Chapter 2: The short version, how to post

This chapter is the whole book in five pages. Each line points to the chapter that explains it in full. If you read nothing else, read this.

The one idea

X does not show your post to all of your followers. X guesses which people are likely to do something with your post, and shows it to those people. The thing X wants most is a reply. Every rule below comes from that one fact. (Chapter 4)

What each thing is worth

When somebody sees your post, they can do things with it. They can like it, reply to it, repost it, send it to a friend, or hide it. X keeps score of those things. Each one is worth a set number of points. A like is worth 1 point. A reply is worth 10 points, because X wants replies most. Hiding your post, muting you, or reporting the post takes points away, shown below with a minus sign. The more points X expects your post to earn from a person, the higher your post appears in that person's feed.

Two things to remember. A reply is worth ten likes, so a post that gets people to reply beats a post that gets people to like it. And the negative actions cost far more than the positive actions earn. A post that reaches the wrong people, who then hide it or mute you, does worse than a post that reaches nobody. (Chapter 6)

Before you post

• Decide whether it will be a question or a statement. In the live accounts measured for this book, questions got three times as many impressions as statements. The best questions are not general survey questions. They ask about one exact thing that happened to the reader. A general question gets a "yes." An exact question gets the story, and the story is the reply. Two examples. A gym account: "What was the first lift you ever failed in front of other people?" A mechanic: "What's the noise your car made right before the most expensive repair of your life?" Chapter 23 has examples for seven more subjects. (Chapter 23)
• Start the sentence with the reader, not the subject. "Has anybody ever…", "What did you…", "When did you first…". A post that starts with "Sourdough…" is about bread. A post that starts with "What did you…" is about the person reading it, and people answer questions about themselves.
• Say one thing. One question, or one idea. Two questions get half-answers. Three ideas get none. (Chapter 24)
• Make sure it can be answered in one sentence, because one sentence is what people will type on a phone.
• Test it: picture the exact sentence a stranger would type underneath it. If you can picture that sentence, post it. If all you can picture is "yes," rewrite it.
• If it's a statement, write the kind of thing somebody would send to one particular person. A reader thinking "that's my brother," "that's my boss," or "that's my gym" and sending your post to that person is a share by link, and a share by link is worth 40 likes.

The Do list

• Do ask about one exact thing that happened to the reader, not about a whole subject. "What's the first tool you bought that you still use?" gets replies. "What do you think about hand tools?" does not.
• Do start the sentence with the reader.
• Do keep it to something a person can answer in one sentence.
• Do post about two times an hour, spread across the whole day, never several at once. X cuts the score of your second post in any one person's feed in half, so posts bunched together get in each other's way. (Chapter 27)
• Do post when your readers are awake. In the live accounts measured for this book, the best hours were 3 PM to 6 PM, then 9 AM to midnight, in the account's own time zone. Almost nothing happened overnight. Your readers may keep different hours, so measure your own (Chapter 16). A post is only ever shown for 48 hours; after that it's gone from feeds for good. (Chapter 27)