That "overnight" viral tweet took 4 years of build up

I tracked back a tweet from last week that got 80k retweets about a mom's airport hack. The account had been posting consistently for 4 years with barely 200 likes per post. Right before the viral hit, they'd done 3 threads about travel tips that slowly gained traction. The viral tweet was just the 4th in a series using the exact same format. Anyone else notice the pattern with these overnight successes?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopher_wells425d ago

That's still a lot of persistence most people won't do.

jesse99425d ago

Yeah I read a blog that said most viral stuff takes years of consistent posting first.

robinj2914d ago

I saw something about this on a podcast actually with a guy who runs a big travel account. He said the same thing - his first two years got almost nothing, then a post about packing cubes randomly blew up. The algorithm doesn't care how long you've been posting, it just needs to find the right audience at the right time. Its weird how many people quit right before they'd have broken through though. Most folks can't handle putting in 200 posts with zero reaction, I get it. But that viral tweet was just the payoff for all that invisible work nobody saw.