The #1 rule of marketing is to double down on what works.
I learned this rule from Noah Kagan. Whether you look at his stuff from seven years ago, which is when I first found him, or at his latest YouTube video, the message will appear over and over again: Double down on what works.
Noah is living proof. He launched 24 business ideas before finding one that he stuck with for the next decade. The same with his salary: He has nine sources of income but spends 90% on just one because it pays the most.
Noah does a lot of case studies, and in those, the pattern repeats as well. After eight years of trying, Mr. Beast found a viral video formula he now uses in every video. Kevin Hart first tried to imitate Chris Rock in his stand-up comedy. When he realized making fun of himself worked better, he doubled down. To this day, he often mocks his height and family drama.
Writing is no different. All creative work requires experimentation, but from a business perspective, it makes sense to double down on what works until it no longer does.
In 2020, the following ten of the 200+ posts I wrote worked best. Together, they’ve garnered close to two million views. Four of them reached over 100,000 views. The lowest view count was 30,000, the highest 800,000.
Tallying up all the hours, people have spent a total of 420 days reading these stories. That’s more than a year! Member reading time is a great metric because it tracks what gets read more so than what gets clicked. That’s what this list is sorted by, from most to least. It means these stories held the most attention and thus also earned the most money.
Here’s an analysis of why I think these posts did well and what patterns I can see worth doubling down on.
1. How To Identify a Smart Person in 3 Minutes
This is now my most viewed article of all time. I never expected this to be the one, but who ever does? I think it did well for a couple of reasons.
- It is in the category of “smart hacks,” which people love — and which we’ll see reappear two more times on this list. More on that later.
- This article solves a common problem, especially in business: How do I figure out who actually has something valuable to say, and who is just making noise?
- It’s a problem that often goes unaddressed because no one likes to admit that, actually, not everyone’s ideas are equally valuable.
- This problem was more prevalent than ever this year as we tried to have meetings on Zoom calls — and the solution also works in that setting.
- It allows you to feel smarter too because it’s a clever little hack.
- It gives you permission to judge others, which is something we all love to do, even though we know we shouldn’t.
- It nonetheless puts the spotlight on others. It’s not about you, it’s about identifying intelligent people around you — and thus helping the whole group to move forward.
All in all, I’m proud of how it turned out, and I’m grateful Forge featured it, which undoubtedly contributed to its success (it had 10k claps when it was featured, and now it has 58k).
2. The Worst Rebrand in the History of Orange Juice
This was a fun experiment. I follow Marketing Dudes on TikTok. They do a great job of breaking down marketing case studies in a short period of time.
The Tropicana juice box rebrand is one of the most famous botched marketing initiatives of all time. I think the reason my piece did well is that I a) summarized all the findings from past analyses and b) added a lot of my own new takes on the incident, none of which I’d seen mentioned elsewhere.
This is definitely a format that is repeatable, but since marketing and business aren’t my core topics, I’ll probably only do it from time to time.
3. Audi’s Latest PR Disaster Reveals How Society Thinks
This was probably my most controversial piece of 2020. Audi posted an image of a young girl eating a banana while leaning against the grill of one of their sports cars. They earned a shitstorm of epic proportions for it.
Phallic symbols, CO2 emissions, kids run over by cars, the whole nine yards. What I did was take the other side: I told people to get their heads out of the gutter. I think this was a prime example that showed we now assume the worst behind everything instead of seeing things for what they could be.
I think this did well not just because I took the underdog side in an already emotionally charged situation, but also because I factually debunked some of the ridiculous claims trolls were making in the comments to Audi’s post.
It was easy to self-select into either loving or hating this piece, and though that’s not something I want to abuse just for fame’s sake, it’s good to have this tool in my belt.
4. The 5 Qualities of Emotionally Mature People
This is another topic that made the list twice, and this was the first and most popular piece I wrote about it.
I remember seeing “emotional maturity” creep up as a buzzword on several popular articles at the time, and then I asked myself: “What do I have to say about this topic?” As it turned out, I had someone very not emotionally mature in my extended family.
I spent a lot of time researching this piece. I read all the other articles and tried to summarize their findings in a few key points. I think this, along with delivering a very personal example, is why this article was well received.
5. Learn Structured Thinking in 3 Minutes
As with the #1 article, a Quora answer from someone else gave me the idea here. I adapted the concept for the my audience, used my own examples, and the result was a post from which you can’t master but can at least understand an incredibly powerful intellectual concept in just three minutes.
I think this is why the “smart hacks” category was so successful overall. Everyone wants to be smarter and improve their thinking, but no one wants to take long to do it. All mental models must be applied and practiced over a long period of time before we can internalize them, but if you can give people the gist of one in three or four minutes, that is a compelling promise.
6. 15 Signs You’re Emotionally Mature
There’s a rule about having a big viral hit in a new category: You can follow up on it, but you’ll rarely top the success of the original.
In my research for the initial emotional maturity piece, I discovered more questions that seemed to lack good answers, and I ended up writing a handful more articles on the topic. All of them were moderately successful, but none beat the first, including this one.
7. How To Not Waste Your Life
When you watch movies and a scene really hits home with you, write it down. I love reimagining my favorite movie scenes in text, and this was no exception. It was mostly about a smart quote, but the context in which it was delivered also mattered.
This is a three-minute read, but it took longer than many of my ten-minute behemoths. It’s harder to write a short piece that hits home because you must nail every word. This piece was semi-popular upon release and then really took off a few months later.
I have another one like it that I’ve been racking my brain about for months because I don’t really know what the message is or how to deliver it. Let’s see if it’ll ever see the light of day.
8. The 20/20/20 Rule of Productive Mornings
This is a rewrite of one of our most popular summaries on Four Minute Books, The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma. I mostly credit the title for its success. I think I just happened to pick the right idea to highlight from the book and then delivered it at a time when a lot of people felt it was relevant to them.
9. The 5 Habits of Eventual Millionaires
Writing is the best job in the world because everything you do has the potential to become the fabric of your next breakthrough. Sometimes you’ll randomly stumble upon something and will immediately know you’ve been handed a gift. That was very much the case here.
I don’t remember why I landed on Jaime Masters’ interview on YouTube, but I just instantly knew I had a solid article on my hands. Jaime did incredible work over the years, and so reporting it in condensed form for a new audience was an easy, fun, and successful act of service.
10. Learn Touch Typing in 4 Minutes
Good things come in threes, and this last “smart hacks” piece is no exception. For context, I wrote about ten “learn X in Y minutes” pieces, and another 20 or so on the topic of intelligence in general, so the hit rate in this category is quite high.
I think this did well because typing is a skill we all need nowadays, yet most people receive no formal training in it. Everyone types somehow, but “somehow” usually means inefficiently. I was lucky to take a touch typing course when I was 12, and it’s a skill that’s had an incredible payoff over the years (even more so now that writing is my full-time job).
If you can break down the basics of an important skill with a huge return over the course of one’s life in a short period of time, that has tremendous value.
Takeaways
Looking at this list gave me a lot of clarity. Here are the lessons I’ll take away:
- You can’t predict your biggest hits, only analyze them in hindsight.
- If a topic graces you with repeated viral hits, write more about that topic until you’ve honestly exhausted yourself and have nothing else to say.
- Not every viral hit will provide a pattern, and not every one that does will offer a pattern you’ll want to repeat.
- You’ll rarely beat the original with your follow-ups, in terms of popularity.
- Sometimes you’ll just get lucky, either because you picked the right title or because a great idea fell into your lap.
How will I heed these lessons?
I’ll write more “smart hacks” posts on occasion. I’ve got a good bunch of those left in me. I also have two or three more drafts on emotional maturity which I’ll finish, by which time I’ll probably feel done with that topic. Maybe I can turn both into books later.
I won’t force myself to write more two-minute movie scene takeaways or divisive marketing case studies. I’ll just do them when I genuinely want to.
Most of all, I want to continue writing without trying to predict too much. As long as I focus on writing what I care about in the moment, there’ll probably be enough to analyze looking back — and then, I can double down once more.