Twitter (X) Communities Are NOT the Way to Grow Your Tribe in 2024

If you’re looking for a way to grow your community, X, formally known as Twitter, is one of the biggest and most active social media platforms out there, offering up an immense pool of users to grow your community. However, that said, growing it on Twitter may not be the best way.

Here’s a deep dive into Twitter communities and the best way you can use X to grow your tribe.

What Are Twitter Communities?

Introduced in 2021, Twitter (or X) communities where users can engage and build relationships with other users who share an interest in their niche. The idea is to create meaningful and long-lasting connections based on mutual values and interests. Here are some benefits of using communities on X:

• Meet others with the same interests – Users can talk to people who care about the same interests they do.

• Post directly to a community, not followers – Users can share posts they know will relate directly to their community instead of posting to a larger, less engaged audience.

• Admins and moderation – Since X communities are moderated, users can feel safer and more supported than those in the general feed.
  

Since their introduction, Twitter communities have nestled themselves easily into the larger framework of the app. As long as the communities follow X’s terms of service, they can be based on any specific type of interest, from TV shows and books to hobbies such as baking or DIY. 

However, in the grand scheme of things, X communities are quite small. These groups contain members ranging from hundreds of followers to thousands, which is a drop in the ocean compared to the 556 million active monthly users currently on X. With that in mind, are X communities really the way to grow a sustainable tribe?

How to Find Twitter Communities

[Source: Screenshot of Twitter sidebar.]

To find Twitter communities:

• Open the mobile app
• Tap on your profile picture in the top left-hand corner
• From the list of options, tap on “Communities”

From there, you can see the diverse range of communities available. The app will recommend different types of communities based on the content you’re already engaging with, such as movies and TV shows, politics, sports, or even things like software engineering. You can also use the search bar at the top of the page to “Search for a Community,” which helps users find an active community that resonates with them. 

[Source: Screenshot of Twitter communities.]

Once you click on a community, you’ll be able to see the tweets that are coming in, what’s trending, the hashtags used in the community, and an About Page with community information. 

How do I join a Twitter Community?

Joining a community is simple. Just click the “Join” button on the right-hand side. 

[Source: Screenshot of Software Engineering community.]

From there, you’ll be asked to read and agree to the community rules. 

[Source: Screenshot of Twitter community rules.]

How to Make a Twitter Community

To make a Twitter community, you first have to subscribe to X. The site offers three tiers with different price points, but luckily, you only have to subscribe to one of them to be able to make a community. 

Once you’ve subscribed, you’re good to go. Here’s how to make your own community:

• Step 1 – Click the “plus” button in the left-hand corner.
• Step 2 – Fill in the information X asks you for. This includes your community name and purpose, so it’s good to plan this beforehand.
• Step 3 – Choose if you’re happy for anyone to join the community or whether you want restrictions.

How to Build and Grow Your Community on Twitter

Building and growing a community on Twitter can be more challenging than creating one on other social media platforms or community platforms in general. This is because X encourages real-time conversations. Interactions move like lighting on Twitter, and it can be easy to miss whole conversations. Furthermore, the character limit means you can only share small, bite-sized snippets of content, which might make it tricky to form meaningful connections or get your brand messaging across.

However, tools such as polls, premium, and even threads can help with community building and help amplify your message.

Crafting a Magnetic Twitter Identity

To build a community on Twitter and garner loyal followers, you have to create a Twitter identity that will convince people to follow you. With the fast-paced nature of Twitter, your voice and branding need to be strong. Here are some things to consider:

Carving Out Your Twitter Niche

A focused X presence is the best way to attract like-minded individuals and build a tribe of followers who will want to engage with your content. Although many brands and individuals go viral on Twitter, it’s also easy for your content to get lost.This is because so many people share their thoughts at once. That’s why it’s important to focus on a set group of people. Here are some best practices:

• Share thoughts about your niche – Although it’s tempting to get involved in every single conversation, sticking to commenting on your own topic will help you attract a like-minded audience. 

• Use industry-specific hashtags – Whether your niche is DIY, travel, writing, culture, SEO, or anything else, you can conduct hashtag research to find the right ones for you. Use the search bar to look for different topics and hashtags and make a note of what people are using.

• Engage with other content in your niche – When you start engaging with similar-type content, Twitter will begin to show you related content in your FYP (For You Page) and may even start to show your content to others.
  
• Use Twitter insights – X has a range of analytics on each tweet that you can use to track your performance. This includes likes, comments, bookmarks, and impressions. There are also a range of third-party apps you can use to track how your content is performing on X.

The real craft is in writing your tweets. Since you don’t have the long captions of Instagram or the long-form content of a blog, it’s important to narrow down your messaging to fit in one tweet. Here are some things to help:

• Outline your tone and language – With such a small number of characters, your tone or the language you use can be easily misinterpreted. In fact, X is known for that very thing happening frequently, which is why it’s so important to master your tone. Do you want to come across as friendly? Informative? Joke-y or sarcastic? 

[Source: screenshot of a pinned tweet by Elon Musk.]

• Use pinned tweets – Users can “pin” a tweet at the top of their profile. Use this to give insight into your brand so users don’t have to scroll through all your tweets to get a sense of who you are.
  
• Twitter bios and profile pictures – Use Twitter bios and your profile picture to give your audience a sense of your brand’s character.
  
• Consistent messaging – Make sure your messaging is consistent with the tone of your community. You should adhere to your own values and beliefs, making them clear to communicate your community values.

Engaging and Connecting on Twitter

Conversational Cadence

With the fast-paced nature of X, it can be a challenge to keep your audience engaged at times, especially with so many other tweets and conversations offering distractions. To keep an engaging and interesting cadence:

• Keep tweets short and snappy – It’s important to convey what you need to in a few sentences.
  
• Create threads – With such a small character limit, threads are a fantastic way to drop more information on a topic. Since they’re constructed of bite-sized chunks of information, people find them easier to read article links. You could even sum up an article and then link to it at the bottom of the thread.
  
• Keep information relevant – X is notorious for picking up on inaccuracies within information. It’s important to keep your information relevant and up to date. Become an authority in your niche.
  
• Reply quickly – We don’t expect you to be glued to your phone 24/7, but it’s important to reply in a timely manner before the conversation moves on. This will encourage continuous engagement.

However, Twitter isn’t all about language. There are other tools that brands can use to grow a community.

• Lists – Once added to a list, you can keep an eye on your most loyal followers and encourage more engagement.
  
• Spaces – Users can create a “Space,” where they use live audio discussions to chat about topics. Brands can use this to bring their community together, encourage engagement, and offer insights on topics.
  
• Polls – Need quick feedback on something? Polls are your way to go. They are fantastic ways to improve engagement by encouraging your followers and community members to interact with your posts.

Expanding Your Twitter Community’s Reach

Hashtags and Trends

Using hashtags can increase visibility, helping potential followers find important conversations that are happening in your community. Use existing hashtags that are going viral, or even create your own, and ask existing community members to use them. 

Look at hashtags to see what’s trending and use it to your advantage. For example, if you’re a pet company and #InternationalDogDay is trending, post an infographic, video, or even a simple post letting people know about your brand. Alternatively, post something funny or cute to encourage likes and engagement. This can help you gain followers and draw more people into your community.

Member Engagement and Recognition

With every community, it’s important to make members feel included and seen, as this will boost member engagement. There are lots of ways you can do this, including reposting specific member’s posts. Repost and engage with content that offers interesting insights, new information, or even those praising your community. You could also highlight the most active members of your community, rewarding them by giving them recognition. 

Have a balance of retweets and posts, and ensure that whatever you choose to retweet is relevant to your community and niche. All of this will help foster a sense of ownership and recognition among members, encouraging participation and engagement.

Sustaining a Dynamic Twitter Presence

Analyzing and Acting on Twitter Insights

Unlike other social media apps, such as Instagram, Twitter doesn’t feature a full dashboard for you to look at insights. Instead, you have to tap insights for each individual tweet or use another app. This is why Twitter communities might not be the best way to grow your tribe.

Adapting to Twitter’s Evolution

To harness Twitter for your community, it’s important to stay on top of the app’s updates. This social media giant is always rolling out new features, so test them all out and see what works best for your community. This way, you can keep the community fresh and engaged, why appealing to the app’s algorithm.

So, is Twitter a Good Place to Grow Your Online Community

Thinking of using Twitter or X to grow your online community? There are a few things you need to consider before making that leap.

Pros of Twitter Communities

• Hashtags – This feature is great for finding new community members. Unlike Instagram, where hashtags are becoming less of a feature to build your audience, Twitter hashtags always offer a way to connect with new people.
   
• Use polls for feedback – Get real-time feedback from your community with Twitter polls. You can choose the question, answers, and how long you want to run the poll for. This will help you get instant insights.
  
• Connect with community members in real-time – Twitter is known for its fast-paced environment, which allows you to connect with community members, address issues and get feedback in real-time.
  
• Spaces to host live events – Host live events and connect directly with Spaces. This audio format removes the barrier of text, making it easier to build connections and, thus, a community.
  

Cons of Twitter Communities:

• A troll’s haven – Twitter, or x, is sadly known for its trolls more than other social media sites. Users will create accounts simply to argue with others or spread negativity. When you’re creating a community, your focus should be to create a positive and safe environment where your members can express themselves. This might be difficult if X is your platform of choice.
  
• Impossible to moderate – Because of Twitter’s troll culture, moderation becomes much more difficult, which means you might end up with an unsafe space for your community.
  
• Not a lot of community insights – Unlike Instagram or TikTok, insights are few and far between. You’d have to click on each individual tweet or use a separate app.
  
• Constant, changing features – Twitter is always rolling out new features and getting rid of old ones. Unlike other social media apps, you have to pay for premium to access a lot of the features that might benefit your community. Since this is the case, you might as well use your money to use other platforms that are actually built for community building, such as Teach.

A Better Way of Using Twitter to Grow Your Private Community

There may be a lot of cons to growing a community on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it as an effective tool. With a few tried and tested strategies, you can use Twitter as a funnel to grow your community, no matter your niche. There’s a whole range of benefits to growing a private community, as opposed to setting up on social media. Here are a few:

• Social media puts you at the mercy of billionaires with changing minds
• Social media audiences come and go, but a community audience stays
• Private communities offer easier integration 
• Easier moderation than social media apps
• The control and the power are in your hands
• Live events

Here’s how to harness the power of the funnel strategy to grow your community through apps like Twitter.

The Funnel Strategy:

1. Twitter as the Beacon

Rather than growing a community on Twitter, use the app as a beacon, guiding potential users to your community. Use social media to make everyone aware of your community or promote a lead magnet, attracting like-minded individuals who will benefit most.

2. Start with Value

To entice people to join your community, it’s important to showcase the value you can offer them. Depending on your niche, you can offer valuable tips and insights. For example, if you’re niche is cooking, share quick and easy recipes to get potential members interested. Don’t give away all your best secrets, though! This type of content is meant to serve as a teaser for deeper, richer experiences you can offer in your community. 

3. Create Exclusive Invites

Once you’ve captured the attention of potential community members with content teasers, offering exclusive invites or VIP passes can help them take the next step. Share exclusive invitations to live events or special content on your Twitter platform. To access the content or events, users need to join your community. People will flood in, and your community will start to grow.

4. Engage and Direct

Always make sure to engage with your Twitter audience, so you can nudge them towards your community in an authentic way. It’s important to find a balance. If your Twitter users believe your sole goal is to push them toward your community, it might cause them to step back. Make sure to use CTAs (calls to action) to direct traffic from your Twitter to your private community. 

[Source: Teach.io website.]

Building Your Private Community

1. Choose Your Platform Wisely

Choosing the right platform for your community is so important. The platform should align with your niche and include all the features you need to nurture it and help you grow, including insights, moderation features, content integrations, and more. Think carefully about which features will benefit your community the most. For example, do you plan to host live events? Are you group coaching? Would a subscription model like Patreon benefit you most?

Teach.io has everything you need to grow your community from scratch. Complete with support for live events, one-to-one messaging, insights, and so much more, you can nurture a thriving community. Try Teach’s 14-day free trial now.

2. Ownership and Control

Predictability is key when creating a community, which is why having ownership and control over your space is so important. If you choose to create your community on social media, then you’re at the mercy of the owners, who are constantly adding and taking away different features, and increasing and decreasing your engagement. A private community will ensure you always have control over your space.

3. Tailor-Made Experiences

Because of the vastness of Twitter, it can be hard to curate tailor-made experiences that make your community members feel special and included. Using a private community eliminates distractions, allowing you to deliver specific experiences that will make community members feel special and encourage them to engage more with your content. From one-on-one messaging to polls and questions and answers, the power is in your hands. 

4. Data Sovereignty

When you use private platforms to host your community, you own all your community data. You can use this, rather than the limited insights offered by X and other social media sites, to understand your community members better and cater to their needs without being at the mercy of algorithm changes. For example, if the data reveals that your community prefers articles over video content, you can implement more articles without wondering whether your content will be seen.

5. Long-Term Stability

Social media platforms are unstable, and X is living proof of that. Once Twitter, X is now home to a variety of changing features. With a private platform, you don’t have to worry about that. You can create a community space that remains consistent and reliable over time, acting as a safe space that community members can retreat to.

Conclusion

Although X is one of the biggest social media platforms available, it’s safe to say that it’s not the best way to grow your community. With its constant changes, limited features, and how impossible it is to moderate, growing a sustainable community is a challenge. The best way to utilize Twitter is by finding like-minded individuals and using it as a funnel to direct traffic to your private community. From there, watch your community thrive and grow.