Distribution

A film nobody sees did not launch

The film is one asset. The launch is what reaches people on the day. This is how we run the second half of the job, and why it is planned before the edit is locked.

Distribution is half the work

A launch is not a publish date, it is a competition for one hour of attention. We plan the posts, the roster and the timing before the edit is locked, because that hour is where the outcome is decided.

How the X algorithm works

Four things decide how far a post travels. A launch plan that ignores them is a guess.

  1. 01

    Your followers see it first

    The post goes to a slice of the people who already follow you. Nothing else happens until that slice reacts, which is why a good film on a quiet account stays quiet.

    Your postSeedScoredOut of network
    Nothing reaches the right side until the left side reacts.

  2. 02

    Half of every feed is out of network

    X puts the For You feed at roughly half in-network, half out-of-network. That second half is where a launch reaches people who have never heard of the company, and it is only unlocked by scoring well with the first half.

    Accounts you followAccounts you do not50%50%
    Roughly the split X describes for the For You feed.

  3. 03

    Replies count for far more than likes

    The ranker weights a reply at twenty seven likes, and a reply you answer at a hundred and fifty. The brief is not to collect likes, it is to say something worth answering.

    • Reply answered+75
    • Reply+13.5
    • Repost+1
    • Like+0.5

  4. 04

    The first hour sets the ceiling

    Reach compounds off early engagement. Two identical posts, one that earns replies in its first minutes and one that does not, finish the day on different numbers, and the slow one never catches up.

    Replies earlyNo replies earlyFirst hourDay one
    Same film, same account, two different launches.
01The postfilm, claim, link02In-network seedpeople who follow you03Signals, scoredreplies, reposts, dwell04Out of networkpeople who do notEvery quote tweet re-enters at the seed, with an audience the anchor could not reach

What the ranker pays for each action

X's own weights, from the recommendation code it open sourced in March 2023. This is why we brief creators to write a real take, and why we never buy engagement: the cheap kind is weighted near zero and the fake kind gets reported.

Earns reach

  • Reply the author answers+75
  • Reply+13.5
  • Profile click that leads on+12
  • Repost+1
  • Like+0.5
  • Video watched+0.005

Costs reach

  • Not interested in this-74
  • Report-369
X's open sourced ranking weights

Five steps to a viral launch

Half the launches in our archive land between 300K and 1M views, and the biggest have gone past 2M. This is the sequence behind them.

  1. 01

    Anchor the launch on one post

    Everything points at a single post, normally the founder's, with the film in it. It holds the claim and the link, and it is where replies, bookmarks and profile clicks accumulate. Spread those across five posts and you get five small launches.

    Anchor
    Every quote points home. One post accumulates everything.
    The same spend, seven separate posts, nothing accumulates.

  2. 02

    Pick the roster for the room

    Follower counts are the least useful number in a brief. We pick accounts whose replies your buyers read, and you see every name and price before anything runs.

    TechnicalOperatorsBroadYour buyer
    We buy the overlap, not the biggest circle.

  3. 03

    Quote tweets, not reposts

    A repost dies in a timeline as your post. A quote is a new post with its own audience, its own replies and its own score, and it still sends people back to the anchor. Every quote is written for the account posting it.

    Repost
    One audience, reached twice, in your words.
    AnchorQuotelinks back
    Two audiences joined, and a link home.

  4. 04

    Front-load the first hour

    The opening quotes land inside the first hour, close together, because that is where the ceiling is set. The rest are spaced across the day and into the next: eight posts in ten minutes reads as an ad, eight across two days reads as news.

    Anchor postFirst hourThree to five quotes, tightRest of day oneOne every few hoursDay twoThe long tail of the rosterDay four to sevenThe follow-up

  5. 05

    Hold something back for the week after

    Launch day attention decays inside a day. A follow-up post, a cutdown or a result the founder can report buys a second rise in the same week.

    Launch dayFollow-up
    A second rise, rather than one long fade.

Related examples

Launch posts that ran this way, with the film in the post.

What you get from us

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