Viral by Design: How We Engineered a Tweet to Trend on X

Can you guarantee that a tweet goes viral?

Apparently yes, with a method that’s trending among creators and marketers on X.

We gave it a try and I can now report on the results, caveats, and if we’d ever do it again.

Take a look at the tweet we’ll examine:

Side note: This was a collaboration with the Ship 30 team, who created the tweet, lead magnet and landing page for us. They were great to work with. New subscribers got added to both of our email lists, something we made clear in the first email they received.

How it works

It’s simply, really. You create a lead magnet with a landing page like you normally would (of course, you can also use any existing one).

But instead of just including the link to the landing page in the tweet, you leverage the auto-DM functionality of tools such as Hypefury or Tweet Hunter.

A reader must like and/or reply to the tweet to get the link to the landing page via an automated DM (direct message) from you.

This leads to more engagement on the tweet which tells the algorithm that this is worth promoting. Hence the tweet will perform better than your typical tweet.

Results

Here’s how the tweet above performed (snapshot taken after two days):

Typically, we deem any tweet with more than 100 likes successful on Tiago’s account. So 948 likes and 835 replies is a great outcome.

But how many people actually landed on our email list (the result we ultimately cared about)?

786 people opted in to get the lead magnet. However, only 299 of those were truly new subscribers. Everyone else was already on our list.

Given that we gain between 250-300 new subscribers organically every day, this experiment only resulted in about a day’s worth of additional subscribers.

Caveats to consider

If you’re thinking of trying this out yourself, there are a few things you should know:

First, auto-DMs are limited to 500 in 24 hours on Tweet Hunter and 200 in 24 hours on Hypefury to prevent you from getting flagged by X for spamming people’s DMs. That means you’ll eventually have to post the landing page link as a follow-up tweet once you’ve reached that limit. Otherwise, you’ll likely have people complain that they didn’t receive what was promised.

Second, with this method, you’re making people jump through extra hoops. They have to first like/reply, then check their DMs to find the link to the landing page, then hopefully click on it, and then sign up for your email list. You’re adding extra steps to the process to help boost the original tweet. But that also means you’ll lose some people on every step of the way.

Third, you’re DMs will get messy and it might be hard to find the people and conversations you actually care about in there. But depending on the size of your account this could also spark some new interesting conversations.

My take

To be honest, I find this approach gimmicky. I want to create the best possible experience for our audience from the start and making people take unnecessary steps collides with that value. And since the result was merely okay, we likely won’t be doing this again.

Want to give it a shot?

Successful marketing and audience growth is all about experiments. You can grab a 7-day free trial of Tweet Hunter and give it a go. (Hypefury’s free trial does not include the auto-DM functionality.) I’d love to know how this approach worked for you.