In partnership with
What if I told you the post that gets 10x your normal engagement isn't random luck?
Ever wish you could download your competitors' entire content playbook, or finally figure out what actually makes your own posts go viral (or flop)?
Most brands guess. The smart ones are stealing.
Not the content itself, but the exact patterns that drive engagement.
Here's the shocking truth: Your biggest competitors have left their entire strategy exposed.
All it takes is a simple workflow, a couple of scraping tools, and the right AI prompts and suddenly you're running circles around brands still playing the guessing game.
The Problem is Worse Than You Think
Think about your content strategy right now:
Someone says, "That post did well, let's do more like that!" But nobody can explain WHY it worked or how to repeat it.
This isn't just inefficient. It's expensive.
And while you’re here guessing, there’s a smart competitor who is analyzing.
Here’s the deal:
Your biggest growth levers are already visible, in your feed or your competitors' top posts
But 95% of teams ignore the data that matters, missing the outliers (those rare posts that punch 5-10X above average)
When you dig into outlier content, you find shockingly repeatable patterns
So what's the real difference between average creators/brands and 7-figure content engines?
Average brands follow their gut. Top brands follow the data.
Big shout out to my sponsor Wistia!
We analyzed millions of videos so you don’t have to
Wistia, a leading video marketing platform for businesses, just released their fifth annual State of Video Report! The report, based on insights from over 14 million videos, and 100,000 businesses, brings you the latest video tips, trends, and insights. Download a copy to…
See how your videos perform against industry benchmarks
Learn which kinds of videos get the most engagement so you can make more of them
Find out how to scale your video strategy for less $$ with AI
Plus, it’s actually fun to read. How many reports can you say that about?
The System That Changes Everything
I've been quietly teaching this to founders and creators who want unfair advantages. I call it the H.E.I.S.T. Method:
H – Harvest Data
Forget manual research. This is where you unleash the machines.
Tools like Apify or ScrapeCreators let you instantly export posts, captions, engagement data, and more from any profile. Yours, competitors, or stealth accounts.
In under 5 minutes, you'll have what would take analysts weeks to compile: every post, every number, no more guesswork.
E – Evaluate
Now sort that data by engagement and tag the true outliers.
The question that matters: "Which five posts hit 5x above average?"
That's your strike zone. Do this for your main feed and any UGC/stealth channel.
I – Identify Patterns (with AI)
This is where it gets interesting.
Feed your best (and worst) posts into GPT-4o or Claude with prompts like:
"Identify the core hook pattern in each outlier post."
"What emotional triggers appear repeatedly in the top performers?"
The AI will reveal what human eyes miss: recurring structures, CTA styles, emotional triggers driving real results.
S – Spot the Formula
This is where the "aha" moments happen.
Do your outliers always open with a polarizing question? Are UGC posts crushing it with controversial takes?
The patterns will shock you. They're almost always simpler than you expect—and completely repeatable.
T – Transform Your Strategy
Turn findings into action:
Draft 3-5 new hooks based on proven patterns
Create a simple checklist for your team or UGC partners
Build a weekly 15-minute audit into your process
Proof It Works (Real Results)
Case #1: My own content
I scraped my last 300 posts across X, and Threads, ran them through an AI analysis loop, and spotted a simple but powerful pattern:
Posts where I (1) gave immediate value, (2) talked about AI or building systems, and (3) tagged a creator or brand within the first post or headline were 6.5x more likely to go viral (10,000+ views) than posts that didn't.
(I also found that no one cares when I post about David Ogilvy… but alas I keep trying)
Case #2: The joke that landed
While promoting a consumer app through my agency, Emerald Digital, we didn’t guess what would work, we scraped it.
We pulled our own short-form posts, scraped the competition, and ran an AI audit.
The pattern? Posts that leaned into slapstick or silly humor crushed everything else by over 10x.
We pivoted hard and within a month, one post smashed 14 million views.
The formula was sitting right there in the outliers.
Quick Wins
Start Scraping:
Don’t overthink it. Apify and ScrapeCreators both have ready-made recipes for pulling post data from Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, or X. Want more control? Spin up an n8n workflow and automate the whole process - zero coding required.Plug-and-Play AI Prompts:
Copy, paste, done. Here’s a prompt to drop into GPT-4o or Claude:“Review this dataset of posts. For each outlier (top 10% by engagement), summarize the hook, emotional angle, and CTA. Identify any patterns that repeat.”
Outlier Tracking Template:
No need to build from scratch. [Download the Big Players Outlier Audit Sheet] - a Google Sheet designed to help you track, tag, and compare top performers across any feed, whether it’s yours, a stealth/UGC channel, or your biggest rival.Make It a Ritual:
Add a 15-minute “content audit” to your calendar every Friday. Scrape, review, and update your playbook. Iterate fast, adjust often, and your strategy compounds every week.
If this newsletter lit a fire under you, forward it to one person who would benefit.
🎁 Get rewarded for sharing! My team grew NEW accounts to over 50 million views in just a few months. We made an AI viral hook generator so you can follow the same hook frameworks that we do.
Invite your friends to join, and when they sign up, you’ll unlock our AI Viral Hook Generator—the ultimate tool for creating scroll-stopping content.
{{rp_personalized_text}}
Copy and paste this link: {{rp_refer_url}}
Content isn’t random. Virality isn’t luck.
It’s math you haven’t mapped yet.
Big players don’t wait around hoping their next post pops off.
They build systems to find the outliers, decode the patterns, and double down.
Let’s go big.
Matt Berman
CEO Emerald Digital | Connyct