Here’s the thing about “knowing your audience” on Twitter...

As you become comfortable with tweeting, you may find that your message resonates with unexpected audiences.

If you’re evolving your messaging, your target audience will change over time. Be prepared to adapt.

For example, when I became active on Twitter, I knew I wanted to engage the scientific community under #SciComm.

My approach was not good. I used the hashtag to tweet articles about science, science communication or social media.

Why was this a bad strategy? Next tweet

People who are interested in those topics already know where they can find that information. My posts would receive an occasional like or retweet when I’d use #SciComm and reference a quote from the articles I shared.

When did things change? When my content changed.

Next tweet.

Once I started implementing the “tweet what you know” strategy, I found my audience.

I tweeted updates after lecturing in #Caltech107. I used the platform to engage students in Q&As.

People were interested to learn more about the course, so they followed me.

There’s more...

It was only a year ago that I hit my stride. It started with this thread

I started tweeting what I knew in a way that my audience could directly apply the key takeaways to their own social media use. https://twitter.com/sarah_mojarad/status/1136891428582305792

How long did it take to get from my #SciComm posts to tweetorials? Three years.

Folks, please be patient. Trust the process. You will build a following, but there is no rush.