Guide to Grow Career with X
Step by step guide to grow personal branding on X
This is part of the Guest Series by the Tallinn Product Group — a space where readers and experts from product teams share their experiences and ideas.
In this article, Gosha Knjazhev shares his insights on growing a personal brand on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn to maximize career and consulting opportunities.
Social branding has become an essential part of career growth today, and we hope this guide will be valuable to you.
If you have an idea or experience you’d like to share with the readers of the Tallinn Product Group, feel free to reach out or suggest your topic in the comments.
Why grow on X?
Most people want to grow a personal brand, but let’s be honest, nobody’s got time for that. After binge-reading Nikita Bier’s Twitter, I decided to give it a shot and quickly realized: you can automate this thing.
My name is Gosha, and I’m a digital designer. And the goal is simple: promote myself on Twitter. And adjust ROI: minimize the “I” and make “R” as predictable as possible. In other words, to build an automated leadgen and a cumulative source of social proof of my mastery.
Result: after 2 months, I have: 450 followers (currently +-10 new subs per day), daily posts and comments, 1 booked consultation, and a couple of nuclear fans.
Bonus: Professional positioning and growing social proof of my professionalism (whatever it means).
Budget: +-$100 for infra. +-$300 of my (and not only) time.
The Playbook. How to grow on X?
So, let’s begin with the basics. After chatting with a few marketers, it turned out Twitter growth is just a system:
Comment a lot.
Follow people.
Post viral stuff.
Post smart stuff.
Shitpost.
Growth formula:
A) First 2K followers → mass follow + heavy commenting.
B) 2-20K → viral posts (ask follow+comment for freebies, reviews, automations, “top lists”) + partnerships with other influencers (now you are, lol)
C) 20K+ → shitposting and audience migration, I guess.
I’m at stage A, so I’ll write about it. Here’s what actually works. You are welcome to steal it.
1. Nail your niche
Twitter isn’t about size. It’s about finding your weird, specific bubble.
Mine: product, marketing, and design people interested in behavioural design and interface nudges.
2. Adjust your profile
Bio: clear hook, some numbers, a touch of humanity.
Avatar: your face. No AI art.
Banner: visual extension of your bio.
Follow ratio: don’t look like a bot.
name: easy to transcribe
3. Find ~100 influencers your people follow.
We’ll dance around them. They have what you don’t. Its visibility among your target audience and that’s something to take advantage of.
If a company has a good Twitter (like Figma’s), that works too.
Avoid people posting about politics (for example, I personally don’t comment on Paul Graham)
I’m also not sure engaging with huge commentators is a good idea.
4. Comment like your life depends on it
30+ a day. It’s half your growth engine.
Use TweetHunter or analogs for creating specific feeds.
Comment within 2 hours after publication.
Medium length = credibility.
Buy the blue check. It boosts you to the top.
5. Mass following
The other half.
ксScrape followers of your influencers.
Filter bots and randoms with automation.
Follow 40–50/day, slowly ramp up until 100.
Unfollow non-followers after 3–4 days.
Auto-DM new followers with a chill welcome message.
6. Content
Post daily. Show expertise, not noise.
7. Sourcing
Steal smart. Use your old work, niche articles, and weird foreign blogs. Rewriting deepens your own thinking. Escape the sources that are close to your audience.
8. Welcome DM
It’s your first impression. That’s how I sold my first consult. (When we moved to WhatsApp from Twitter, I had a feeling of Tinder-like success)
Bonus points
Tool stack (~110 €/month)
PhantomBuster — followers scraping, welcome DM, follow/unfollow automation
self-hosted n8n — filtering for massfollow
TweetHunter or Hypefurry — content
Checkmark — cheap visibility
Extras:
Freelance commenter
Avoid:
Follow-for-follow
Buying accounts
Comment rings
Threads before 2K
AI stamps in your content
1:1 content сopy of Twitter and Linkedin
My go-to:
Form a small “growth pact” with friends. Comment on each other, but keep it classy.
Also, top lists perform insanely well. They get bookmarked like crazy.
And now stats
Most viewed piece of content: https://x.com/withgosha/status/1975622406288105974
New follows:
Last 2 months Overall:
Honesty Section
Maybe it’s not the best way to spend money, but I treat it as a pet project.
I deleted Twitter from my phone. Everything runs on autopilot: mass following, welcome DMs, and a freelance commenter. My only job is to spend an hour a week moderating automations and the freelancer’s work. Once a month, I write 30 posts, which takes about three hours.
The result is visible and cumulative. It’s my persistence in the professional community, my expertise, my social trust, my social capital. It’s nice that I can now share my Twitter alongside my portfolio site.
To get more out of it, I plan to adapt this flow for LinkedIn. I also generate a lot of content, so I think about adjusting my website for GEO/SEO.
If you want to talk about Twitter, ask for automation tips, or discuss my recent experiments. find me here: gosha.ee or x.com/withgosha
P.S. Now I trust the Dead Internet theory much more.
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