In partnership with
Why the Smartest People on X Don’t Mind if They have a Small Account
The paradox:
The people with the most valuable knowledge are often invisible.
It’s not because they’re bad at communication.
But it’s usually because social media wasn’t built to reward the way they think.
They don’t play the game. They build and as a result, most of the time, you never see them on your feed (till they become famous).
But if you know where to look…
You’ll find them quietly dropping master-level insight to an audience of 127 people and changing lives while you engage with 50 “hooks that always work.”
Quick Detour for my sponsors today: DEEL
Check out what they are offering for my readers:
Global HR shouldn't require five tools per country
Your company going global shouldn’t mean endless headaches. Deel’s free guide shows you how to unify payroll, onboarding, and compliance across every country you operate in. No more juggling separate systems for the US, Europe, and APAC. No more Slack messages filling gaps. Just one consolidated approach that scales.
🚨 OKAY BACK TO TOPIC 🚨
True experts aren’t optimizing for reach
They’re:
Running businesses
Building systems
Studying obsessively
Teaching small groups
Sending DMs with actual substance
They don’t have time to rewrite their thoughts.
Their content rarely goes viral because it’s full of nuance, and ‘a typical doomscroller’ doesn’t react to high IQ nuanced posts.
Social media rewards performance
The algorithm loves:
Simplicity
Emotional spikes
Repeatable hooks
Broad relatability
But expertise is layered. Context-heavy. Often boring to the masses.
So the smartest people end up filtered out of the main feed.
Intelligence doesn’t always scale well on socials
If someone’s dropping real insight:
It probably sounds “too specific”
Or it requires thinking before reacting
Which doesn’t bring engagement
= LOW REACH
The average timeline isn’t built for that.
Which is why:
The best ideas live in replies, not posts
The best thinkers use DMs and Lists, strategically
The best convos happen on spaces, not in the quote tweets
Why small accounts are actually a superpower
The high-signal ones have:
More freedom to explore ideas without “branding”
No pressure to appeal to a mass audience
Tighter, more authentic engagement
Way more generosity in spaces, comments and DMs
These accounts aren’t trying to go viral. They’re trying to think out loud and presenting their ideas strategically to form connections.
Your best learning on X won’t come from the timeline
It comes from:
Lists of weirdly smart, low-follower accounts
Quiet corners of niche communities
DMs with people you find interesting
Posts that don’t go viral but make you stop and think
Everyone’s so busy chasing follower counts that they miss the fact that real leverage = information no one else is talking about.
Quick Detour for my sponsors today: ATTIO
AI-native CRM
“When I first opened Attio, I instantly got the feeling this was the next generation of CRM.”
— Margaret Shen, Head of GTM at Modal
Attio is the AI-native CRM for modern teams. With automatic enrichment, call intelligence, AI agents, flexible workflows and more, Attio works for any business and only takes minutes to set up.
Join industry leaders like Granola, Taskrabbit, Flatfile and more.
Check out what BELAY is offering:
Leadership Can’t Be Automated
AI can help you move faster, but real leadership still requires human judgment.
The free resource 5 Traits AI Can’t Replace explains the traits leaders must protect in an AI-driven world and why BELAY Executive Assistants are built to support them.
What to do with this
✦ Stop judging by follower count
✦ Follow more people who write for thinking, not clout
✦ Build Lists by topic (small accounts only is okay)
✦ Use DMs for actual convos; that’s where depth lives
✦ Treat your timeline like a tool, not a popularity contest
Some of the smartest people on this app have under 1,000 followers on purpose.
Find them before everyone else does.
They’re not just ahead of the curve.
They’re building it.
SEE YOU ON THE NEXT ONE
BTW… IF YOU NEED HELP WITH MONETIZING OR NEED A CUSTOM STRATEGY;
I’m here.
You can hop on a call with me and I’ll walk you through everything:
