Cre8tor Club: Here's what's wrong with your X posts

Four easy ways to expand your account's reach

The best novel ever written was probably never published. The best movie script ever created was probably never turned into a film. And the best tweets ever tweeted (ugh, fine, “X posts ever posted”) probably never reached your For You feed.

It’s just math. What are the odds that the world’s most creative minds are even slightly interested in the complexities of the X algorithm?

James Joyce (c. 1915), frustrated because he’s stuck on 45 followers

Many people say that great work will eventually find an audience. It sounds nice and I wish it were true. But in the real world, if you want to get more eyes on your posts (and by proxy, your actual work), you need to play by the rules of the social media game.

Here are four easy ways to dramatically improve your numbers.

Rule 1: Avoid links

X wants its users to stay on the platform 24/7. Your link is a threat to send those users elsewhere. So X throttles your post’s reach when it sees the link.

Instinct tells us to make it as easy as possible for people to reach what we want them to see. It’s harder to get people to navigate to a link in your bio, for example, than to simply click a link that’s in the post. And maybe you are willing to sacrifice some of your post’s reach to include that link.

But your decision may change when you realize how dramatic the throttling effect can be. Elon Musk’s Grok AI app, when pressed, tells us that his X app may limit the reach of a post with links by up to 90% or more:

Think about it. How often do you see links in the For You feed?

The workaround is to 1) create an engaging post, then 2) drop a link in that post’s replies and/or direct people to a link in your bio. If you are promoting your podcast, for example, you’ll want to grab attention with a short video clip.

Here’s an example of a Phillies podcast post that does some things well:

• There’s no link.

• We can see immediately that the hosts are Todd Zolecki, Jim Salisbury, and Ruben Amaro Jr.—names that people trust.

• The post highlights a quote that stirs emotion and triggers discussion. (The topic is Dave Dombrowski’s comments regarding Bryce Harper and whether Harper can be “great” again.)

And here’s where things went wrong:

X throttles the follow-up post because it contains a link. Even without a link, the reach of a quote tweet is limited (by roughly 50% relative to an original post, according to one analysis). And unlike a reply, it’s not easy for viewers of the original, highly engaging tweet to see the quote.

Check out what happens if you post nothing but links, like the Philadelphia Inquirer:

430,000 followers. Zero engagement. What are we even doing here, Inky?

Rule 2: Avoid posting videos over 29 seconds in length