How to build a Twitter audience with Dr. Emily Anhalt
My interview guest this week is Dr. Emily Anhalt. Dr. Anhalt is a psychologist, consultant, and the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of Coa, a venture-backed startup that offers online therapist-led classes and one-on-one therapy.
For the past twelve years, Dr. Anhalt has been working clinically with executives, founders, and tech employees, and has conducted extensive research with prominent psychologists and entrepreneurs about how leaders can improve their emotional fitness.
I spoke to Dr. Anhalt about how she has grown her audience on Twitter to 20,000 followers and what she’s learned along the way. Enjoy!
Why did you start using Twitter?
I first got on Twitter in 2009 because my partner was working for a company that was acquired by Twitter. He started working there and I wanted to know what it was all about.
It was very frustrating for me at first. One of Twitter’s downfalls is it’s super hard to go from zero to one. When you start a new account, getting to a place where anyone is seeing what you’re posting is really frustrating.
Stick with it. It won’t be immediately gratifying but it doesn’t mean you won’t get there. It took me 12 years to get to 20,000 followers.
How did you get your first 1,000 followers?
You have to post regularly. The Twitter algorithm will actually show your tweets to more people if you’re putting out more content. I try to tweet at least once per day.
Have a voice and stay on brand. You have to decide what your thing is and only tweet about that. If I tweet about how my life is going, or something interesting about me that’s not part of my approach to modern psychology, no one engages with it.
What’s your thing on Twitter?
I simplify complex psychological concepts.
How did you grow your audience to 20,000 followers?
I’m not an expert by any means, but here are some things I’ve learned along the way.
Don’t be afraid to be controversial. My Twitter following has grown by leaps and bounds every time I post something that pisses some people off. Obviously you shouldn’t ostracize people just for the sake of ostracizing them, but if you do have a strong opinion, you’ll get a response.
Be concise and clear. Some good advice I got from Matthew Kobach was, “if you can say what you’re saying in half a tweet instead of a whole tweet, do that.” Unless you’re specifically tweeting for other therapists, don’t use jargon.
Be responsive and interactive. When I was growing my audience, I thought about the 10 people who had the audience I wanted to have and I followed each of them. Then I set an alert to be told every time they tweeted. If I could think of anything clever to respond with, I did immediately. Not only did their audience see me, but if they liked what I said, they retweeted it.
And when people reply to your tweets, engage back with them. It will keep your tweets visible in the timeline and makes people want to interact with you.
What has building an audience on Twitter done for you?
I met my co-founder on Twitter. The company we’re building is a result of showing a big group of people what we believe in and that attracts other people who believe those same things. There are companies who are interested in having me speak for them because they see I have a strong perspective.
If you’re interested in shifting the culture of therapy in the world, it’s hard to do that one person at a time. There is something unmatchable about getting out there and exposing yourself to bigger groups of people.
How do you get ideas for content?
Anytime I think of something that’s interesting as a concept, I write it as a draft. Each morning, I wake up and look at my drafts and decide which one applies best for that day. Sometimes I’ll even go back to old tweets and think about how I tweet it again in a slightly different way.
Any final advice for therapists?
We need clinicians who know what they’re talking about to be tweeting. There are so many people out there who have no idea what they’re talking about, and the experts should have the megaphone. I hope I can support clinicians in building their brand and putting what they know out there.