Peter Yang, on paper, is an ideal product manager. BUT, apart from having an exceptional resume and having worked at Roblox, Reddit, Credit Karma, Twitch, and Twitter, he has successfully managed to get 100k followers on Twitter, 70k followers on LinkedIn, and an amazing monetized newsletter of 45k subscribers.

The Growth Journey

I would say Peter started his journey around January 2020, when he published his book. He mentions in this article all the details regarding how he did it, but by the end of the year 2020, he had sold about 5000 copies, which is not an easy feat to achieve (he had just about 4000 followers when he published this article).

How I Self Published a Book that Sold 5,000 Copies

Peter has been a consistent user of Twitter for a very long time. Here is one of his earliest short threads

However, his first popular thread came in November 2020 when he published a blog post and wrote a thread on the same topic. This was one of his first threads to receive over 100 likes during that time.

At the end of the same month, he wrote another banger thread on OnlyFans, which blew up and brought him over 4,000 likes. Around this time, he started changing his content to be more focused on the creator economy and web3. Since Peter was already working with companies based in the creator economy, it should not have been very hard for him to research and generate content within this field. This is an amazing thread where we can clearly see his product management skills and logic at work.

After November, Twitter was consistently putting out "good" content along with a little bit of shitposting for Peter. If you're still not convinced that Peter always loved and valued Twitter, here's one of the top tweets from that month.

Since the start of 2021, he has been learning and posting a lot of content about the web3 space. Most of the content that Peter posted this year was beginner-friendly. From what I understood from his substack and tweets, he wanted to learn about web3 and share his knowledge with the world. Along with his regular content, he jumped on the web3 trend, which was booming highly during this year, and was successfully able to increase his audience on Twitter from about 4k in December 2020 to 23k in December 2021.

Currently, he has about 107k Twitter followers. When I began researching him, he was closing in on 100k, which means he gained about 10k followers within a span of 15 days.

Let's take a closer look at how he achieved this while balancing a full-time job.

Growth Drivers

1. Consistency Over Anything

Peter become dead consistent for Twitter around November 2020, not that he was not consistent before that but before then he was just using Twitter as a normal user. Around November 2020, he started value sharing threads and tweets on Twitter and he committed to his newsletter.

He has built a content system that helps him publish without experiencing writer's block. He says he achieves this by doing the following:

1. Peter writes a newsletter every 15 days.

2. He breaks up all the newsletter content into 5 different social media posts.

3. He schedules his posts days in advance.

In one of his newsletters, he mentioned that he uses TypeFully for Twitter streaks and scheduling.

Peter believes that going viral is overrated. Instead, if you consistently post enough content, some of it is bound to go viral.

2. Shitposting Frequently

Peter is all about jokes and memes. He never misses a chance to share a meme along with valuable content. He doesn't care if he doesn't get attention for these posts, but he is committed to posting memes every now and then. He makes sure to have a funny take on news or any ongoing conversations on Twitter.

Although he provides amazing content and resources on Twitter, a sudden increase in his audience has always come after his memes went viral. Trust me, he is good at it.

Due to this, one of his tweets went crazy viral. It is his best-performing tweet to date, and as you guessed, it is a funny shitpost.

This tweet went such crazy viral that he got about 15k followers through this single tweet alone. He mentions about all this craziness in this article here.

Here is one more funny thing I found, Peter ran a maven cohort where in the FAQ he mentioned this. He is hilarious 😂

3. Providing Value in Newsletter

I think Peter has developed a loyal fan base here. I have read almost all of his newsletters since November 2020, which are around 45+ articles, and I have not found one where he didn't provide value or any of the articles felt incomplete. He produces one of the highest-quality newsletters for his audience.

Up until the middle to end of 2022, he also had a newsletter every now and then about Web3, along with creator economy and product management. All the articles in 2023 have been focused on the creator economy. More recently, he has started interviewing guests in his issues, which I think could be amazing for the growth of his newsletter. He goes really deep into whatever the topic is for the issue; none of the information shared in the issues feels generic or shallow. He creates new concepts, analyzes other things in the creator economy, and also provides valuable actionable insights for anyone who is trying to be a creator.

What are some actionable insights which anyone could take from Peter Yang and his journey?

1. Post Consistently (EVEN IF IT'S A SHITPOST)

This is nothing new; we all know that posting consistently without having writer's block is hard, but Twitter is a fun place. Your content does not have to be pitch-perfect; it can be informative or funny. Be a part of the conversation and become more active. Peter mentions in one of his articles that Consistency > Going viral.

Use tools like Typefully to do Twitter posting streaks. Starting from a blank page is hard every day, but we saw Peter's technique to overcome this in the growth drivers above.

Posting great content sporadically and good enough content frequently, the latter always wins the race in terms of audience building. So, when you produce a lot of just-good content, you get more chances to connect with your audience. Of course, not every piece of content will be your masterpiece, but your fans will still find value in it. Plus, when you're regularly putting out content, it all adds up and can have a huge impact. And, the more you show up in your audience's lives, the more likely they are to think of you and engage with your stuff on a regular basis.

2. Learn what is working and what is not

Starting on Twitter is hard. Most of the content you post will only reach about double digits eyes, and chances are, most of the content you post won’t even get engagement. Peter always tries to guide his audience to pick a niche. I know I am just reposting the content he has shared here, but this is one of the biggest lessons I learned after reading about him.

Peter advises working backwards from the outcome and trying to find an answer to the questions that people are looking for. Here is what he mentions about this:

So basically, experiment, experiment, experiment until you get the hang of it.

3.Build Connections through Replies and DMs

This is the biggest lesson for anyone who is trying to grow on Twitter. Peter says that "80% of the value from having an audience comes from the DMs." Supporting your peer group who are trying to grow and people who you want to stand with is more important than ever. Peter mentions this multiple times throughout his articles.

Here is how Peter suggests building connections with people online:

That’s it, that’s the top 3 things that anyone who is trying to grow an online audience should focus on.

As I come to the end of this article, I cannot help but express my gratitude towards Peter Yang for the incredible value he provides in his newsletter. His insights will be instrumental as I start to grow my audience.

If you're someone who is trying to grow your audience, then you should definitely check out Peter's newsletter. Here are a few of the best issues from his newsletter that I highly recommend:

• The 5-Step Playbook to Turn Your Knowledge into Income Online

• 10 Lessons From My Journey as a Creator and Product Leader

• Jay Clouse (Creator Science): How to Make $500K Online as a Knowledge Creator

These issues are packed with valuable insights, tips, and tricks that can help you succeed in the creator economy. I will quickly plugin something to end this article which I loved from one of his issues.

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading and don’t be shy to leave your comment if you have any. Also, please consider following us on Twitter (Keval Jagani, Meet Shukla) and sharing this newsletter.