Happy Tuesday and Welcome back to… THE JAILBREAK.
(along with 690+ readers 🗝️ )

When I got laid off from my Data Engineering job at VMware 3 months ago, the last thing I expected was to become a social media manager…

I also didn’t expect to pull 100k+ views in 15 days.

But I did…

For the last month, I’ve been running the short-form social media accounts for Bloom Technical Institute - the coding bootcamp I graduated from years ago!

In the last 3 weeks,

I’ve taken their page from this:

To THIS:

This is my first ever time making short-form content and I’ve managed to pull over 100k+ views for Bloom Tech on their IG/TikTok in the last 15 days.

And today I’m breaking down exactly how I did it so you can steal my strategy and replicate it for your content.

Let’s dive in!  🤯 🤳 

1. Choosing Niche/Target Audience

If you want to pull major views FAST, you need a niche.

We’re not trying to build a personality account here, we want to pull lots of views quickly, raise brand awareness, and get more people to click on our product link. This is where the money is.

To do this, we need to make videos for a SPECIFIC person.

Since a coding bootcamp hired me, my niche has been predefined.

My niche is tech/coding videos and my target audience is self-taught programmers, beginner devs, and people learning to code.

Here are some questions to help find YOUR niche:

What are some things I’m good at?
What do people say I’m good at?
What do I enjoy talking about?
What does my audience enjoy?
What is my unfair advantage?
What can I be the best in the world at?

2. Finding What Works

Now that we have a niche, we need to find what works.

It’s market research time, baby!

First, make a list of popular hashtags and searches related to your niche. This is where we’ll find our ideas. Here are some of the hashtags I’m using:
#programming, #programmingmemes, #beginnerprogrammer, #codingmemes, #learntocode, #softwareengineer, #datascience, #techjob, #learnpython #machinelearning #csmajor

Take notes of which videos catch your eye and stop your scroll.

If I think a video is good, I check the metrics.

If the video is performing better than average (i.e. 10x more views on the video than followers on the account) I save the link and add it to my Notion doc. I know that video is something that could be replicated.

3. The Ol’ Yoink and Twist

Now that we have a list of 10-20 outlier videos from our niche, it’s time for the most widely used method for creating viral videos, The Ol’ Yoink and Twist.

This is where you take a popular video (YOINK!), and add your own special sauce to it (TWIST!)—essentially copying to format of the video but changing the substance.

Ali Abdaal and loads of other big YouTubers have used this exact method to blow up their channels too. When Ali only had a few thousand subs (he's now at 5+ million), he found a video that was blowing up titled “How I Take Notes on My iPad as an Engineering Student”. Ali being a medical student, decided to make a video called “How I Take Notes on My iPad in Medical School” and this video now has over SIX MILLION VIEWS. Not even his idea initially, but by adding his own twist, he has a unique banger on his channel that’s printing views and money years later.

We’re now nearing 30,000 views on a video where I did the same thing.

Someone made a simple video where they said they had been coding for hours and finally found the bug in their code… one missing semicolon!

I yoinked it, twisted it, and instead of finding a bug in my code, I added a picture of myself! Simple concept, big results!

Find a banger, yoink it, twist it, post it!

4. Experiment and Double Down

When you start a new account, it’s hard to predict your view counts.

The first 20-30 videos should be experiments with different formats. For me, this was a combo of memes, advice, inspirational content, and tech tips.

We’re nearing the end of the first month of daily posts on Bloom Techs pages and it’s about time to check our experiments.

Which formats are working?
Which are falling flat?
Do people like memes? Advice? Education?
Who’s watching these videos?

See how your content performs during the first month and then you can use the analytics to start answering these questions. Remember, the more you know about who you’re making content for, the better your content will be.

Kill the formats that aren’t working.
Double down on what is.

(If you’re interested in hiring me to make content for your brand, feel free to respond to this email or shoot me a message at [email protected])

5. Tools for Making Videos

Capcut - essential for TikTok styles/text/effects

Notion - capturing ideas, video links

Google Drive - offloading from local storage, sharing

Repurpose - post/schedule on multiple platforms

🎥 Video of the Week:

How to Land a 100k/yr Tech Job (from ZERO to HIRED)

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- Jack Ross ✌️

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