My first post, got 71,000 views, I was staggered.

The last time I'd seen growth like that, I was posting on an anonymous platform (I think it was called Ekho...?) about 10 years ago, which I got very lucky on.

But in the last 2 months I've amassed 474k views, across 18 posts. The top post got 253k views and was shared 716 times.

How did I do it?

I told stories, and incited engagement....on a platform which isn't limited by existing relationships.

"But Rob, that's not easy to replicate, I can't do anything with that!"

Totally understood, I said the same thing in the past - but now I'd say otherwise...let me explain.

There's 4 problems I had previously when posting on things like Facebook & Instagram (you might have had the same experience):

1. What to post?
2. No feedback - engagement was so low I had no idea which posts were good, and which were bad.
3. My copywriting is bad.
4. If I do this a lot, will it actually work, or am I wasting my time?

What I Posted

Stories from my past

My most frequent winners came from posting stories from my past.

The story that did 71k views was me explaining how I did £30,000 ecommerce sales in my first year.

I picked something I was already good at (to some degree), and explained how I did it - the trick was explaining how, and not just what. Whilst I'm not the fountain of all knowledge, it worked for me.

I repeated this with other things I'd done, and they all performed much better than my average.

Inciting engagement

My next strategy was posting something that asked people what they had done, so that they could be involved in the post, and created engagement between not just me, but also other commentors creating more of a discussion thread, than a post.

Here was my winner, at a whopping 253,000 views:

 What's Your Most Unexpectedly Profitable Side Hustle?

This might not work on a platform where I'd need an audience, but it worked very well on Reddit which is more anonymous.

Feedback Issue

A big issue for me originally was the feedback loop. This was actually really important as I couldn't get winners without knowing what they look like.

Primarily this is down to the platform you're posting on. Most social media's (like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Youtube) take time to build an audience, and since people build relationships with influencers (in their heads) it's hard to break through and get engagement yourself.

So when I first start out posting on social media, I hardly saw any engagement. Certainly not enough to know meaningfully which posts are good. I started on Instagram and Facebook as an ecommerce webiste - I got to about 1k followers on Instagram after a fair while.

The solution?

I'd suggest looking at a platform like reddit (it worked for me) which is more anonymous, so if you write a good post, there's nothing stopping it from doing well.

The challenge/drawback with this is I wasn't building an audience up, but getting the feedback was actually pretty vital in understanding what posts work.

I could then replicate this by reposting my good content on a platform where I can build an audience...I'm doing that right now right?

Copywriting

This is actually a skill which I massively undervalued in the past. 

Every interaction you do it has an impact. Sending an email to a colleague? Applying for a job? Yes, copywriting will help.

But how did I get better at it?

For me, I watched multiple youtube videos on it to get started. Then I did other specific things...

What Specific Advice To Get Better?

Here's what I did, and also what I would have done if I had to get up to my current skill level in the quickest possible way:

1. Get a list of Youtube videos from big youtubers in your niche and read each title, until you know what common themes/patterns exist (there are patterns, I promise)
2. Titles & headlines are important - this is what people see first, and so the most eyes will be on it. Less people will see your 200th word in a post, so that's less important than the title. I focussed on my titles.
3. Copywork - get a list of good posts, and write them out by hand. Writing by hand forces you to think about each word more than typing it. It also let's you see the patterns. I did a variation of this to get better (so I didn't do this exactly - but this method is better than what I did.)

If I do this a lot, will it actually work, or am I wasting my time?

Worst Outcome

If I do it a lot, I will get better at copywriting, regardless of whether my posts do well.

So I get better at a key skill in life.

Best Outcome

I gain an audience, and can eventually sell stuff to them. I become rich and rule minds!

Likely Outcome

I get better at a key skill in life, and will get some traction (although less than I want).

I probably won't post as often as I should (intensity is a big part of the strategy), and I likely won't continue for as long as I should. It's pretty clear, it takes long time to build up an audience.

Should I continue?

Yes - can't win if I don't sit at the table.

Also it helps with my other marketing (even stuff like PPC & SEO), as it will build visibility & trust to potential customers (and hopefully some sweet sweet backlinks...please link to me...).

Results

Finally, here's a chart of how my posts all did. You can see there's some real duds in there, but quite a few which hit the 20k mark.

 

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