(In case you missed it) A template to virality

Hello!

And welcome to the 116 new thieves that have joined our club.

I'm actively looking for newsletters to cross-promote The Steal Club with, so if you have a similar audience (between 1-3k) do reach out to me here or via Twitter!

We have a super interesting issue ahead of us, so let's get right into it!

You may have seen some of my visuals on Twitter.

Most of them come from what I learned in Janis Ozolins’s Explain Ideas course. 

Through the course, I joined the community where I am actively involved.

When something goes well, there's a "Wins" channel where people share when one of their visuals does well.

Something kind of standard in the community.

It all came down to one of the members, Prashant, sharing one visual thread that went viral.

There was only one problem:

The viral thread was using Alex Maeses's visuals (another community member) but it wasn't posted by Alex. 

A random account simply took it, only tagging him at the end.

The thread went ULTRA viral as you can see 👇

There is a reason why a tweet or thread goes viral.

It's a mix of content + proven formula.

That's why you see the same type of threads going viral on Twitter over and over again.

While you might say this removes the authenticity of the content, this meme sums it up well:

Hey, don't kill the messenger😅,  but you can't deny it works. (I will elaborate more below.)

So, how do you actually replicate a viral thread?

As you can see, there are only two elements to this concrete viral thread hook.

Each of these elements serves a specific purpose:

• In the first line, a bold promise catches the reader's attention
• Followed by a visual to complete the hook and that previews the rest of the content

Simple and easy to replicate structure.

Before getting to the juicy part, let me pause for a second and recommend you one of my must-read newsletters: Idea Economy

Idea Economy is one of the few curation newsletters where I check EVERY single link. 

John does an excellent job at finding signal among the creator economy noise. Plus, the design is super clean and easy to read. Bonus points for that!

Subscribe to stay on top of what's happening in the creator economy, "steal" ideas, and get inspired. Check it 👇

Idea Economy

We now have the elements. Let's put them into action.

Some community members (including me) attempted to replicate the formula, getting great success.

But two of them stood out 👇

Prashant went first on replicating the viral structure. And killed it.

Then Alex, who already had proof his visuals were viral material, followed.

For this newsletter issue, both Alex and Prashant have been very kind to open their Twitter metrics for us. 

So here they are 👇

Bonkers.

"So that's it? Taking a viral structure, replicating it and I have a viral hit?"

Obviously not.

You can use templates to replicate viral threads, but it won't matter if your content is not good enough.

Viral content happens for a reason. They are ideas worth spreading (and easy to spread). 

"Sticky ideas" if you have read "Made to Stick".

Leveraging the format is simply a small part.

“But hey Alex, using templates kinda feels hacky. It feels like the content is not authentic”

I understand the concern.

But if what you say has value, putting it on an already proven structure doesn’t make it less authentic.

Instead, it increases its likelihood of being read/shared. Thus increasing its value.

Justin Welsh made a great case for this when he was confronted about using templates to create content:

• Authentic meals are made using recipes.
• James Clear writes one of the most popular newsletters in the world (3-2-1). Which is basically a template that he fills with valuable content.

Templates, systems, or whatever you want to call them, are just a way for you to get your message across.

“If you want to spread your ideas to other people, you should work within the confines of the rules that have allowed for other ideas to succeed over time” - Chip & Dan Heath on Made to Stick

This idea around "templatizing creativity" and more concretely, Twitter writing, is what lead me to create Hooks that Hook.

Hooks that Hook is a thread-writing mini-course.

What will you learn?

I basically took my thread library and:

• Found the best of the best thread hooks
• Analyzed why they work in short videos (less than 1h)
• Crafted ready-to-tweet templates out of them.

The final product will launch on March 28. 

And, as a token of gratitude for being a steal Club member, you get 50% off the final price!

And that's it for today!

I hope you enjoyed this longer-than-usual issue!

I want to thank Prashant and Alex for being super helpful and sharing their Twitter metrics with us. You can follow them at 👇

• Prashant: Twitter, Visual detectives.
• Alex Maese: Twitter, Instagram.

See you next week!

Alex Llull

Thief Master

The Steal Club

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