The Invaluable Benefits of Posting Daily on X... and Failing
My long-form posting challenge didn't make me grow. But I still gained a lot.
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This is an older post that was well received on Medium. I’m republishing it because it has several important lessons for creators on any platform. Let me know what you think!
I beat myself up every day for quitting Twitter after a brief stint in 2020.
Organic reach was amazing. Many successful creators you know today got started at that time.
I resumed publishing on 𝕏 (as it’s now called) in September 2023. I’m more committed and better skilled, but organic reach is dead.
Some creators were still seeing fast growth. Their secret: long-form posts, the new feature.
Inspired by them, I set myself a challenge: publish a long-form post on 𝕏 every day.
Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. At all.
But it was still useful. It surprised me with important lessons and unexpected benefits. Here’s how it went.
Why I chose this challenge
I’ve been creating content since 2010 and witnessed every evolution of the online platforms.
Every time a new feature appears, algorithms reward its adoption. It happened with Facebook videos, Twitter threads, Instagram Stories, LinkedIn carousels, YouTube Shorts, and so on.
So, when some 𝕏 creators shared fantastic results from daily long-form posting, I thought “History is repeating. I can’t miss this train”.
I finally felt in the right place at the right time. Plus, a challenge is fun and gives you a daily purpose. Followers also love to support you and follow your progress. So, I pulled the trigger.
The rules
Every good challenge needs rules. Here are mine. I explain the reasons, too, so that you can design your challenge, too:
a maximum length of 300 words, long but still feasible every day,
only proven topics, to reduce the variables,
always draw from personal experience, which is what people want,
add all long-form posts to a pinned thread on my profile to guarantee maximum visibility,
repurpose posts on Medium, to maximize the benefits and compare results,
repurpose on LinkedIn.
I won’t leave you hanging. Let’s jump straight to the results.
Epic fail
The challenge started in the most encouraging way. I shared my plan in a post and it received more replies than the average. My followers were excited.
I planned to go on for 30 days. But I got sick on December 27th after 23 days of posting. My fever was so high I wasn’t able to think.
Besides, the results were miserable, so I quit early.
How miserable? The graph below says it all. It shows my impressions on 𝕏 for the 23 days of posting and the 23 days before.
It doesn’t matter how hard you squint. The effect of my long form posts is negligible. And I spent about an hour every day crafting them. (The peak at the end of the graph is one of the unexpected benefits. I’ll tell you more about that later.)
Even worse, my best posts in terms of impressions and engagement during the challenge were all short!
Why such a disaster?
It’s not enough to just publish a lot. Quality counts.
So, I first wondered whether my posts weren’t that good. They may not be Pulitzer-worthy, but I’ve been getting enthusiastic feedback on my writing or years, even in English, which is my second language. They can’t be so terrible.
I was also careful to choose broad topics that already proved effective earlier. And I spoke from personal experience, which is what people want.
When I looked at the creators that inspired this challenge, I found other probable points of failure:
I never talked about eye-watering results. The most successful long-form posts I saw usually bragged about fast audience growth and surprising earnings.
I wasn’t talking about how to grow on 𝕏. There are too many creators that succeed on any platform teaching how to succeed on that same platform. Many other topics are inherently weaker.
My starting audience was too small. I have more than 800 followers, but hundreds of them followed me 3 years ago and are now inactive. The creators inspiring this challenge had more followers, all collected in recent months.
My posts may have been a little too long. But I’ve also seen longer posts succeed.
Finally, I may just have missed a short lucky window. Maybe the algorithm rewarded long form posts, but for a short time.
The silver lining
Fortunately, such a deep commitment is never wasted. Did you notice the spike at the end of the challenge in the screenshot above?
I was laying in bed with high fever and decided to stop the challenge. So I wrote a short post to inform my followers. I also declared I’d follow a more casual approach on 𝕏, something I’d been thinking about for a long time.
That short post took me 5 minutes. It did better than all the long-form ones combined. It actually is my best post since I resumed publishing on 𝕏.
Very interesting (and depressing). Why did it happen?
First, doing something valuable in public makes people curious. It’s the essence of the build in public approach.
Second, everyone loves meta posts, discussing how to grow on the same platform where you’re posting.
Third, vulnerability always wins. I shared a failure, so I inspired empathy.
Fourth, I didn’t just report the failure. I also presented my idea on how to go forward and explicitly asked for an opinion. A personal story or idea, plus an invitation to engage, is the perfect social media mix.
This result inspired me even more to focus my social media presence on building in public.
By the way, this single post brought another unexpected win. It was noticed by a podcaster who was not a follower. Seeing my challenge inspired him to invite me as a guest.
That same day, I was also invited to guest post on a newsletter. This time, the challenge wasn’t mentioned, but the coincidence is suspect.
Anyway: daily writing rocks
Self-awareness and reflection always turn intense experiences like this challenge into powerful teachers.
Having to ideate, draft, and edit an article every day was the perfect excuse to carve out time for writing. It’s what I’d do all day long. But sometimes it gets pushed to the side by other business activities. The daily commitment was the perfect excuse to spend about an hour every day writing.
Staying within the 300 words was so fun. My drafts were far too long, especially in the beginning. Editing was the most exciting puzzle. It trained me to:
Remove the unessential.
Rearrange words to convey the message in the shortest way possible. It’s an indispensable skill, even if you don’t post on social media. Conciseness is clearer and doesn’t waste attention.
I was also pushed to increase my efficiency even more. I constantly refined my writing and repurposing process. And I forced myself to reuse ideas from my existing content.
I’d do it again (and you should to)
Tim Ferriss’ first tip to aspiring writers is “do something interesting first”:
For him, it’s easier to create good content when you’re telling something interesting, even if you are an average writer. The opposite is hard, sometimes impossible.
This is a strong reason to start and document a content challenge (or any challenge). If it’s hard, it’s interesting:
it shows your audience you are a doer,
it invites support, because people see themselves in you,
it provides infinite content ideas as you document your progress.
It’s also a forcing function. To complete the challenge and still be able to do your other daily activities, you need to be efficient. You need to improve every part of your process, from ideation, to writing, to editing. These improvements carry over to your daily activities.
And finally, it may be the perfect tool to finally beat the army of excuses that prevent your ideas from reaching your audience.
If, like me, you find it hard to use social media to grow your audience, there’s a better atlernative: guest posting. By finding creators with overlapping audiences and offering valuable guest posts, you gain exposure to new readers and expand your reach.
Here’s my ultimate guide to find guest posting opportunities and make the most of them:
I gave up with X as I can't stand all the bitching and trolling that goes on there. But I do love it here at Substack, especially on notes! I try and touch base with my newsletters each day now.
I really love how you shared both the good and the bad. It was a good read. I enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing.