This Simple Post Will Blow Up Your Following
In any niche & at any audience size
I gained 102M views on Twitter in 1 year and there was one post that was especially effective for me. I’ve used it to get +1M views multiple times and the best part is that it works in any niche and that it’s especially effective for small creators.
In this newsletter I’ll explain what it is and the 5 exact steps you can copy to make it work. But before we get into these specific steps, let me explain what post I’m talking about and why it works so well.
Before we dive in, I’m holding a massive Black Friday Sale: 60-85% OFF everything. Click here to check it out (ending soon). Back to the newsletter!
The Thread Simplified
The post I’m talking about is the Social Hacking thread.
The idea is that you write about a popular person in your niche. Share their best ideas and strategies. Stories can work too, but I’m personally not a fan of those.
The reason why this post works is because you borrow their authority.
People already like and trust them, so they’ll read your post because it’s about someone they like. And if you explain their ideas well, they’ll start liking you too.
Don’t overuse this tactic because you want to be known for your ideas, but early on it’s good to use because it’s one of the fastest ways to grow.
So now that you understand why it works, how do you do it?
There are 4 crucial parts that you need to include for this. If you mess up one then the thread won’t work, so give me a few minutes to explain it so that you can copy the tactic and use it in your own niche to get millions of views.
Before we dive in, I’m holding a massive Black Friday Sale: 60-85% OFF everything. Click here to check it out (ending soon). Back to the newsletter!
1. The Hook Tweet
1. The Hook Tweet
The Hook Tweet makes or breaks your thread.
It has 5 parts:
The hook
The person
The value
The setup
The visual
Let me quickly explain all of them with this example:
Part 1: The Hook
The goal of the hook is to grab attention.
So you need to make a big claim that’s relevant for your ideal reader (but that you can also deliver on). It can feel a bit weird to say ‘the greatest or the smartest’, but extremes do well on social media.
I cringe a bit when I read this, but it’s what works on social media so it is what it is.
Part 2: The Person
Tell them who the thread is about.
It needs to be a popular person in your niche so a lot of people care about it.
You can say their name and the thing they’re known for.
Part 3 - The Value
The value part explains why it’s worth their time.
Attention and time are currencies.
People pay attention when they consume content.
So you need to give them a high Return On Attention (ROA).
You do this in three ways:
Make the perceived (time) investment from you high
Make the perceived time commitment for them low
Make the perceived benefits for them high
This will make them feel like it’s worth paying attention to.
Here’s an example of a social hacking thread that has high perceived value:
It’s specific and it shows a high time investment.
This format is a bit overused right now, but it’s a good example of what a high perceived value looks like.
Try to make them curious and maximize the perceived value.
Part 4: The Setup
Explain clearly what they’ll gain by reading.
Lessons
Benefits
Strategies
People read content when they think it’s in their self-interest to read it.
So clearly tell them why it’s beneficial for them to read it.
The perceived value is important here as well.
Make the perceived value high (what they get by reading).
Make the perceived effort low (what they need to do).
This makes them feel like it’s worth reading.
Part 5: The Visual
Add an image that stops the scroll.
For Social Hacking posts, you can simply use an image of the person you’re writing about.
If they made a certain transformation, then you can create a before/after image:
That’s how you write a strong Hook Tweet.
It’s by far the most important tweet in the thread so give it extra time.
That brings us to the second part: The Body Tweets.
2. The Body Tweets
The Body Tweets are the core of your thread.
These are all the tweets after the Hook Tweet that contain lessons.
You can write 5–25 body tweets, depending on the depth.
I usually do:
1. 8 tweets for short threads:
The reason for this is that these threads are the easiest to repurpose to Instagram or LinkedIn (10 image limit, so 8 lessons + hook tweet & summary tweet).
The second one I use is longer.
2. 10-20 tweets for longer threads:
These can do great on Twitter.
By the way, this doesn’t just work on Twitter, you can also post these threads on Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, and even Substack (although they don’t seem to perform that well here so far).
But again, on Instagram and LinkedIn you have an image limit so be mindful of that.
I have written 7 threads with +1M views (3 with +10M views).
4 of these threads were social hacking threads.
Here are the numbers of the body tweets each one had:
14.8M views → 14 body tweets
14.5M views → 18 body tweets
10.6M views → 18 body tweets
2M views → 8 body tweets
1.2M views → 20 body tweets
1M views → 16 body tweets
1M views → 20 body tweets
There’s no ‘best’ number of tweets for a thread.
Although longer ones seem to do better if they’re written in a way that grabs and holds attention.
The reason for this is that social platforms make money by keeping people on their platform for longer (so they can show them more ads).
Here’s the logic:
More lessons → more time spent on the thread → more ad revenue for Twitter → more views (because the algo rewards content that keeps readers on the platform longer).
So that’s something you want to keep in mind.
But don’t make the thread long if it doesn’t need to be.
Use as many body tweets as you need but also keep it as concise as possible.
How To Structure Body Posts
The goal of body tweets is to share one lesson about one subtopic.
Body tweets usually contain 4 different parts:
Each body tweet has 4 parts:
Part 1: Subtopic or lesson
Part 2: Insight or explanation
Part 3: Short takeaway or conclusion
Part 4: Visual or video for clarity [optional]
Here’s an example:
That’s how you structure the body tweets.
If you want to write them better so they hold more attention, check out Aesthetic Writing (70 OFF this week).
That brings us to the third part: The Summary Tweet.
3. The Summary Tweet
The summary tweet summarizes the key lessons of your thread.
It reminds readers what they’ve learned.
The summary tweet is often your second-best performing tweet in the thread (after the hook tweet). It gets a lot of likes, saves, and reposts so it’s worth including.
You can simply make a list of the lessons you covered (with the setup as hook):
That brings us to the next part: The Thread Finisher.
4. The Thread Finisher
This is your last “official” tweet in the thread.
Use it to:
Ask readers to follow you
Ask them to repost the first tweet for reach
Point them to the links in your bio or post links below it
You can add it with Hypefury (aff link) so it looks like this:
It’s very simple to add. Just write the thread and click on ‘add a thread finisher.’
It’s also smart to include an auto plug. This isn’t needed to grow, but it will help you to convert some of the traffic that you get into email subscribers and customers.
You can do this manually by replying to your thread or you can do this with Hypefury. If you do it with Hypefury, it automatically posts the newsletter or the lead magnet plug below your thread (so you gain more newsletter subscribers or customers).
So this is how you write the thread ending.
Social hacking threads are great for growth but there is one big problem:
When you look at these 2 threads you can see that they’re the same exact thread, but one of them got 37 times more views (23K vs 866K views).
This is because I had more leverage when I posted the second one. In other words, I had a better engagement and networking strategy that allowed me to gain 37X more views with the same exact thread.
Without this strategy, you social hacking threads will likely flop (or not do as well as they could). So to make the most of what you just learned, check out this newsletter next to learn how I got 102 Million views on Twitter in 1 year so you can also get millions of views (or grab the X Growth System for my entire system, 70% OFF this week).
Talk soon,
Stijn Noorman
PS: the social hacking thread is one of the best threads, but there’s one better thread type. This one got me 3 threads with 10M-14M views and it helped me get 70M views in 90 days. I explain this thread in the Viral Threads workshop (80% OFF this week).
PSS: the Black Friday sale ends this week. It’s your last chance to get 60-85% OFF everything. Click here to check it out (ending soon).
Smart to borrow authority from other great thinkers