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Welcome to 1% Better. A weekly newsletter where I provide simple playbooks to grow your following, earn more revenue, and live a happy life.

Today at a Glance:

• How I structure X posts to go viral.

• Some tips for creating content that people want to share

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The Secrets of a Viral Post

For the 2 years I’ve been on X/Twitter, I’ve been working to perfect my post writing.

I’ve been experimenting with different styles, structures, points of views, languaging, and strategies.

After 2 years of experimentation, I think I’ve come up with my perfect strategy and formula.

I call it HOOK, BODY, PUNCH. And all 3 pieces have different goals.

Hook: This one is self explanatory. This is the opening line of your post/newsletter/piece of content. This is perhaps the most important line of them all.

The one goal of this line is to HOOK your reader in. It needs to be powerful. It needs to be controversial. But most importantly, it needs to generate INSANE amounts of curiosity.

You’re trying to raise the stakes as high as possible. The higher the stakes the better.

“Here is the event that changed my entire life” is way higher stakes than “Here’s a cool event I was just thinking about”.

Here’s the key though: it can’t be blatant clickbait. It needs to be tastfully clickbaity. You’re creating a promise with this hook. If it’s obnoxious clickbait, you’re probably not going to deliver and it’s going to hurt your relationship with your reader.

An example I see of this all the time is something like:

“I QUIT TWITTER FOREVER!!!

Is something I would have said if I didn’t read this…”

Just intellectually dishonest. You make a promise on the first line you don’t deliver on. Your reader rolls their eyes and probably never reads your content again.

Body: This is where we deliver on the promise of the hook. We try to deliver on that promise as succinctly and efficiently as possible.

Let’s take a look at this post:

My hook is powerful and high stakes. I then have to deliver on that promise.

My body gives a piece of advice I think is counter intuitive for my audience.

The first line of the body goes straight to the point. No fluff.

Then I expound with a few more details. I back it up with reasoning, using as few words as possible.

I give enough reasoning where I feel like I fulfilled the promise of the hook.

The only goal of the body is to fulfill the promise of the hook as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Punch: This is your parting words of the post.

I call it the punch, because my only goal of it is to make the reader feel like they got punched in the gut.

If the reader feels like they got assaulted by your last line, they’ll probably engage.

What does it mean to punch your reader in the gut? They feel happy. They feel excited because they learned something. They feel pissed because they disagree with you. They feel shocked because they didn’t know you had it in you. They feel like crying because they feel bad for you. They feel motivated because they look at life differently.

All of these are punches to the gut.

Let’s review my last post again:

The gut punch here happens because it makes my reader concerned. They get concerned that they might be the person I’m describing in the post with a 0% chance of succeeding.

It makes them want to reflect on their own content.

It makes them want to reflect on their profile.

And because they feel that emotion, it makes them want to reply and let me know what they think.

Mission accomplished.

Whenever I create any piece of content, I consider all 3 of these components. My best posts invariably nail all 3 parts of a viral post.

Write these down and think about them next time you post. Could be the difference between a post nobody sees and a post that goes hyper viral.

Find this content helpful? My X Growth Masterclass relaunches on Saturday!!

My Master Class is relaunching very shortly! It was an absolute smash hit when it launched in August. It includes all my content tips and tricks as well as a complete rundown on how to find your voice and monetize. This is 40 videos and HOURS of content. Keep an eye on your inbox this Saturday!

In the meantime, feel free to join my community, the 1% Club, where we have weekly Zoom calls going over content creation! Join the community below:

Have a great weekend everyone!

-Alex