions of the right people >>> 50k impressions of untargeted audience.

I was reaching the wrong people which meant my 50k+ impressions meant shit.

Faking till I make it

See, I don’t like to fake my personality.

I am a genuinely funny and introverted human who only cares about his own work.

But engaging with others every day and appreciating them and all that — isn’t very me.

It was something that felt fake to me while commenting, and sounded weird too.

But you need to do that to get more visibility under more popular designer’s tweets.

Also, you have to avoid getting canceled — people love digging up old tweets to bring you down.

This means thinking many times about your public image, not something I wanted to get bothered by.

I like sharing my opinions freely, with like-minded people.

Why I’m doubling down on Medium over Twitter

That place is rigged and beyond any saving.

Pay-to-win communities don’t last long and Twitter has been bleeding users ever since Muskrat took over.

And you need a lot of people with purchase power, so creators (like me) can run our business and co-exist.

Which wasn’t happening.

I strongly believe most sensible businessmen have fled the brainrot like average users too.

Now I leave too, someone who’s been there for 3+ years.

Good riddance, Larry the blue bird!

Medium, is a more sophisticated and better platform to publish your work on.

The views have tanked here too in recent times, but the audience is 1000x times better.

I can have a well-thought-out conversation with my followers here, but on Twitter it’s called an argument.

Moreover, I see value in having a mature audience who care about me and my work, and to whom my ideas matter.

And I see that potential audience here, not on Twitter.

Hi there 👋🏻 I’m Sharanya — a freelance UI & Web designer writing about design and documenting his journey.

Currently booking projects — let’s chat.

Check my digital products on my shop.

Find me on Twitter, Dribbble & LinkedIn!

I Tried Going Viral On Design Twitter was originally published in UX Planet on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.