Patterns
Social proof: what 285 posts that lean on it have in common
285 posts in the library lean on social proof, reaching a median of 633 likes. Eight that use it, what it travels with, and how to use it without faking it.
Rests on:the post,the post,the post,the post,the post,the post,the post,the post
Social proof, as the analysis uses the term: the post shows that other people — customers, peers, numbers of them — already did the thing or believed it. 285 posts in the library lean on it, and they reach a median of 633 likes against the library's 632.
Eight that use it
For years, @DoorDash cheated its delivery workers by using customers' tips to meet its workers’ guaranteed pay instead of giving them the tips they earned.
Uses concrete numbers instead of vague claims, which makes it credible and quotable.
Netflix just got a $2.8 BILLION payout from Paramount for its failed Warner Bros. deal.
Leads with a specific number, which is concrete enough to be worth a second of attention.
We’ve reached the part of Freddy’s journey when a private jet operator, two $5B+ airlines and the Governor of Utah are sliding into his DMs so he can make it to Canada to watch the German World Cup team play. Incredible.
Uses concrete numbers instead of vague claims, which makes it credible and quotable.
> be an electric engineering student
Opens with a short, self-contained line that is easy to take in at a glance.
My day job (also: night job) is CEO of Slack, a publicly traded company with investors to whom I am a fiduciary, 110k+ paying customers of all sizes, and thousands of employees I care about very, very much. The last few weeks have been 🤯😳😢 Here’s what it's been like. [Thread]
Uses concrete numbers instead of vague claims, which makes it credible and quotable.
Huy Fong's Sriracha hit revenue of $150m+ a year...with no sales team, no trademark and $0 in ad spend.
Leads with a specific number, which is concrete enough to be worth a second of attention.
Elon fired the IGs and gutted the federal agencies investigating and regulating his companies including the SEC, NLRB, DoD, NHTSA, FDA, DoA and FAA.
Uses concrete numbers instead of vague claims, which makes it credible and quotable.
We’ve raised $30B in funding at a $380B post-money valuation.
Leads with a specific number, which is concrete enough to be worth a second of attention.
What it travels with
Social proof rarely works alone. In these posts it most often appears beside specificity (285 of 285) and reciprocity (14). The opening that carries it most often is an observation — 150 of the 285.
How to use it without faking it
The mechanism is a description of why something worked, not an instruction to manufacture the effect. The post shows that other people — customers, peers, numbers of them — already did the thing or believed it — so the question to ask of a draft is whether that is actually true of it, not whether it sounds like it is. The posts above pass that test; the library's rejected ones mostly did not.
From the analysis of the strongest example: Preserve the Hook → Landing structure and the plain observation opening. Replace the subject matter entirely with the writer’s own product, story and numbers.