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How Arvid Kahl uses Twitter - From Zero to Twitter empowerer

Alex Llull
Alex Llull
@AlexLlullTW
Welcome fellow thieves,
Here is the first issue of The Steal Club, where we extract insights on how successful creators use social and steal them for our own content.
Let’s get started.
ESTIMATED READING TIME: 6 minutes

The Research - Who are we stealing from? Who is our target?
Our target is Arvid Kahl, one of the kindest people on the “Indie Maker” side of Twitter.
I think he’s playing the Twitter game a bit differently than the rest of us, and that’s why I picked him for The Steal Club’s first issue.
I’m inspired by how he consistently shows up to support other makers (no matter who they are), and I’m really curious to see what we can learn from him.
The Profile
The Numbers
At the time of writing this (May 10), he has:
The operation - What are we stealing?
We are stealing…The Strategy
📊 In order of importance, the pillars of his strategy are: Engagement → Sharing → Content
  • Engage with other makers & founders. Make meaningful connections. People feel seen and heard, which creates a “two-way bond” with your audience.
  • Share other people’s content with the goal of amplifying their reach. The keyword here: Empower.
  • Create content around everything you do and everything you learn. Arvid builds trust as he builds in public. Heck, he’s writing a book in public!
Arvid Kahl
Sometimes, I have those moments of pure joy here on Twitter when I see someone celebrate another person's success. It makes me happy, and I'm not even involved. What a kind community I am a part of.
But there’s more!
  • Show up every day: Arvid believes consistency is the name of the game.
  • Build relationships in public: “Build relationships, discuss your thoughts and strategies in public, and you will find that people find that particularly interesting.”
  • Don’t try to appeal to everyone: “Be your unique self and embrace the people who resonate with that.”
We are stealing…The content creation process
♻️ Recycle your content. Arvid recycles his content all the time. This allows him to:
  • Build a flywheel: Each blog post turns into a podcast episode and a newsletter issue. So he gets three pieces of content out of one.
  • Turn content others make about you into new content: repurpose podcasts, Twitter conversations, replies, and private DMs into more content.
  • Repeat yourself: content timing will never be ideal for everyone. The easy fix is to repeat yourself every now and then. This allows for new audiences to get to know you and for the existing ones to be “refreshed” on why they follow you.
🔗 Cross-link your content. This allows Arvid to:
  • Make it easier for people to find his content.
  • Diversify his audience. Not everyone reads and listens to podcasts, but chances are they do one of both.
  • Better SEO: you are using high-authority domains to post links.
  • Get more traffic by giving people the chance to learn more.
🚪 Make your content accessible
He re-records his articles as a podcast, essentially reading them out loud.
There’s not much effort involved, but it turns the content into a different medium that consumers who cannot or don’t want to read can consume too.
Arvid Kahl
For content to be valuable to your audience, someone other than yourself needs to gain something from it.
We are stealing…His engagement tactics
Arvid has 2 main rules when engaging with others:
  • Engage everyone, no matter the follower count.
  • Engage to empower, not to debate.
He also follows these simple principles to interact with others:
  • Give meaningful responses: reply to questions, spark conversations, thank people for sharing your content. This shows people that Arvid is worth engaging with. Because of this, more and more people have been sharing his tweets.
  • Understand who you are talking to: “The remedy for any lack of knowledge is to constantly engage with your audience beyond your own content.”
  • Find “rising stars” in your niche and engage with them. Attract (or steal, 😉) their audience, who will be very similar to yours. Bring value to their profile and the audience will follow to yours.
We are stealing…His audience-building approach
🎯 According to Arvid, audience building has two goals.
  • Become a domain expert in the field of your choice to build a reputation.
  • Build something meaningful that helps your audience.
“It’s not building an audience and then squeeze them for their money. It’s building FOR them. It’s more like a community.”
🎒 Learn the concept of “Audience Graduation”. 
  • As Arvid says, there will always be some audience members who “graduate” from you. You teach them everything you know and, when they are done, they move on to the next thing.
  • Solution? Arvid suggests you should “Move the needle”. Explore new concepts (for you and your audience) every week, teach them (or learn with them) something new. It’s the only way to reduce audience churn.
📈 Grow with your audience
“Stay ahead of their journey and teach them as you go”.
If you are the person who is only one step ahead, the audience will follow. They are curious about your next step and your learnings, as it’s going to be theirs soon.
💁 Build a personal brand that transcends whatever you are doing
You want to have a brand for the business you are building, but more importantly, you want people to follow you for who you are, and how you engage and help within the community.
“If you have a personal brand and a business, what your business does doesn’t matter. If it flops, that’s okay. Move on to the next thing. Your personal brand is still there.”
The loot - What have we stolen and how can we use it? Key takeaways
As you can see, there’s a lot we can learn about how Arvid does social. For me, these are the 3 key takeaways I’ll be applying to my own content:
  • Help others succeed, and you will succeed on the way. Empower.
  • Build a content flywheel and make it accessible. Be like a spider, do not let anyone out of your content web once they get in. Repurpose your content into different formats. More content = More attention
  • Build a personal brand that’s bigger than whatever you are doing. Keep it safe. Visualize Value might have been down but Jack Butcher still exists.
The stash
This is everything I used to plan the heist on Arvid’s content.
And this is it for now!
As this is the first issue, any feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Is the format digestible? Is it easy to read and understand? Would you prefer it if it was longer? Or shorter?
Let me know what you think, no hard feelings! Just reply to this email and I’ll get back to you with a little gift as a thank you note.
See you on the next one!
Alex Llull
Creator, The Steal Club
thestealclub.com
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The cost - What it takes to put this heist together
If you are curious, this is roughly what it took me to put together the report → 9h and 10min
Research - 5h
  • Blog Research - 3h 30min
  • Twitter research - 30min
  • Podcasts research - 1h
Writing - 3h
  • Drafting - 2h
  • Editing - 1h
Other tasks - 1h and 10min
  • Design - 30min
  • Newsletter setup (1st edition) - 40min
Did you enjoy this issue? Yes No
Alex Llull
Alex Llull @AlexLlullTW

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