The One About the Viral Tweet
The One About the Viral Tweet
"I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s 'Shipping Crisis' Will Not End"
No Telling What goes Viral, or Why ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I tweeted a link to a story written on the Medium platform (similar software to SubStack, Revue, Ghost, etc). It was written by a 20 year trucking / logistics industry veteran named Ryan Johnson.
The tweet looks like any link tweet. It doesn’t even have a picture to draw attention to it. Just words.
But, the headline and first sentence is legendary:
At first glance, the article looked like any article. Boring to look at. No pictures. No page breaks. Some paragraphs are long in big blocks of type.
*In copywriting 101 for readability, you should use short words. Short sentences. Ideally 2 - 3 sentences per paragraph. Short Paragraphs. <H2> Heading tags - H2s for big topics. <H3> Heading tags - H3s for subtopics. One new Header every 5 paragraphs (average). 
There are 2488 words, and it takes almost 10 minutes to read at a normal reading rate.
Here is the article about the Supply Chain problem in the US entitled “I’m A Twenty Year Truck Driver, I Will Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End” by Ryan JOHNSON.”
Ryan’s first hand theory about the Supply Chain Crisis - which will affect everyone that consumes anything - reads like he is a seasoned writer. The words and sentences flow nicely, to make you want to keep reading. It is a great article. (despite not being optimized for readability).
That little tweet has gotten a lot of views. Turns out I have a couple of big influencers who retweeted the tweet to their tons of followers.
I was stunned when I opened Twitter and saw these numbers. One word - Bonkers:
I commented on Ryan’s article on his original Medium post to thank him and try to pass off some kudos for his popular story, but as of publication time, he has yet to reply.
I’ve been tweeting for 12 years, (@paulmacko) and have less than 3000 followers. But the quality of your followers is the important metric here. By quality I mean they are leaders, influencers, and have hundreds of thousands of followers. Even many millions like Paris Hilton.
Here are just a few of this tweet’s comments:
“This is BY FAR the most cogent, clear explanation of the “supply chain crisis” that I’ve encountered anywhere.”
“The best commentary to date on the supply chain crisis.”
“Highly value add and relevant article. This aspect of supply-chain induced inflationary pressure looks unlikely to be resolved quickly and may even worsen.”
“I confess I only had an elementary understanding of the supply chain. This article was eye-opening.“
“#LivingWage is the issue … different from what you hear on Faux Fox News“
“Read. Understand. Oh, and somebody get our *expert* Transportation Secretary to read it, too.”
“This deserves a read.” …and hundreds more.
You get quality followers from your newsletter by sharing great ideas, thoughts, and stories while simplifying and synthesizing the relevant and important information.
Seth Godin explains about giving your best stuff away for free in this timely article:
"How a (Free) 20 Year-old Book by Seth Godin Completely Transformed My Business - 20 years ago, marketing genius Seth Godin tested a brilliant idea: Give your best stuff away, and watch it spread. It's just as useful today as it was then.”
I’ll keep doing what Seth talks about, and watch it spread, while trying to add value along the way.
A lot of writers on blog platforms have the same principal problem - and that is to get sign ups, or followers when starting up. Just get found. Is that too much to want?
The “StackHacks: Getting Deeper into Marketing” series of how-to articles and ways to find your following should help you get a few new readers. New fresh articles every week. Thank you for reading! ✌
Awesome, Paul! And great speaking with you today. Will follow up in a bit,
George
It really was a great article and his first on Medium. Congrats on so many impressions for the tweet!