It’s hard to admit that it’s 2022, and I’m a complete Twitter newbie.

No more fronting.

I joined Twitter way back in 2008, and then performed an unforgivable act: I bought a bunch of bot followers on Fiverr, so I could “look cool” to all my corporate cubicle mates.

Then I checked out of Twitter and nothing much happened with my profile for the next decade.

Yeah. I was one of those guys.

Low self-esteem, and confidence in short supply, trying to make myself look like I was the next incarnation of Tim Ferriss.

What’s the lesson in this shocking admission of guilt?

Don’t Be Me!

Last week I had my assistant delete all the fake followers one by one, bringing my follower count down to 300-ish fine folks, some of which I still question if I deserve their attention based on my past behavior.

Deep breath

But I’m reformed now, trying to learn how to do things the right way, and I’m finding three things to be true about Twitter right now:

• This is where the smart people hang out. Sorry, but it’s true. After spending just a few weeks on Twitter, it feels refreshing to pull my head out of the Facebook black hole and to get some elevation.
• Twitter appears to be having a bit of a revival after a few years of being overshadowed by Facebook and Instagram. Or maybe it never really went away, and my experience of it has simply shifted. In either case, something feels different to me, and I like it.
• As part of my research on how to do things the “right way” research, I came upon a tool called Hypefury. It’s a powerful tool that promises to support engagement without slipping back into Shady-town. And so yesterday, after completing a free 7-day trial, I purchased an annual subscription to Hypefury.

I’m committing myself for at least one year to working on building authentic connection on Twitter, which feels quite supportive of my goal to write more in 2022.

In just the past few days, I’ve seen some pretty promising improvements in my engagement, and the entire process feels delightful.

So what is Hypefury?

Hypefury describes itself as “your personal assistant to grow and monetize your Twitter audience.”

To put it in simpler terms, Hypefury is a Twitter scheduling tool with a strong emphasis on thread posts (more on this subject later).

It’s not meant to be a complete social listening suite like Hootsuite, or replacement for the native Twitter experience.

It’s a simple tool to schedule your tweets, leverage their unique growth features, and then go back about your day.

I still do most of my reading and engagement directly on Twitter via their official client.

Hypefury is a very simple tool, but they have done a great job of honing in on a few key levers that are helping their users achieve growth and break through the noise on a platform that boasts almost 400 million users.

Their subscribers are quite vocal about this.

It’s helped get me excited about using Twitter again, so I’m grateful for that.

In my next post, I’ll break down the experience of using Hypefury for the first time, and two key actions you’ll want to take when getting started with your trial.