📈 The Most Important Rule of Content

Read time: 4 minutes

I did my first LinkedIn live on Thursday and was asked, 'what is the most important thing you'd tell people starting out on LinkedIn?'

My answer: Learn to hunt for outliers. Nothing else matters.

If your goal is to grow your audience, whether or not you schedule your posts is irrelevant. Your average performance is irrelevant. Even your engagement rate is mostly irrelevant.

The main thing that drives follower growth is outliers - the handful of posts that break through and reach people who don't follow you yet.

The data supports this. In our Q3 2025 algorithm report, we analyzed 318,000+ posts and found that the median creator gets 90% of their impressions from just 20% of their posts.

I call this the 90/20 rule.

Most creators panic when their views swing wildly from post to post. They think they're doing something wrong.

But in reality, if you post regularly, only a handful of posts will drive almost ALL your growth. The rest are just experiments to find those winners.

Content Is A Game Of Outliers

Many creators fail because they have one successful post and then go back to whatever they were doing before.

They never study what made that outlier work. They never try to replicate it.

Meanwhile, the creators who are killing it?

They're outlier hunters.

Every time something pops, they obsess over why. And by “pops” I don’t mean get 1,000 likes, just 2-5x more impressions than your average posts.

Then they double down immediately.

To bring this to life, here are a few topics or visual formats that have blown up for me and then I’ve doubled down on.

1. Job Interview Cheatsheets

This went viral for me back in April 2024 and I doubled down.

• Job Interview Cheatsheet - 30,827 likes

• Job Interview Cheatsheet (Pt. 2) - 14,020 likes

• Job Interview Cheatsheet (Pt. 3) - 1,828 likes

2. Visual Artist Carousels

These worked well for me from summer 2024 until early 2025. If you share others work - credit them.

• 9 Visuals That Will Change How You Think - 27,610 reactions

• 8 Visuals That Will Change How You Think - 23,056 reactions

• 10 Mindset Shifts That Will Grow Your Career - 18,680 reactions

3. Inspirational Carousels

These are working for me right now.

• People Who Worked Hard To Get Good Results - 3,309 reactions

• Stories Can Change - 3,128 reactions

• You Don’t Need Permission - 1,548 reactions

In each case, I saw that something worked - usually either the topic or the visual style - and then I just kept doing it until it stopped working.

Being one of the first also makes a massive difference - that’s why I spend 30 minutes every week doing content research in Saywhat’s inspiration database.

How to find and double down on your outliers

1. Look at what's actually working for you

Pull up your stats from the last 90 days. Find the posts that got 2x more impressions than your average. Ask yourself, what made them pop? Was it the topic? The visual? The hook?

2. Research what's working for others

Spend 30 minutes a week looking at what's performing well for other creators in your space. What's getting 2x their normal likes? You're hunting for topics and visual styles that are working right now.

3. Test test test 

Take a top performer. Create 3 variations:

• Similar topic, different visual style.

• Similar visual style, new topic.

• Similar hook, new topic.

Add your own spin, don’t copy.

4. Double down fast 

When something works, do more. Create 3 more versions immediately while it's hot. This is how you turn one-offs into formulas.

There's no hack here.

This takes practice. Lots of it.

But when you stop obsessing over your daily post performance and start hunting for winners, the game changes.

And suddenly those "inconsistent" results start looking pretty damn good.

See you next time,

Will

P.S. Two things:

• I do all my content research in Saywhat’s Inspiration section. Try it today for free.

• I just dropped a new YouTube video on the 6 ways to stand out from AI slop. Watch it here.

Will McTighe

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