The tiny words that changed my reach by 22x

I’m about to expose myself …

Last week, I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to understand why one of my own posts flopped.

I’m talking awake all night looking back and forth from two screens analyzing every single word, apostrophe, and spacing.

Two posts from the same account.

SAME follower count, with the SAME Google Doc screenshot format, SAME kind of asset inside it.

The first did 5,718 views and 115 saves.

A few months later the second did 129,800 views and 3,500 saves.

So I went through every theory I had.

Better doc. Stronger hook. Wrong time of day. Market finally being ready for it.

I was maybe two minutes away from blaming the algorithm again, which is my default move when I don't want to look at my own writing.

The difference was two words.

The post that worked had "personal brand" and "founder" in the first line. The one that didn't, didn't.

That was it. Weeks of theorizing, solved by something I could have typed in four seconds.

Once I saw it I couldn't stop seeing it. We run accounts for CRO agencies, performance creative shops, SaaS founders, coaches, email agencies and info product owners, and the ones producing the best leads were never the biggest accounts.

They were just far more deliberate about who each post was written for.

One founder closed a £46K deal off a single post. Another did $36,000 in 12 hours. Same pattern underneath both.

The content got attention from the right pocket of people.

1. X runs on interest now

X looks like a follower game from the outside.

Post more.

Grow the number.

Get more reach.

That is how a lot of people think about it.

But the platform is way more interest-based now. What shows up in someone’s feed is decided by what they engage with, reply to, repost, like, share, and keep reading.

So every word in your post is basically a targeting signal.

If you use the words your buyers are already engagingI with, the platform has a much better chance of putting you in the right pocket.

If you use words that are too broad, the post can still get reach, but the wrong people see it.

That is why keywords matter so much.

They tell the platform who the post is for.

One of our agency clients had a deal come in through his content, and the part he cared about most was not even the size of the deal.

It was that the lead was in his ICP.

That is what you want.

The content should sort people before they ever book a call.

2. Top of funnel decides who sees you

Top of funnel is where most founders make the first mistake.

They optimize for reach without asking where the reach is coming from.

For this layer, two things need to work together:

1. the right keywords

2. the right vehicle

The keywords tell the platform who the post is for.

Vehicle (format) gets people to stop and actually read.

Vehicles we see work well here are things like:

- Google Doc screenshots

- Reddit-style posts

- listicles

- snipes

- broad educational formats with the right keywords inside the post

Snipes are one of the most underused.

Your market is already in temporary attention pockets every single day. You quote it, add your own point of view, and put your name inside a topic that already has attention behind it.

That is way easier than trying to create attention from zero every single time.

3. Middle of funnel is where trust gets built

The posts doing most of the actual selling rarely look impressive. 80 likes, maybe a 150. That's fine, because reach isn't the job here.

The job is making the right person think "this guy understands the exact problem I'm dealing with."

What goes in this layer:

- what's genuinely working in the industry right now

- what's stopped working

- case studies

- pain points explained through a story rather than a list

- simple technical breakdowns

- long-form posts that show how you think

This is also where consistency starts earning its keep.

We had a founder who'd been posting in bursts for years and never built any momentum from it.

Once content started going out consistently across X and LinkedIn, people he'd never spoken to began reaching out.

Inbound doesn't arrive until people have had enough reps with your thinking to trust you with their problem.

4. Bottom of funnel gives the attention somewhere to go

You can get the first two layers right and still make nothing.

A lot of founders build an audience on free value for months, then promote once and wonder why it feels weird.

The fix is to make proof part of the content before you ever ask for the sale.

We run proof content every week.

A real client win.

A real problem solved.

A real outcome.

Enough context to make it credible.

Then stop.

No CTA needed every single time.

You are showing people that working with you produces results, and letting them connect the dots.

Strong proof usually has at least one of these:

- a measurable business result

- a specific problem that got solved

- revenue or deals generated

- qualified leads or inbound created

- a clear before-and-after outcome

“Great work” is not proof.

“Loving the content” is not proof.

“The design looks amazing” is not proof.

Proof means the reader can understand what changed because of the work.

5. This is why the right few thousand people matter more

Layer one is a targeting problem.

Layer two is a trust problem and it takes the longest by far.

Layer three is just making sure all that trust has somewhere to land.

Get them stacked properly and you don't need the biggest audience in your market. You need the right few thousand people seeing your name, your proof and your thinking often enough that you become the obvious call.

By the time someone books, the content should have done most of the filtering for you.

They already know what you talk about, they've seen the receipts, and they have a reason to believe the call is worth their time.

— Wiz

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