After two months of revising over 60 social media posts on Quora using the Social Media Viral Video Formula, I finally finished my goal.
It has been an incredible learning experience.
I’ve seen a significant increase in views of my posts.
It wasn’t easy at first to rework the posts with a better Hook (Part 1), Buildup (Part 2), and Action Step (Part 4).
After some time, however, it became easier.
I’ve noticed a handful of Hooks and Buildup phrases work universally with many different types of posts I created.
Plus, this process allowed me to improve Part 3: The Delivery more than I expected.
As a result, it took a lot longer to revise them.
The overall process was well worth it.
My content is much better.
It was a good investment of time and energy, altering how I write future posts forever.
Here are some of the biggest takeaways and things I learned along the way:
The Hook part really works to capture higher levels of views. It’s highly valuable. Here are a bunch I used often that work with many topics:
- I tried lots of ______ (ex. marketing strategies, ways to make money online), and was surprised by what I discovered (another variation is … and couldn’t believe how well this _____ (ex. strategy) worked.
- Nobody is (or Not enough people are) talking about this secret ______ (ex. product, strategy, concept) in the _______ (ex. money-making space, affiliate marketing industry).
- You won’t believe how this incredible _______ (ex. idea) changed my online business forever.
- I can’t believe how doing _______ (ex. these four things) transformed me from being ______ (ex. lost, confused, frustrated affiliate marketer) to one making _______ (ex. enormous progress).
- I can’t get over how effective this ______ (ex. online marketing strategy) is- and you won’t be able to either once you try it.
- If you’re not using this _______ (ex. product, technique, idea), you’re missing out on huge potential for your ______ (ex. business).
I looked at the most viewed post to identify why it was the most viewed.
Here’s the headline of the post that got the most views (over 500 as of this writing):
- I can’t believe how doing these four things transformed me from being a lost, confused, and frustrated affiliate marketer to one making enormous progress and enjoying the journey.
I think there are two reasons this got the most views:
- One is the headline is enticing. It is about transformation and redemption from being lost and confused to someone making big progress and enjoying it. This might resonate with others who want the same thing. Plus, it’s true. I was lost and confused, and now, through taking considerable steps to get help and applying new things I have learned, my progress is tremendous, and it’s a lot more fun.
- Second is the Quora space I posted. The space is called Online Money Making. It must be a popular space because I get higher-than-average views than other spaces. I post content in about 12-15 spaces, and they each have a different audience with different average views. I do this primarily because I found it hard to post lots of content in a few spaces, as many posts were rejected for some reason. As a result, I had to spread out posts over more spaces. So, the higher views could be directly related to the space I posted in. However, based on my other posts in Online Money Making, this particular post got between 2-3x more views, making me think the headline could be a primary contributing factor. I did not use this headline in any other posts, so I noted this because I can test this further by using the same headline structure in a few different posts to see if they also get larger views.
Another question I wanted to answer was: what were the results of my action steps? Did one action step perform better than the others? What wisdom can I pull from reviewing the action steps?
- Here are the action steps I used (usually at the end of the post):
- Lead magnet
- My Blog
- Upvote the post
- Follow me
- Identifying the action step that produced the best “result” is hard because they all did better. But it’s hard to compare them because they are so different. For example, upvoting a post is very easy for someone to do. On the other hand, opting into my lead magnet takes much more effort. So, it’s hard to compare them. The big takeaway is that every post should have an action step because it does work. Everything did better.
Are there any unexpected surprises from using the social media viral video formula?
- I was surprised at how much fun it was to use it. It was intriguing to figure out what headline to use, how to add a buildup phrase after the headline, and what action step to use. I was also surprised at how much of the content I changed in the body of the post. Some content improved a lot because I rewrote almost the entire post. It took longer than expected, but now I have better content, which is great.
What else did I learn?
- I learned that it takes a while to use a new formula correctly. It’s not a quick, whiz-bang type of thing. Writing content takes time, thought, and energy. The repetition of applying the formula to 60 posts also helped me get better at it. Towards the end, I was finding it easier to write the content because I had done it so many times already. Also, this process has changed the way I’ll write posts forever. The formula is ingrained into me now, so my content will improve.
If you want to improve your social media posts, check out the 4-step formula. Below are links to my four blog posts, one for each step.
Apply the formula many times so that you learn it, and it becomes a part of your creative style forever.
Then, reap the rewards!