Born to dilly dally, forced to lock in

In September 2021, I started the Tweet 100 challenge initiated by Jay Clouse. Tweet 100 was a challenge to share something meaningful on Twitter every day for 100 days. I took this challenge for several reasons:

• I could see the potential in connecting with nonprofits on the platform. As a visual storyteller who primarily worked with nonprofits, this was attractive to me.

• I wanted to see how much I could grow on the only platform that was just associated with my name, not my business. Every other social media platform I had, I created a business page (Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin), but not on Twitter.

• I wanted to see how well I could translate my expertise and perspective through writing. Twitter threads were becoming a thing, I wanted to experiment with a different storytelling format.

• I wanted to have a space to share my work and connect with other creators. Instagram was dying for photographers, and it definitely wasn’t a place for writers. I was looking for a new home online.

After 100 days of flailing about without direction, I started to get the hang of what my audience was responding well to, and what wasn’t resonating as much. Jay Clouse then shared that he would be continuing on to do Tweet 365, and while it seemed daunting, I decided to keep going. I even started posting Monday-Friday on LinkedIn to see how my writing would resonate on that platform. While this challenge is what jumpstarted my journey in writing online, it lacked a few things.

• There was no clear way for participants to connect with each other and brainshare.

• The leaderboard was cool but didn’t take into account who already had an engaged following before writing daily.

• The leaderboard only counted the days a person was consistent and the followers gained. It didn’t count impressions (though I imagine this would be hard information to gather), new clients or customers, new speaking opportunities, increased podcast downloads, or new relationships formed. If Jack Conte is right and the follower is dead, then this is kind of a big deal.

• There was no guidance on how to package your expertise. The founders of Ship 30 for 30 were also getting pretty well known by this point, and they started Typeshare to help writers generate and package ideas. While I love what they’ve built, this doesn’t really help you find your unique voice, it just helps you sound like everyone else who’s looking to build an audience.

After 365 days of writing online with no guidance, no true accountability, and no community, I:

• doubled the following on my personal account

• tripled the following on my podcast account

• garnered 750K impressions on Twitter

• doubled my creative business income without any outbound outreach

• gained the confidence to speak at podcast conferences the following year

• grew as a podcast host and interviewer

All it took was one commitment to writing and publishing daily. I can’t promise you any of these results, but I can promise that for the next 90 days, you’ll get weekly guidance on what to write, accountability from myself and others in the community, and a Notion template for tracking your progress towards your goals.

This isn’t the space where we bite the head off of a big project, like writing a book. This is the space where we form the creative habits that will allow us to create daily for weeks, months, and years without running out of ideas.

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