How to ethically farm engagement on social media

TOGETHER WITH

How to ethically farm engagement on social media

Check out this tweet from Justin Gordon:

The post is stupidly simple. 4 words (5 if you count the underscores as a word).

And it prints engagement. Just look at the bottom left corner of this screenshot:

136 replies.

Relative to the account size, and the way Twitter engagement has been lately, this is solid.

Why did it work

There are 3 simple reasons:

TAKEAWAY #1 - The prompt is low-friction.

The prompt only takes 1 word to respond to. The engagement prompts that get the most responses are usually easy to answer.

Don’t force your audience to write a 5 paragraph essay in MLA format to engage with your content.

If the goal is maximizing engagement, keep the response needed to 1-3 words. Easy.

TAKEAWAY #2 - The prompt use tactical polarization.

Founders and VCs (the target audience of this tweet) are going to have strong opinions on what traits the ‘best’ founders have.

If you know anything about Twitter and social media in general, it’s that people love to share their opinion.

Be careful with how you use polarization in your marketing, but when used tastefully and in an industry-relevant way, it is a no-brainer to increase engagement.

TAKEAWAY #3 - You’re probably overthinking your social content.

Again, the tweet is 4 words long. This probably took less than a minute to type up. And it crushed.

I see so many content teams hamstring their social teams by implementing long-ass approval processes for content. A simple tweet doesn’t need 3-4 rounds of edits.

Send it. Iterate fast. Speed wins on social, and content formats like this are great for quick testing and increasing content cadence.

TAKEAWAY #4 - This type of content (and the underlying principles we just outlined) are not limited to Twitter.

Engagement prompts exist on all social platforms. I just used this tweet as an example.

You can apply the same principles (low-friction, tactical polarization, scrappy content) on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Threads — well if the app is still alive.

TECH NEWS

• Chip on their shoulder: Nvidia’s $1 Trillion valuation and a global shortage of AI chips is leading to a boom in challenger startups.

• A bit dodgy, mate: Apple slams UK surveillance-bill proposals as a threat to user security.

• Just how you like it: OpenAI launched customized features for ChatGPT, so you don’t have to write the same instructions over and over again.

• Real deal: White House says tech giants like OpenAI and Google will watermark AI-generated content for safety.

TOGETHER WITH BRILLIANT

Data skills aren’t magic. They’re math.

Data science skills are only going to become more valuable over the coming decades. And the best way to sharpen your skills in math—and master the concepts behind data science—is with Brilliant.

Brilliant is the interactive app that over 10 million people use to level up in math, data, AI, and more.

Forget watching lecture videos. Brilliant has built a library of stunning hands-on visual lessons that are packed with interactive problem-solving.

No time to learn? No problem. Brilliant bite-size lessons take minutes to complete and gradually ramp you up on big subjects.

Try it now →

AI TUTORIAL

Business decision analysis using ChatGPT

Want a second opinion on a business decision you’re about to make? Try this prompt:

Analyze the implications of implementing [decision] in [business]. Discuss possible advantages and drawbacks, and suggest enhancements to [decision] to mitigate any identified drawbacks.
Business = [Insert Here]

Decision = [Insert Here]

Here’s the result:

Tool used: ChatGPT

NEWS

What else is brewing

• Amazon plans to build a $120 million facility in Florida that will prepare satellites to launch into space as it goes hard at the satellite internet business.

• Leon Black, the billionaire private equity investor, agreed to pay $62.5 million to avoid a lawsuit from the US Virgin Islands over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the New York Times reports.

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered an investigation into whether Bud Light’s parent company breached its obligations to its shareholders through the brand’s brief marketing partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, which drew massive backlash from conservatives.

• Update from yesterday: Experts have concluded that the creature stalking the outskirts of Berlin was probably not a lion after all but a wild boar, and the massive police search was called off once the animal turned out to be less exotic. In other wild animal news, scientists are testing whether sharks are chomping on abandoned cocaine off the coast of Florida.

Thanks for reading.

Until next time!

Owais

p.s. if you want to sign up for the Disrupt Daily newsletter or share it with a friend, you can find us here.