How to write viral threads like Sahil Bloom

Welcome to another edition of PROse, the B2B marketer's no BS guide to growing an engaged audience.

Want to hear a cool story?

The other day I got to my WeWork at 8:30 and there was this guy sitting in front of me working in Excel.

I would look over occasionally and see him still in Excel. No 20 Chrome tabs, no Twitter break, not even a call break. Just a short lunch break and Excel.

Went all the way to 6pm like that. Idk why, but something about seeing his grind lit a fire in me—I was determined not to leave before him! I ended up staying until ~6:15pm.

The takeaway: I'm all for work-life balance. But sometimes it feels great to put in a few extra hours to move the ball forward on your dream, whatever that is.

Hope this was a productive week for you too!

Alright, let's jump into this week's email.

Sahil Bloom is one of the fastest-growing Twitter creators.

If you’re even remotely active on tech/business Twitter, chances are you’ve come across his content.

That wasn't true just a few years ago.

In May 2020, he had 500 followers. Today he has almost 850,000 followers.

The secret to his growth? Viral threads.

Let’s break down 6 lessons you can apply from Sahil’s threads.

1. Choose a good topic

Half the battle in going viral is choosing a topic with viral potential.

There are two key things, among others, that make a viral thread topic:

• Immediately actionable

• Applicable to a significant portion of your audience

Said another way, your threads should solve a problem or answer a question that most of your audience has.

If you need ideas to write about, there are a few places you can check out:

• Quora questions

• Questions in your niche's subreddits

• Content that outperformed in the past

2. Write an attention-grabbing hook

Your first tweet needs to stop the scroll.

Most of your followers are mindlessly scrolling past dozens or hundreds of tweets in their feed.

So you need some way to interrupt them, but in a way that makes them want to read your content.

When you zoom out, most of Sahil’s threads follow a similar hook formula.

I call it the ICO formula:

• Intriguing statement

• Context surrounding that statement

• Offer of what the reader gains by reading your thread

You can see it in action with this tweet that got 20M views and even went viral on Instagram:

Pro-tip: another way to stop the scroll is by including an image. Since most tweets are all-text, images naturally draw attention.

But even without an image, this formula gets the job done.

3. Make it skimmable

Nobody likes walls of text. Not in texts, not in emails, not in tweets.

In fact, most times we read things, we skim it first.

It’s another way for us to filter through all of the content competing for our attention. Subconsciously, our brain is deciding if a piece of content is interesting or not.

When you write walls of text, you dramatically increase the chances that your audience’s brain will automatically say “nope, next tweet!”

Here are a few ways to make your contents more readable:

• Condense points to a single sentence

• List items as bullets instead of using commas

4. Use ‘open loops’

Open loops are a slightly more advanced copywriting technique.

They also happen in movies.

Simply put, open loops are like cliffhangers in your writing.

They pique the audience’s interest with some sort of mystery without giving them an immediate answer.

This keeps them engaged until they “solve” the mystery.

If you’ve ever been on a course guru’s landing page, you probably saw a ton of open loops without even noticing. It’s really popular in direct response copywriting.

Just make sure you "close the loop" by providing an answer to the mystery.

5. Include examples

If you really want to drive a point home, use a written or visual example.

Especially when you’re dealing with new or highly-technical concepts.

Don’t leave your readers to connect the dots themselves, do it for them.

I would include a screenshot here, but this entire email is an example... see how I went meta there? 🤝

6. Provide a takeaway

Chances are after reading a 10- or 12-tweet thread, your audience won’t remember a good bulk of the content.

And, sometimes people just scroll to the end of the thread to get the main message (at least I do sometimes 🤣)

That’s okay! First and last impressions are what people remember the most.

So make a good last impression by giving the reader a simple takeaway they can remember.

Here’s an example of Sahil doing exactly that:

So… the TLDR for you:

1. Choose a good topic

2. Create a good hook with the ICO formula

3. Make it skimmable

4. Use ‘open loops’

5. Include examples

6. Always provide a takeaway

Threads are still the best way to grow on Twitter, even for brand accounts.

My agency manages an account for an early stage startup and we’ve more than doubled our following in two weeks by writing threads.

If you want to skip the struggle bus (I’ve been there), apply these tips to your threads and publish 1 or 2 per week.

And voilá, follower growth on tap.

That's a wrap, folks! But before you go...

If you enjoyed this email, reply and let me know what stuck out. You can also send general feedback!

I'd love to get feedback on what's working and how I can improve (already got some things in the works).