Copy a viral 4-picture slideshow, add your app's images, and post it 400 times

Jack Friks… my stop scrolling app was by consistently scrolling every morning. So, pretty awful how it worked out. Obviously, it's not what I wanted to do. But yeah, I would scroll on like my branded page or like a page in that niche and then I would just like see like what works, what goes viral, like get a sense for it, like really a taste, um, cuz like you're not going to figure it out just posting and not being on the platform. You have to be a user.

Jack FriksSo I was scrolling every day and I'd spend exactly like an hour on this marketing, which would be scrolling and making a video. And I tried different video every day. I think I did that for like 100, 200 days, and I didn't really see much. And then I found this, you know, video on Instagram that was doing crazy. Like it had a million views and it was four pictures and it just had a funny caption and it just showed like most attractive hobbies, right? It wasn't related to anything, it was just a fun TikTok. And then I changed it to like just, you know, hobbies in my app. I used pictures from my app, like the little widgets, so they can tell it's from my app.

Jack FriksUm, and I just changed the caption. I made that video like 400 times, but the first like 100 times I made it, um, I knew- I noticed it got like a ton of views. So, I just kept making, and I put the call to action to download the app right in the comments, and I pin it. You know, 5 million views later, you still get a lot of downloads, even though it's not directly about the app, because it's so many views. And as you can see, yeah, I've used this format for like a year, and it still sometimes hits, but it's pretty much milked dry at this point. That these golden gooses don't last forever.

Joseph Choi… of people, like, "Oh, I have to, like, you know, really understand TikTok and just, you know, be great on camera." And- but you- you basically just scrolled until you found something that got a lot of views, and then you just basically copied it. Did- is- or was there any change that you made that you tried to make it more conversion-friendly, like to actually get more downloads for the app compared to like the original format that you found?

Jack FriksIt's kind of a weird place. You're- if you're making content that gets a lot of views, you have to also consider, is this going to get downloads? Cuz otherwise, what's the point? But I found with this format, like every like 20 or so videos, I'd put my app in one of the pictures. And some of those would get millions of views, and that would get thousands of downloads. But overall, this format's like very low-converting. It's- there's like a tradeoff between any video you make. It could be get 10,000 views and 1,000 downloads, or it could get 3 million and get, you know, 100 downloads.

Jack Friks… then I'm going to like keep posting that video. And like the page on in Curiosity Quench, I used this format for like 400 videos. But before that, I was trying out like a bunch of different things, and then like one just hits a bit and then I just kind of reused it. Because also, um, it takes way more effort to make something new than something you know that works. So, I just kind of kept going with it, even though maybe it doesn't convert.

Jack FriksBut like yeah, as you can see, some of them, I put the app right in there, um, and then I just like pin the comment, and try to get early on pinning the comment so people actually see it, cuz the thousands of people would comment on how bad, you know, these hobby lists are cuz they'd be- they'd be triggered or they'd be mad about it, and that would make people look at the- my comment that I posted, which is about my app.

Joseph ChoiThis was one of these magical videos. You got 1.8 million views and 47,000 likes, and you also included the, uh, screenshot of the app. So, this was probably decently high converting. Do you know how many downloads to expect from around this like performance?

Joseph Choi… from the bio, and it's like kind of performing, but not really, do you have a decision-making framework for pivoting to a different strategy versus like sticking with it? Cuz I feel like everyone's just like, "Oh, you've got to just hustle. It's all about volume." But then like, if you do it forever [laughter] and it's not going to work ever, then it's like it can be discouraging. So, is there a point where you wanted to quit and decided not to?

Jack FriksI think at this point, I didn't have enough like that much experience to know like to even think about that. Like, I was just thinking, "Oh, my gosh, you know, this hit 2 million views, and I got like 1,000 downloads in a single day." I was like I was freaking out. I didn't like consider, "Oh, how can I scale this? Should I do something different?" I was just like, "Okay, I got to keep doing this. What if- because it's working a little bit." It wasn't working like crazy, but compared to my like 8 months of like, I don't know, 50 downloads a day, 60 downloads a day, and hitting 1,000 downloads a day from these like videos, I didn't even think.

Jack FriksLike, how long is this going to last? I didn't think about that. I just kept pushing them out. And eventually, it slowed down. Like, I think 3 months later, it slowed down. I also slowly transitioned of working off this app at the time, because I had another project that was just doing like insanely well. So, it's kind of like-