Post format · Teaching posts
The playbook: real viral examples and how it's built
A promised outcome with steps in order is the post people bookmark. 70 viral posts on X from 60 creators used this format between May and October 2026. Their median views were 98.2K, and their median reach 11.6 times the creator's follower count.
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Real examples
The 5 most viewed posts, one per creator.
Carver
@carverfomo
10.9Mviews
someone cut a 40 second clip of a stream this week. it did 3.8 million views. he got a notification the platform kept the traffic, the streamer kept the clout, and the clip itself paid nothing so i built CUT, open source, on Robinhood Chain chat knows a moment is happening…
19K followers · Sep 6, 2026 · Video
Simone Canc
@simonecanciello
5Mviews
influencers are dead. > ask chatgpt to create a character sheet from a pinterest pic or video > download a viral tiktok > replace the person with your character > use seedance 2.5 with references this account got 16M views in 3 days. someone is gonna sell you a $299 course…
27.5K followers · Sep 29, 2026 · Photo
Luis Batalha
@luismbat
4.7Mviews
Simple way to find customers using Grok Bot: 1) Use Grok Bot to search for people on X complaining about competitors or looking for alternatives (“Looking for an alternative to...”) 2) Use the @amplemarket connector to learn more about the person + company, then reach out to…
42.1K followers · Aug 25, 2026 · Photo
starmex
@starmexxx
1.9Mviews
NVIDIA QUIETLY DROPPED A $249 BOX THAT REPLACES YOUR $200/MONTH OPENAI SUBSCRIPTION WITH $2 IN ELECTRICITY it's called the jetson orin nano super. smaller than a wallet, runs at 25 watts, does 70 trillion ai operations per second. runs llama 3, mistral, gemma and deepseek…
11.7K followers · May 27, 2026
Vinay Jain
@vinayjain404
1.3Mviews
"Read 347 competitor ads. 3 angles, all crowded. Found a 4th nobody's touched. Build it?" That ping landed in a founder's Slack before he'd finished his coffee. His own competitor research to date: three ads, skimmed. Finding the gap and claiming it: Max. Hours the founder…
5.2K followers · Aug 28, 2026 · Video
How it's built
Answer this first: What's a process you could teach step by step? For example: “How we onboard a new client in a week: the kickoff call, the shared doc, the first draft by day 3”. Then write one line or paragraph per bracket, in this order:
[A hook that promises a concrete outcome] [The steps in the order the reader would take them, each with the how] [Why it works, or what you'd do first]
The median viral post in this format was 998 characters long, and 49% had a photo or video. Use it to get clients and grow your audience.
Formats like it
- The numbersA real figure stops the scroll, and the decisions behind it are what readers save.
- The mistake and the fixNaming the mistake the reader is making earns the right to give the fix.
- The receiptsAn itemised list speaks for itself and reads fast on a phone.
- The explainerA term everyone uses and few can explain is a post people save.
All formats, as fill-in outlines: tweet templates and LinkedIn post templates. What's going viral right now: this week on X.
Questions
What is the playbook post format?
A promised outcome with steps in order is the post people bookmark. It goes in this order: a hook that promises a concrete outcome; then the steps in the order the reader would take them, each with the how; then why it works, or what you'd do first.
Does it work on LinkedIn as well as X?
Yes. The examples on this page are X posts, and the same shape works on LinkedIn: Postel's own list of LinkedIn openings that beat their creator's usual engagement includes one in this format. On LinkedIn, put the first beat in the first two lines, before "see more".
Where do these examples come from?
From Postel's library of individual creators on X. Each day, posts from the last two weeks by creators with at least 1,000 followers that have reached 5 times their follower count in views are checked once: a model sorts each by format, and a stronger model approves it as a clear example. 70 posts from May to October 2026 were tagged with this format; the page shows the most viewed one from each of up to five creators.
How do I write a post in this format in my own voice?
Answer one question first: What's a process you could teach step by step? Then fill the template on this page with your answer, one beat at a time. In Postel, pick this format under Viral posts › Formats and it writes the post for X, LinkedIn or both from your answer, in the way you write (one AI credit per network).
I'm one of the examples. Can I have my post removed?
Yes. Send the post's link through the contact form at postel.app/contact and it comes off this page within a few days.