Fabricated Virality is when you reverse engineer your content so that it has the best possible chance to go “viral” or be a top-performing post for you.

Professional creators who do this for a living already know what I’m talking about.

But for everyone else, here’s a 3-minute crash course:

1: Understand that social platforms reward engagement with more reach

  • Your content is constantly being evaluated by the social platform you are posting on

  • Social platforms essentially use “engagement” as a signal for high-quality content (or content that others would potentially like)

  • The more engagement you get quickly after sharing a post, the higher the chance that the social platform will share it with more people

  • Engagement = like, bookmark, comment, or share

  • My gut says that bookmarks, comments, and shares rank highest

2: “What gets shared is usually what goes viral.”

  • If we reverse engineer a viral post, it’s obvious what to optimize for… shares

  • Create content worth sharing, and you get free reach

  • For example, if I like your X post and RT it, you get instant access to my 74k audience.

  • Think about all of the times you’ve RTd something on X or shared something to your Instagram story… you are adding to the virality of the original post

  • Now that you know this, consider optimizing some of your content to be more shareable

3: Create highly shareable content

  • To do this, you need to truly know your audience

  • Who are you aiming to reach? What accounts do they follow? What content are they posting? What are they sharing? What are they commenting on? Use all of this to inform your content strategy

  • My most viral content is usually related to helping founders & creators build their distribution (see below for an example)

  • I try to stick to helpful content since it makes my audience look smart when they share with their followers (and it’s less of a headache than dealing with controversial content, which also performs great in the feed)

  • Try using infographics, videos, images, spacing, and formatting that make your content easy to consume and share

4: Bootstrap Initial Engagement

  • Some people might find this cringe, but I think it’s fine to share a piece of content with friends, coworkers, or family, and ask them to engage/share

    • I wouldn’t do this with every post, maybe stick to the ones that you put a lot of effort into creating, or the ones that have the highest potential to go viral

  • Start a social media Slack channel for your company and encourage employees to share their best content for support

  • If you have an email list, include the post in a newsletter update

  • Cross-promote the post on other social platforms and tell people why they should check it out

  • Since you know that social platforms reward engagement with more reach, it makes sense to bootstrap your initial engagement

  • Build the habit of supporting other creators so that they return the favor when they see you in the feed

5: Don’t forget about Community Management

  • If you’ve done everything up until now, then the last step is to stay on top of your community management.

    • When someone shares your post, thank them

    • When someone drops a comment, reply to them

    • If someone has a question, try to be helpful

    • In general, try to keep the conversation going

  • I’ve seen friends go mega viral by spending hours over multiple days, just doing community management on a post that got initial traction

Here are a few more posts that you might find helpful (see what I did there 😉)

Going from 0 → 1 as a Creator

Advice for early creators, founders, and employees trying to build their online presence.

www.internetempires.com/p/going-from-0-1-as-a-creator

Your Lifelong Distribution Engine

www.internetempires.com/p/your-lifelong-distribution-engine

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