The best X & LinkedIn growth hack I know (only takes 15 min per day)

I want to give you the single greatest growth hack for building your audience on X and LinkedIn. This works for every platform. Like fundamentally, this is a strategy works for every platform. But I want to show you exactly how this works for X and LinkedIn. If you think about it, like, let's just go back to first principles. How do you build an audience? You build an audience by publishing content. The problem is that each platform is constrained in some way by the number of pieces of content that you can publish in a day. Like X, because it's such a fast-moving platform, you have the ability to publish lots of things in a day. You could publish upwards of 5 or 10 times in a day. LinkedIn is different. LinkedIn doesn't support as much volume, and so you can maybe only publish once or twice per day on LinkedIn. Either way, whether you're publishing once or twice or 5 or 10 times, at some point you are constrained by volume, right? So how do you build your audience, faster? Well, if you can't publish more content, right, because more content in theory would mean I have more of my ideas out into the world and so my audience grows faster, what do you do? And conventional wisdom is, uh, well, you should engage with other people. And that is the strategy, but everybody executes it wrong. So let me walk you through exactly how to do this, um, in a very tactical way and some things to think about like why this is so effective.

Okay.

So where people go wrong in terms of commenting is they think that the name of the game is to just comment, like as if the act of commenting is the thing that leads to success. That is not what happens, right? Like if you just comment on people's posts, nice one, good job, love this, that doesn't do anything for you. You, you are essential. Yes, you are posting a comment, but that comment says Nothing, right? And so a different frame, the way I would think about comments is comments are another channel where you can publish unlimited content.

Okay.

So the way I refer to this is comments as content, because from your profile, you can only publish so many ideas in a day, right? But when you comment on other people's posts and profiles, You can publish unlimited content in a day. And so the way to think about comments is not to think about a comment as necessarily a response, like, nice one, or I really liked this, but instead to think of a comment as a short-form post in and of itself. The only difference— the writing and how you approach writing a short-form post and a comment is identical. The only difference is that one is being published from your profile and another is being attached to someone else's profile. Or someone else's content from their profile, right? And this is— if I could give every single writer and creator, what is the one thing that in addition to writing and creating content on your own, what is the one thing that will have the biggest accelerant on your audience growth?

It is this.

It's the realization that you can publish unlimited content. And actually, we can take this a step further. You can take old pieces of content or remixed versions, and you can publish them as comments on other people's posts. Okay, so let me show you how this works. And, and real quick, as I get into this, the thing that I want to emphasize, you know, one of the big ideas that I repeat over and over and over again inside of all of our different writing programs, our premium Ghostwriting Academy, our AI Writing School, all of our standalone digital products, our newsletters, I Write about it on social everywhere. The goal is not virality. The performance of any individual post is not what matters. The thing that matters is building a library in a niche, and I can prove it and I can show you exactly why that is the case.

Okay?

If you go into any social platform and you search for a topic, what happens is that social platform is going to find posts that have to do with that topic. And so one of the subtopics, like my niche is digital writing, and one of the subtopics that I write about is ghostwriting, just like I also write about copywriting and I also write about self-publishing. I also write about writer business models and writer career paths. These are all subtopics underneath the umbrella that is the niche of digital writing.

Okay.

So if I search for one of these topics, X example is going to show me posts about that topic. So let's just scroll and take a look. This is my post. This has to do with me.

This one is mine. This one is mine.

All you know—topic of ghostwriting. This one is mine.

This one is mine. This one is mine. This one is mine. This one is mine. This one is mine.

Here someone else's.

This one's mine. This one's mine. This one's mine. This one's mine. This one's mine.

This was my—you get the point right? So when someone gets introduced to the topic or the niche of ghostwriting, for example, what is the likelihood that they're gonna come across me? Well, it's very high. We just do a simple scroll and I own like 98% of this topic, right? Then if they see, wow, Cole must be the, the category king of this subtopic, right? Instantly that builds trust. Instantly the reader comes to the conclusion, this person's been doing this for a long time, this person specializes in this thing. If I'm interested in this thing, chances are they're probably a really good person to listen to, right? So if this person is interested in ghostwriting, what is the likelihood in seeing my dominance, my library of content in this niche, what is the likelihood that they will click over to my profile and follow me And then what is the likelihood that they will go, "Oh, I didn't know Cole ran all of these writing programs that are congruent to the thing that he writes about here on the social platform." It's very high. And this is fundamentally what's called a funnel, right? All you're doing is you're putting things out into the world that speak to areas of interest. People that are interested in that thing move further and further down the funnel based on their level of interest until eventually they become a consumer or a buyer of a product or a program or a service. So as I explain this, this is the big idea to internalize is your goal is not like— I don't care every time I sit down to write and publish something. I do not care if that thing performs well. Don't care because the performance of any one post is irrelevant. If it goes viral, cool. If it gets 11 views, cool. It doesn't matter. What matters is it's another asset in my library of content that's sitting there and compounding. It's part of my web so that when someone gets introduced to this topic or this category, my web just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until eventually they scroll down, they go, "Wow, Cole owns the majority of this topic. I should probably follow Cole if I'm interested in this topic." Okay? So that's the big idea. Now, within that idea, right, there's two different ways of owning a niche. On social platforms. One way is you publishing content of your own, right? 'Cause you are a media channel in and of yourself, but you're constrained in some way, right? You can't publish infinite content in a day. Like at some point the platform has a constraint, right? So what do you do? Well, the other way is you make a list of other tangentially related creators, right? They could be in your niche, in your category, they could be in tangentially related, niches and categories. You want some connection though, right? It would make sense for me to do this with someone who maybe writes about AI because I often write about AI writing. They're tangentially related. It might not make as much sense for me to do this with someone who writes about super advanced biotech. That doesn't really have anything to do with what I write about, right? So you're looking for related or tangentially related. Writers and creators that are writing about similar-ish topics as you, or there's some level of congruence. And the reason is because if you're constrained by publishing content on your own, what you can do is you just think about creating content attached to other people's content, which is what a comment is, right? So how do we do this? Well, this is very simple. What you do is you take your niche or you take your topic or a subtopic within your niche. You search for it and then you look for posts that are about that same topic. Okay, so here I own a lot of this on X, so I might have to scroll for a while to find somebody. Okay. And let's see, let's see what I find here. This is all me. That's the process. That's what happens when you own a, own a niche. Okay, well, I think I've exhausted ghostwriting. All right, let's, let's do something. Let's, let's go tangentially related. Let's go to copywriting. Okay, okay, so here's a good one. So Andrew here, Andrew, 3 hours ago wrote this. Oh, it looks like the post, he can't comment on it. Okay, well, we'll find another one. Let's see, all me, I dominate This subcategory too. Okay, this is a good one. Bad copywriting and good copywriting, right? So this is my product.

This is what it does.

This is what makes it good. That's bad copywriting. Good copywriting. This is your problem, etc. It's funny, Kevin is actually using one of our tried and true viral formats here. This is something Dicky and I have been like preaching for years as a template is like bad versions of the topic, good versions of the topic, right? So What can I do? Well, I could write my own post on my own profile, or I could comment on this and I could post a reply, but a bad reply would be, "I love this," right? That doesn't do anything. That doesn't mean anything. So instead, what I want to do is I want to comment something that is the same type of thing that I would publish myself, right? Comments as content. So what could I do? Well, for example, an easy one, is I could literally just recreate the format and do it myself. Well, formatting this, I'll just write it out, right? So I could say I would tweak this to bad copywriting.

I am who is important. I spent a lot of time and effort on this. You should care because I worked really hard.

And good copywriting is: You are who is important.

You won't have to spend much time and effort on this. You will love not having to work so hard. I'll make your life easy.

Now, I could post this as a tweet like this. If I sat down to write and I was like, I'm going to write a tweet today, this is the type of thing that I would probably tweet. But again, if I'm constrained, right? And by the way, you can do both. Like, you can— I could take this as a comment, post it, and then tomorrow I could post the exact same thing as a post from my profile. So it's not actually an either or. It's you can do both. And this is one of those things that I find so many writers and creators don't understand about creating content in a niche over and over and over and over and over again, right? That is the game. The game is not to have a million ideas. The game is to have a handful of core ideas that you just say a million times. Okay, so this is the type of thing that I would, that I would tweet, but I can get around my publishing constraint by just attaching it to someone else's post. So there we go. Reply. Boom. Now I have a post in this niche tapping into someone else's audience like this person, similar-ish industry and niche. They have 60,000 followers. This post, as this post circulates and stays attached to this topic, now I have a post attached to their post. And if you do this 20 or 30 times a day, this doesn't take forever, right? You can— this, you sit down and do this for 15 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes in the morning. Right? If you do this 20 or 30 times a day, you are— you have the ability to get beyond the constraint of publishing on any individual platform. You tap into other relevant people's audiences and you extend the library of your content in a niche and you attach yourself to all the other content in the niche. You can do the same exact thing on LinkedIn. Okay, so if on LinkedIn I search for freelance writing, because for example, in one of our writing programs, our Premium Ghostwriting Academy, we primarily speak to freelance writers and go, hey, this is why you're stuck. This is why you're not able to charge a premium. This is why you're not landing great clients. Here are all the things you should do differently. PGA is the largest training program for freelance writers on the internet. Okay, so what should I do? Well, what I should do is, yeah, I can continue publishing content on my own,, but I also should search for freelance writing in LinkedIn and look for other people that are writing about that same topic or other freelance writers. And I shouldn't comment on their posts like, nice one, right? That doesn't do anything for me. Instead, comments as content. So here, like I scroll down, I see this person. This person's advice is, I've been asked recently about how to find freelance writing gigs. And the answer is pretty simple. You should connect with other freelance writers. Okay, well, I love the intention, but that's wrong. I train freelance writers for a living. Uh, that is wrong. That is not how you find gigs and that is not how you find good clients, right? So what should I do? Well, I can write a piece of content as a comment here.

So I can say, I appreciate the intention, but Just to push back on this, connecting with other freelancers is not how you find gigs. This is actually why so many freelance writers struggle to earn more than minimum wage. The way you find clients is by going out and pitching clients yourself. And you don't have to be salesy. You just need to do what I like to call free consulting. Find someone in your industry you can help, educate them on a problem you know they have, or maybe a problem— educate them on a problem they don't know they have. Or maybe a problem they know they have, they just haven't gotten around to solving. Tell them exactly how to solve it, which requires doing work, and watch them inevitably ask you, "Oh, is this what you do?" In which case you say, "Yes, this is what I specialize in." This is how you land premium clients. And it's very, it's a very simple strategy. Boom. Comment.

Everything that I just wrote inside this post is the same thing that I have repeated on, I don't know, 600 live sessions inside of PGA at this point. Like, I know this exact problem. I know exactly why this type of person is stuck there. I know exactly what they should do, right? This is the same thing that I would probably write inside of a post myself, but I can get around all those constraints and I can get myself in front of— look at, look at all the freelance writers that are commenting on this post or attached to this post or might come across this post. I am able to tap into our exact target reader and target customer. And the way that I do that is by publishing comments as content. Okay. So this is, this is the best growth hack and strategy I can give you. I've been doing this for years. It's so unbelievably simple. The reason people don't do it though, is because it's a little boring and it's a little monotonous. And so it's not difficult. Like I just told you exactly what to do. You should go do it. But chances are you're not going to do it because you're going to sit down, you're going to do it for a day. You're going to go, oh, this is kind of boring to do this for 30 minutes and go find people who are writing in my niche or tangentially related niches and then write content as comments in response to the things that they wrote. Right. But like, that is fundamentally what's required. Everybody wants to set goals. Everyone wants to build an audience and make money on the internet. But goals don't magically happen on their own. Goals are the results of inputs. And the only way a goal gets achieved is if you provide it with sufficient input. This is an input. And the input is I got to go do this on 20 people's profiles every morning for 30 minutes for 3 years in a row, which, by the way, is like what me and my business partner Dickie did. This, this had a huge impact on our accel— the acceleration of us building audiences on these two platforms. So I would encourage you to go do this. It's the easiest growth hack you can do. It's something you have total control over. You can publish unlimited content. And if you want a little pro tip, Just sit down for one afternoon. It'll take you 20 minutes. Build a list of creators in your niche, in your industry, in tangentially related industries, creators that are ideally publishing on a regular basis just like you are, 'cause that means there's always something new that you can comment on. Make a list of those creators, sit down every morning, go through all of their profiles, comment on the last thing that they posted with a comment as content. Lather, rinse, repeat for a decade and watch everything, watch all the numbers go up and to the right.