📋 How Alex Garcia grew his Twitter to 40k followers

How Alex Got Started

Alex fell in love with marketing because it allowed him to connect great people with great brands. So he built an ads agency called Social First Marketing Agency in 2018.

After a couple of years he realized that being an agency owner isn’t his thing. So he joined The Hustle as a marketing manager in July 2020.

A year later he joined Gumroad as Head of Marketing. And another year later in July 2022, he officially went full-time on the Marketing Examined newsletter.

But he actually already started it in November 2020.

At the Hustle he specifically wanted to learn how to build a newsletter into an online media company. He also helped build the podcast My First Million.

So at The Hustle he learned all the skills he needed to build his own media company quickly.

Then he decided he wanted to position himself as a growth marketer and attract an audience who’s interested in that as well.

Before we dive into the specifics of his strategy, we have to take a quick look at how Alex approaches marketing.

Alex’s Approach to Marketing

While many experts say niching down is the best marketing strategy, Alex uses a different approach:

Buffet marketing.

In order to find the right marketing tool and strategy that works best for you, you need to test a bunch of different things, Alex says.

So it’s a bit like going to an all-you-can-eat restaurant with a huge buffet. First you want to try a little bit of everything.

And then get a second serving of the 1 or 2 things you liked best.

He also incorporated Tim Ferris’ mantra of getting 1% better every day through something he calls his “marketing diet.”

He wants to learn 1 new thing about marketing every day. So he has a doc where he collects all links, tweets, articles etc. and notes down what he learned from it.

He actually used this content library to come up with a lot of ideas for his 50 threads challenge.

Twitter Strategy

Alex had been on Twitter for a while and posted newsletter-related tweets from time to time while he was still working at The Hustle.

After he launched his first newsletter called Marketing Examined, he started posting more threads, breaking down genius marketing strategies in late 2020.

His goal for content on any social media platform is to create value through one of 2 things:

• Solving problems.

• Entertainment.

He’s very good at helping people solve problems.

One of his first threads that got traction was the story of the Nike Swoosh.

He shares how a struggling graphic design student called Carolyn Davidson created the logo.

Compared to his other posts, this one went pretty viral with over 600 likes and 150 retweets.

So he decided to make that a theme and set himself a challenge on March 19, 2021:

Write 50 threads in 50 days.

Why did they perform so well?

He created an expectation of amazing marketing case studies that people associated with his name.

Here are a few reasons why people loved them so much:

• Predictable structure

• Inspiring for marketers

• The stories are captivating

• You get insights from marketing campaigns you admire.

Aside from that, he uses Twitter as a testing ground.

If an idea sticks on Twitter, it usually performs very well as a newsletter too.

For instance, at first he just shared those same threads in his newsletter as well. Then he used all of the data from these 50 newsletters to find what people enjoyed most.

Newsletter Strategy

The main thing that Alex took away from The Hustle and implemented in his own newsletter is to create an expectation in the consumer’s mind.

And then deliver it every time.

So the reader should already know what they’re getting if they see your name in their inbox.

This is exactly what he did with his threads and he didn’t change that for the newsletter.

Apart from delivering valuable content, Alex uses his newsletter to build a strong relationship with his readers. And then he uses it as a bridge for his paid offers.

These are courses but also sponsorships in the newsletter itself.

After those first 50 threads, he switched to 2 newsletter editions per week:

• Tactic Tuesday, where he explained 5 tactics around a marketing topic like copywriting

• Tear Down Thursday, where he shared case studies similar to the initial threads.

The Thursday editions performed a lot better. That’s why he eventually switched to only sharing these.

Another really interesting part is how Alex tests different sections of the newsletter.

For instance, to find the best subject lines, he takes his least engaged audience and sends different options. Whichever option gets the most opens is guaranteed to also perform well with his more engaged audience.

He's since created 4 more newsletters and has 200k+ subscribers in total.

His initial plan was to also have a paid newsletter called Growth Marketing Examined. But it looks like that doesn’t exist anymore.

Instead, he currently has a waitlist for a community membership for content marketers and creators called Content Cafe.

Lead Magnets

Alex is also a huge fan of lead magnets, especially for traffic coming from ads.

He’s testing a few different things. The 2 ideas I liked most are:

1. Taking the case studies and marketing playbooks that performed the best and packaging them as lead magnets.

2. Taking one of the topics his newsletter is centered around (e.g. email marketing, CRO, paid ads etc.) and package that as a free 5-day email course.

This makes it way more tangible and more of a no-brainer for people to type in their email addresses.

I couldn’t find any ads or lead magnets that he’s currently using, though. So maybe that wasn’t the best dish of the buffet.

Podcast Strategy

Another content strategy is his own podcast.

But he’s also a guest on many others.

And I think the main reason goes back to why he enjoys marketing so much: he gets to connect with other amazing founders and creators.

He says people are fuel.

They increase your state of mind or your strategies.

So, he tries to surround himself with positive people who are go-getters who will influence his life and business in a meaningful way.

He first launched his podcast 30 Minutes of Growth in 2022 but stopped after 13 episodes.

Then he started a podcast/Youtube channel called Sweat Equity in 2023 with Brian Blum.

These are essentially brainstorming sessions where they discuss successful people’s strategies. Or they share a full case study.

In their first episode, Alex says that adding Youtube to Marketing Examined is part of his strategy to grow a media company instead of just a newsletter business.

How You Can Replicate His Success

Alex blew his growth out of the park with his Twitter threads.

So if you want to grow a newsletter or another sort of community, try the following:

• Choose one social media platform

• Determine your target audience

• Choose a theme that attracts them

• Create a piece of long-form content every day for at least 30 days.

For instance, I’m currently doing a case study thread every day for 30 days, where I break down how $1m+ ARR founders grow an audience of raving fans. This one is Alex’s:

But you can also do that on Linkedin, Instagram or Tiktok.

Build your newsletter or community simultaneously and see what resonates most with your audience.

And then take the winning format to other mediums like a podcast or Youtube later on.