“I signed up for X, I opened up a brand new account with zero followers, and I started following everyone in the YouTube space. From there I started finding opportunities to create things of value for people in that space.”

Start at zero followers — follow everyone in the niche, give away real value

Starting from a zero-follower X account, the path to an audience was following every relevant person in the target niche and shipping small free tools that took real effort to build. Trust compounded faster than follower counts because each useful artifact gave people a reason to engage.