The Workspaces Twitter Playbook

Growing an audience of ~50,000 followers on Twitter (it’ll never be X to me) isn’t easy. Especially when that following is for a newsletter.

It didn’t happen overnight. But it wasn’t complete luck. It took a hunch, consistency, and a bit of trial and error.

Over the past five years, I’ve grown the Workspaces newsletter following to 50,000 after starting with absolutely 0 following of my own. This is not an exaggeration.

Going against my better judgement… I’m pulling back the curtain and revealing exactly what’s worked for me… the content strategy, engagement tactics, and growth hacks that helped me build a loyal audience.

No fluff. No gatekeeping.

Just the actual playbook that has worked (and is still working) for the past 5 years.

When I started Workspaces back in 2020, I didn’t have any sort of audience or following.

But I was confident that it wouldn’t matter.

From day 1 I had a hunch that due to the nature of the content (aka the fact that it was technically my guests content) I would be able to grow off of their hard-earned followings.

This hunch quickly proved to be true and would turn into the core of the Workspaces social strategy going forward.

Piggybacking to 50,000 Followers

The strategy was and remains simple…

1. I would convince a guest to share their workspace with me

2. I would share it on Twitter

3. I would tag the guest

4. I would email them that the post was live and that I have shared it and would love any shares from their end as well

5. They would either RT or share it on their own

It’s that simple.

Out of the 475 workspaces posted, only 4 guests did not share it after the fact.

And yes… I know exactly who they are. And not because I hold grudges (well… that might be part of it) but because it’s so rare that it stands out.

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

I share new workspace tours from the branded @workspacesxyz account.

The featured guest also shares in some way. A quote tweet like this is amazing but is also the most work for the guest. They will typically simply RT which is also great.

In this example, the original tweet + the quote tweet generated nearly 400,000 impressions.

Admittedly, a lot of this does come down to the guest in a few ways.

Do they have a visually appealing workspace? Do they have a large following themselves?

This flywheel has helped the branded account grow each and every week as it taps into new audience pockets every single time it is shared and reshared.

It Goes Down in the DMs

I have easily sent over 1,000 cold DMs since starting the project. Early on, it was the only way that I could get new guests.

I would reach out to countless potential guests each week, quickly explaining the general concept of the project.

If they agreed, I’d quickly shift the conversation to email.

As more and more people shared their workspaces with me, I was able to reach out to bigger guests, hoping to piggyback off of bigger followings.

Nowadays, I send far less DMs. The relationship has flipped. Interested guests now reach out to me to get their setup featured—knowing that a feature in the newsletter is basically a giant ad about them and their projects.

When I am sending cold DMs now, I have the benefit of social proof.

Workspaces was built on cold DMs.

Chances are your project can be, too.

Be prepared for rejections, ghostings, etc.

Eventually, the same people that ignored your DMs will be reaching out to you apologizing for missing your message and asking if they can be included. 3 years later.

Evergreen Content

An unexpected benefit of Workspaces is that all of the content is evergreen. This allows the same content to be recycled and reused over and over and over and over again.

Will a guest always be working at the same company they were when originally featured? No, but that part doesn’t matter.

The images of the workspace are evergreen and are a time capsule of how someone worked at a specific point in time. This workspace can always be used for inspiration when rethinking your own workspace.

It truly doesn’t matter if the workspace is from 2020 or 2025.

Visual Appeal

The Workspaces content also visual. This should not be overlooked and is an important aspect to the entire social strategy as well as its growth.

When you are able to publish visual content on the social feed you are setting yourself up for success.

People are quick to toss a ❤️ or share on an image vs a block of text.

Find a way to share something visual and appealing.

Be a Reply Guy

Being borderline annoying as a “Reply Guy” on the timeline helped kickstart the initial growth and interest of both the newsletter and social account.

Whenever I see a workspace on the timeline I drop the Workspaces handle or URL—and sometimes both.

I honestly don’t even care if the specific person I’m replying to agrees to share.

Of course it would be nice. But that isn’t the point of the reply.

I want their followers to see the reply and subscribe to the newsletter.

Do this long enough and people will actually start being a Reply Guy for you.

I hated being a Reply Guy early on. I felt annoying, thirsty, begging, etc. But the truth is that it works.

As long as you do this in a semi-authentic way and have something that might actually benefit the person you’re replying to, it should be generally well-received.

Play the Hits

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

That cannot be more true when it comes to the Workspaces Twitter account.

Sure, there’s room to experiment (and I should admittedly do much more of this) but I have found a predictable schedule and set of tweets that seem to always work.

A “Happy Monday” tweet with a grid of workspaces to kick off the week.

A “Workspace Wednesday” tweet.

A “Happy Friday” tweet to close out the week.

This or that tweets.

Nostalgia.

Rate this workspace.

You get the idea.

When I find a tweet or series of tweets that resonates, I will hammer it into the ground.

Use Twitter’s search with the exact text in the above examples and you will see countless more with similar results—some might even be using the exact same images, too 😉

Giveaways

An infrequent but engaging strategy that has also worked is giveaways.

I will partner with workspace-related brands to give something of value (typically >$500) away to the followers & readers of Workspaces.

I don’t directly charge for this but the brand is responsible for providing the item(s) and shipping them out to the winner.

The brand gets eyeballs on their products. I get new subscribers to the newsletter.

The format for these giveaways is simple.

Retweet the post and subscribe to the newsletter to enter.

It’s that simple.

I tag the brand in the first post and in a reply tweet I also link to the exact item being given away.

Notice how the giveaway is also visual? That’s by design.

Every giveaway tweet will also be accompanied by an image that grabs attention and stops the scroll on the timeline.

If the entire Workspaces premise is based around images, giveaways shouldn’t be any different.

Linking to Posts

At the end of the day, the Workspaces Twitter account exists to drive traffic to the website which drives new subscribers to the newsletter.

It is a massive reason why the newsletter has grown to 14,500 subscribers 100% organically.

But we also know that adding links to tweets can suppress reach.

That’s why I will typically tease an upcoming workspace tour without a link like this:

Following that up later in the day with a reply to the original tweet telling people to sign up to the newsletter to see it first:

These replies get far less overall views than the original tweets. That’s to be expected. It’s a numbers game. Do this for every single newsletter and the numbers begin to add up and drive social followers to newsletter subscribers.

I follow this same format for sharing a published workspace as well.

Tweet 1: Images and tagging the featured guest

Tweet 2: “Full workspace tour: link”

I used to only want to tweet everything once. This was wrong.

All of your followers won’t see every tweet. Recycle content and share at different times of the day for maximum reach and results.

Closing Thoughts

1/ I’ve been executing this entire Twitter strategy on hard mode for 5 years now.

I have tweeted from the @workspacesxyz branded account more than 5,000 time and not a single one has been scheduled or automated.

This means that I am constantly thinking about Workspaces—for better or worse.

Half of these tweets are done from my phone. Half are done from computer. It’s all vibes and whatever I’m feeling. That is why you will sometimes see the same workspace on the timeline time and time again… it’s catching my own attention as I scroll the website looking for one to post.

2/ The Twitter algorithm is changing at all times. 

There will be good days. There will be bad days. There will be good weeks. There will be bad weeks.

Don’t get discouraged when a tweet that worked a month ago didn’t work today.

Chances are it will work again next week.

Just keep tweeting.

3/ I didn’t start with a branded account for Workspaces.

I never intended the project to take off in the way it did and I originally wanted to grow my own personal following.

For the first year or so I did everything from my personal account, only creating a branded account once I thought I was holding it back.

Mileage may vary on this but things really took off once I setup a dedicated account for the project. Somewhere where it could be all about workspaces 24/7.

Making money with my newsletters is great. Managing the entire process isn’t.

Next week I’ll share my current process for finding sponsors and managing the entire lifecycle from first conversation to money hitting my bank account.

Stick around.

-Ryan