Building an Audience Through Twitter

Nick deWilde is a Product Marketing Principal at Guild Education. Guild is a fast-growing startup that partners with Fortune 500 employers. Guild unlocks opportunities for America’s workforce via education and upskilling.

Nick also runs his newsletter, The Jungle Gym. The Jungle Gym helps readers build a more fulfilling career that integrates work and life. Before working at Guild, Nick earned his MBA from Stanford Business School, and was a Managing Partner at Tradecraft.

Nick and I talk about his relationship with Twitter, and how social media can both serve you, and be a challenge. We talk about individual brands and growing a platform. Nick also shares his thoughts about marketing yourself as an individual, and we discuss how growing an audience plays into your career.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Building an audience while working full-time
• Three reasons people start newsletters
• What to do when your follower count hits a plateau

Links & Resources

• Morning Brew
• Fastly
• Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success
• Julian Shapiro
• Sahil Bloom
• Dickie Bush
• Medium
• Tiago Forte
• Building a Second Brain
• David Perell
• Write of Passage
• Tradecraft
• Guild
• Hacker news
• John Lee Dumas
• Packy McCormick
• Mario Gabriele
• Seth Godin
• Rachel Carlson
• On Deck
• Gong
• Matt Ragland
• Charli Prangley
• The Nathan Barry Show, featuring Kimberly Brooks
• Harry Stebbings
• The Twenty Minute VC
• Isa Adney
• Liz Fosslien, No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work
• Discord
• Reddit
• Pallet
• Craft + Commerce
• ConvertKit
• Enough
• Ryan Holiday
• James Clear
• Marie Forleo
• Ramit Sethi

Nick deWilde’s Links

• Follow Nick on Twitter
• Nick’s newsletter, The Jungle Gym
• To tweet, or not to tweet

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Nick:
I’ve tried to do things in my writing where my employer benefits from them. I talk about work a lot, and whenever I talk about hiring, I mention Gild is hiring. There are things I do to just try to make sure that it still feels worth the company’s while.

[00:00:25] Nathan:
In this episode, I talk to Nick deWilde, who writes a popular newsletter called The Jungle Gym. He’s got a background in product and growth, and all these things from the startup world. I just love the approach that he’s taken to writing these days.

We talk about growing as newsletter. We talk about his interesting relationship with Twitter and social media. How it can really serve you and be this great thing, and then it can also be challenging. Maybe you’re spending too much time on it, or time on it in a way that’s not actually serving you or benefiting you.

We talk about the rise of individual brands being used to grow a platform. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about, watching Morning Brew and Fastly, and some of these other companies do it. It’s just interesting whether you’re marketing as a company or an individual. It’s just a good conversation. We also talk about audience, and just how that plays into your career.

He recently made the switch from a full-time role, to doing more audience-based business stuff. He was just in the middle of that journey. So, it’s a fun place and time to catch up in the conversation.

Nick, welcome to the show.

[00:01:33] Nick:
Hey, thanks for having me, Nathan.

[00:01:35] Nathan:
I want to start on this article you have, that I like a lot, called, “To tweet, or not to tweet,” That got you ahead. I also happened to go to the Shakespeare festival recently, and watched them do “The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged.”

So, you know, I could probably pull off a good, to

[00:01:50] Nick:
Nice.

[00:01:51] Nathan:
Be or not to be speech right now. It’s in my head because I think about all the wonderful things that Twitter and an audience beyond that does for me. Then also the negative sides of it. So maybe we dive into that, but I’d also love to hear what sparked you diving in and building an audience.

[00:02:11] Nick:
Yeah, I’m so conflicted on Twitter, and audience building in general. Like anything, I imagine there’s a fair number of people who you talked to, who are in the writing community, who feel that way. On the one hand, Twitter does so many things for me. Especially over the past couple of years.

As we’ve been in lockdown, lives have moved online. I have met and made friends with so many amazing people through Twitter that I wouldn’t have met otherwise. Same with the newsletter, but Twitter is a little bit easier to build those relationships.