Episode Transcript
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 0:00
Once upon a time, there were 10s of 1000s of makers struggling every day they built for hours and hours but didn't ship and didn't earn enough income one day, the no code wealth podcast came to help them find the way because of this, makers became founders and live the life they deserve. Because of that, founders live lives of abundance, freedom, and creativity. That's what I'm really all about. Hello, my name is Aziz and from being a poor boy born to a single mother in North Africa, with no opportunities, just sheer hard work to failing multiple startups, yet learning a whole lot to barely escaping alive the war in Ukraine, leaving living as an illegal immigrant. I've lost everything twice. And now, I'm rebuilding my life one more time. 1% a day sharing the wisdom of luminaries I've interviewed on this podcast from Google executives to Amazon, Microsoft, Forbes, technology counsel, Harvard, Goldman Sachs, Financial Times, and even a priest from the Vatican church. Everyone is welcome here. So let's begin. My guest today is Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS. Thibault is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Tweet Hunter, and of Taplio, debo sold two startups and crashed way more. So we have a lot of things to learn, and discuss with him Thibault, how are you today?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 1:46
I'm so very good. Thank you very much for having me today. Super excited.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 1:50
I will begin because I'm really curious about your mind when it comes to audience building. What is something that when it comes to audience building that you think is an important thing you understood recently, or a problem? A lot of people do or make one mistake they make when they go through audience building? And if you could explain it in a way that you believe most people don't understand what it means to build an audience, that will be fantastic.
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 2:22
So that's a really interesting question. I think people see audience building in like a one way duration, from their, to their audience. And I think that's very wrong. That's really not how you start building an audience, you need to see it as when you are making friends in the real life, it's really a two way things you need to have. You need to that to build strong relationships with a small group of people. And this small group of effort once you are like internet friends that will support you no matter what you do. And you definitely need the support. Like every social media algorithm is built on the fact that every one of your posts that you publish, it's going to be pushed to new people. If your first cycle, your first cycle, reacted very positively to you to your contents. So if you have this strong first cycle, and they like very much your contents, Twitter will then push your content to more and more people. And that's how I think you build an audience. Does that make sense to you?
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 3:39
Thank you, it does make sense. But I have so many questions. So I'll play the devil's advocate first, first, okay. How big of a priority should audience building me? Why? Because we only have 24 hours in a day. And as a founder bombarded with so many things you have to do. It's like you're trying to do everything, okay, or five understand or at 50%. And therefore, maybe that's one of the causes of the people not building audiences properly. So should this be like the number one priority where you can stop doing other things that are important just to build this first? Or is it equally important as everything else? Or how vital is it?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 4:29
So it really depends on on your stage on the stage your ads? I cannot say that it should be the first thing you should care about. But I would put that in the top three. Let's just give me an give give you an example. In our case, our audience, led to slike validate our products, get feedbacks, get sales and gets all the relationships that we needed to grow our business. So it was Definitely, in our case, I think the number one priority. But I understand if you have, like a more niche product or different kinds of products, you could feel like you needed less. But there is this guy like do move bash, hoo hoo Lemonis is like, I think 12 13 million AR today. And even if the company is that big, it's still his number one priority today just being active on social media to just push to push the why of his solution is so good.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 5:44
Thank you. And, Phil, I have so many questions throughout this one. Look, a lot of people on social media. And I'm not saying this shouldn't be a mistake, purposefully, but human nature is to connect with people who are similar to you. And often, your group of friends, if you're building friends online are in many ways, I mean, not in a bad way your competitors, not your clients. And therefore whatever feedback they give you, whatever actions whatever topic they speak about, basically, you as a founder or as someone who's trying to build an online income or to share to become like an author or an authority, you're not dealing with your target market, because your target market are not like you, they're the people who need you. And so do you feel that a lot of people might make a mistake of hanging around groups that are actually not giving them the market feedback that they need? And instead, they should spend it with people who can become paying customers? Or is it like you mentioned previously, as long as they click and commenting engage with you or to pose that doesn't matter who they are? They're getting your name known by the algorithm sharing more about you out there?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 7:06
Yes, definitely. I fully agree with you like, if your target market is pregnant women, and you spend your days on Twitter, sharing your story and hearing feedback from Twitter, people, I think you're doing this wrong, and you will hear feedback that is totally not what your core target is rethinking. And I did that mistake in my first two startups like listening to people who are not my core audience. So when we, I think when we said that audience building is an important thing. I am not telling you to go on any social media and try to get hundreds of 1000s of followers, this is worthless, if those followers are not part of your core audience. So it's, it's really much more interesting to have to be followed by a few 100, or a few 1000 people that are really relevant to what you're building.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 8:10
Thank you, I'm still I have so many questions. So I'll ask this one. You spoke about the algorithm where for the first cycle, it will check whether your content is good or not. But recently, for example, on Twitter, I noticed is moving more towards something like tick tock, where a lot of the things on the feed are not from people you follow, but it's suggesting to you, you might like this thing. And therefore, often people are noticing less engagement, that their posts are having less views, because basically whatever you're posting is not going to your followers is going to new people who might like it, but then they have no idea who you are. Did you notice this? Is this correct? And if we're living in such a world, what would be the best strategy to be relevant?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 9:04
Yeah, that's I think that's very true. Like, no matter the platform, you what's really like all of them tend to work the same way. Meaning that they just they take a sample of people and they push your content to the sample of people. And if it performs well, it will extend a little bit and a little bit and a little bit until it's not working anymore. So that's that's why having a strong first cycle is important because it will then allow you to reach the maybe the second or the third cycle. But then it's it's only it only rely on the content itself. And if the content is not good, and even if you have a lot of true fans, your content will not be viral. because at one point, or the fourth or the fifth psyker, Twitter or any other social media, we stopped pushing it. So right now, I totally agree that every platform out there is relying less and less on followers, and more and more on a sample of people testing your contents, so that the social media can know if your content is compelling enough. So it's worth pushing it to new people.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 10:32
Thank you. And therefore, a very relevant question becomes, how do you define good content? What kind of content is something that is attractive to followers? Or? We don't really know, you just have to try it. And then sometimes you guess, well, and sometimes, you guessed in a wrong way. And so how would you know, before publishing something, if you think, yes, this is good content, or it's not possible to know you do your best job, and then you discover by publishing?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 11:07
So my first, my first thought about this is that you can think that thinking aloud and reading aloud will give you the answer to this question. And I think that's really wrong. Because every every word has a unique voice. And what works for me can not work for you. So I really think that's what's best if you want to perform on social media is try and try a lot. And forget about quality in the in the first place, and go very, very strong with quantity. And by going with quantity, you will end up seeing what's working and what's not working, and you will you will do better than if you do win if you focus on quality. And of course, there are a lot of recipes that's that you can that you can use. Basically what makes a good content is a content that people want to engage with. A content that you want to engage with is something that triggers a strong emotion, like, fear, or anger or joy, or, or basic things like questions. Fear Of Missing Out, so stuff like this.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 12:34
Thank you, that's actually very helpful. And let's step back, and I'm gonna play the devil's advocate, again, to say, is social media really useful for someone to succeed to have like, an online income that is working well? Or is it mostly a distraction, where everybody's yelling? And trying to be dramatic and to create emotions, but nothing? It's like, a wasted opportunity? Or it's a waste of time? Do you have recent examples or some things that, you know, wow, this person started from zero, and now their life changed totally, because of LinkedIn, because of Twitter, etc? Or are those stories from the past when the algorithms were more friendly, and now it's much much, much more difficult.
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 13:30
So it's, it's definitely not the only thing to do. It's, it's free, in such a huge opportunity. But it's not the only one. So if it's not your thing, you should do something else. There are plenty of people having a very successful life in business without using social media. But at the same time, we ran these Twitter growth contests a few months ago. And in just three months, we so like, almost 10 people going from two or 3000s followers to like 40,000 50,000 just because they were they were focused on that. And they were delivering very, very interesting contents about very different topics. So what I can say is, yes, taking this seriously, and putting in the force can be life changing for your business or for your life engineer. It doesn't and twitter twitter is interesting here because it lets you do this while staying on if you want to, I don't even know us, which is definitely not the case for Instagram, Facebook or Tik Tok. Like most of the big influencers there they have To show their face and they have to be someone. A few, a few Twitter creators are not doing that.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 15:10
Thank you. And then since you spoke about emotions and all that there was a bank account on Twitter who said that he tested publishing every day and you thread and his engagement totally died. But if he publishes once a week, when he gets a lot of engagement and growth, while you're speaking about contests and competitions, where people will publish a lot will create a lot of content. Did you notice this? Do you feel he was saying it just to provoke people and to get some engagement, or that publishing once a week, the your best quality possible is better than trying to publish three times a day tweets or threads or anything like that.
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 15:58
Like publishing one thread a day is very difficult job, I was very, I would be afraid to saturate my audience attention. Or having Twitter that great Shadowbane in me, I think one or two threads per week is really good. But at the same time, you need to tweet every day. If you don't, something will happen that you you will not lie is that if you don't wait for every day, Twitter will downgrade your accounts and will downgrade the reach of your tweets. So then you will end up with less engagement. And you will not understand why this is happening. So tweet every day and publish one or two threads per week. I think this is the sweet spot.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 16:53
Thank you so much. And you spoke about building friendships and how important it is. I spoke once to a founder of a community in the NOC code space. And he reflected and said there are 10 people 10 relationships, that have been the reason for all the good things that happened to him. And no matter how many 1000s of people are in his community, those 10 people are responsible for 99% of his success. So do you feel it's a viable strategy to have a few people who are very good friends with you? And you don't have a lot of followers on Twitter or LinkedIn, but because of them, you can open doors, get opportunities, help each other co create beautiful things? Or do you see it's more by proving yourself getting the big followers, you will attract the attention of the right people, and therefore those relationships will be stronger and better and higher quality than what you begin with? What's your perspective on this?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 17:56
So I really think that yes, totally, like, I fully agree, just maybe 10 People can be the reason for 90% of your success. In my case, it's I think it's the case, like when we just meeting with this big Twitter influencer, GK Marina was, was one of the biggest reason of the success of mine is off my product, tweet Hunter. But this happened on Twitter. Like this is crazy, just sending, sending him a Twitter direct message, a private message made us talk and we talked more, and we realized that we wanted to work together. And and we agree on some term, and we started and this would not have happened if I didn't start being active on Twitter. So yes, a few people can change your life. And it can be on specific currencies. It can also be on Twitter or on any other social media.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 19:08
Thank you. And then I will ask you since you spoke about the importance of building those relationships, and as you came Malina, how you connected with him and found commonalities. What do you believe? Is the method or the way to build friendships? Do you think they happen naturally through magical chemistry? And we don't really control it? Or is it about finding people who have similar beliefs and values like you, or people who are growing and on the same path? Or how would you if you would help someone who's an introvert, let's say listening, a founder who is not good at networking? What would you tell him? How friendships are built on social media?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 19:54
I think it's really a matter of similarities. If if Though you're following a creator, and he's putting out some very good, valuable contents, thus engaging with his content, and try to provide value as well, and then engaging over DMS, and pretty much the same, providing value, asking questions, and not trying to sell anything, not trying to ask anything. This is the way to go if you want to make real relationships, and basically 90% of the DMS I received on Twitter are about, hey, can you check my product? Or hey,
I am in production today? Can you aboard me? Or, hey, please, send send advice about this? This is not good. Like this is just give me something give me something. Give
me something, please. If if you if you do not, if Dennis did not give me something first, or just engage the conversation in a in a friendly way, I don't see how you can make friends.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 21:10
I agree 100%. And I still have so many few questions more at least, but a lot of questions, which is one of them. What do you believe is the difference between Twitter and LinkedIn? Since you are creating products for both of them? What are what should be the goals of someone who is posting on both? What differences? Should they keep in mind? Will they create different things? Or are they just the same? Except you will reach different people?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 21:44
So that's very good question. Like people think that the two social media are very different. And the contents needs to be very different. I don't think that's so much true. So of course, people are very different on both social media and Twitter is more fun. While LinkedIn is a bit more formal. But people think that on LinkedIn, you need to post news links, or very long posts. And actually, if you take the best performing Twitter contents, and you put it on LinkedIn, it's performing very well too. Because you are constraints. On Twitter, you have these 200 180 characters limits. So you're forced to do short things, and you're not on LinkedIn. So people assume that they need to do longer contents. But the shorter the contents, the more appealing it is because people on any social media have a very short attention span. So yeah, go for short contents and try see see the very beginning of your LinkedIn posts as a hook as a scroll stopper, something that should just grab attention. And that would give the reader the motivation to read the rest of your contents, then that I think, I think the a few other differences between the two social media are that you can tweet a lot on Twitter. And that's fine. Whereas issue tweet a lot. If you post a lot on LinkedIn, you will be penalized. LinkedIn will fly your account as spammy and will downgrade your contents. So do not post more than one post every four hours and try to do a maximum of three per day. And on LinkedIn, it's fine. If you do a post every two or three days on Twitter, I would really recommend doing at least one tweet a day.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 24:06
Thank you. That's really useful and practical. And then I will ask you to predict the future which is funny, but very useful. How do you think Twitter will change when Elon Musk will be in charge?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 24:23
That's, that's the million dollar question. I have, like I can I can make assumptions. But I have a hard time predicting this for myself. My guess is that it will not change that much. We will see less ads maybe no other tool. And people like me using the API will be will have to pay way more for our usage. That is so I don't think it will be a huge change as people are saying
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 25:01
Thank you very much. This was a wonderful conversation. I mean, of course, I wanted to last longer, but like you said, we should keep our content short for people's attention. So can you speak to me this about tweet Hunter and about tapeo? How did the idea come to be? What Why do you feel or believe they're different to any competitors in the marketplace and any plans for the future?
Thibault LOUIS-LUCAS 25:33
Yeah, so like, let's, let's take twitter, on the market, you have a few tools that are helping you to post content on social media. And they are all focused on one thing, scheduling, scheduling your contents. So it will go out at the right time. And then you have huge automation. But you have no tool out there that's actually helping you write better contents. And that's what Twitter is about. It's, it's like it has AI in it, and it will analyze your Twitter accounts. And it will try to find very high performing an old tweets, so that you can understand the pattern of what's working and what's not working and take inspiration from those posts. The platform has a lot of other features like analytics, CRMs, and a lot of little things that will help you not only grow on Twitter, but also make it useful for your business. Tab to is pretty much the same. But for LinkedIn, instead of Twitter. We have we made this choice of having dedicated products for one social media, because every social media have its constraints and the big platform that are allowing you to provision all social media, they are super limited on each one of them. So we made the choice to do tweet Hunter, which we think can become the best tool for Twitter, and tapeo to be the best tool for LinkedIn.
Abdulaziz M Alhamdan 27:22
Thank you so much, Tebow. This was my privilege, my honor. I will make sure to write the websites for both products as well as your Twitter in the episode description. And I wish you to keep going and to have a great day. Thank you very much. It was a pleasure.
