CONTENT CLONING: HOW I BUILT A 57K AUDIENCE

Morning!

The ground is wet, the rain is pouring, and my weather app tells me “It feels like -1°C”. Winter technically doesn’t start until the 21st December, but as the great Ned Stark famously said… Winter is coming.

Anyway, today I want to share a process that I credit 90% of my content success to. It’s the reason I have 57,000+ followers on LinkedIn, have racked up 2M+ views on Twitter, and once ran a viral TikTok page (a story I’ll tell you in a minute).

We now use it internally at noticed and it’s helped us build one of the most effective content teams on the planet.

I call it “Content Cloning”, here’s how it works ⤵️

THE ESSAY

When I was 17, I was convinced I was going to make it as a professional football player. I was playing at Stockport County, getting trained by the 1st team’s manager Jim Gannon and everything seemed like it was falling into place.

Then I got an unusual message from a small football accessory brand asking if I could create some videos with their product for social media. “Why not?” I thought, “It can’t be that hard.”

But then I had to create the content, and I had no idea where to begin.

Was I meant to just pull content ideas out of my arse? How was I meant to know what great content looked like? Where in the world was I going to start?

So I did the only thing that seemed right. I studied what other people were doing and found a way to clone their content formats to the football accessory niche. And it worked…

What started as a one-off task to create a few videos turned into me building a viral TikTok page that ended up getting 3M+ views and 147K+ likes.

This page was the start of my career in marketing, but it was also where I figured out how to get millions of eyes on a brand through content.

I’ve since spent the last 5+ years taking almost the exact strategy I used on that TikTok page and applying it to LinkedIn. Doing so allowed me to build a multi-million-pound marketing agency - quite the journey from posting some silly TikToks.

So here’s the ace I’ve been hiding up my sleeve and how you can clone content just like I do:

Step 1: Understand What You Want To Be Known For

Nobody wants to do this step. Everyone wants to build a following, get views, and drive leads. No one wants to sit down and map out what they want to be known for. Whether it’s from a personal brand perspective or a company brand perspective, you need to have a foundation to build off.

The biggest mistake I see people make is overlooking this step and just starting to post content. Because they get 6 months down the line and become confused as to why their growth and engagement have been so inconsistent.

My good friend Ash Jones has a beautiful line he says that goes something like this, “The difference between someone posting content and someone building a brand comes down to their last 10 posts. If their last 10 posts all talk about the same thing, it’s a brand. If they’re all on different topics, they’re just posting content”.

This is just basic human behaviour when you think about it. Because we naturally pattern-match every single day. Once someone consumes your content, your brain registers that person to that topic. Each time they hear you talk on that topic again, it registers deeper. Switch topics in every post, they’ll never remember you for anything.

This is also why a lot of influencers stick to one style or outfit throughout their content, so that people’s brains remember them quicker.

When I see a man dressed in all black, I think of Steven Bartlett.

When I see a man in shorts and a vest top, I think Alex Hormozi.

When I think black turtleneck, I think of Steve Jobs.

This is why you need a clear vision of what you want to be known for before you even write a post.

Daniel Priestley calls this his ‘One Big Message’, and every year he clearly defines it before creating any content. We also use Daniel’s process for this, and our ‘One Big Message’ for next year is: LinkedIn is the biggest opportunity in B2B.

As you read my content throughout the year, you’ll start to notice that line threaded through every single post.

But it’s time to get to the fun stuff, because once you’re clear on your One Big Message, then you can move on to step 2.

Step 2: Study 4-5 People Who Create Content Like You Want To Create

I used to think marketing was like art. That you had to sit in a room with a blank piece of paper and come up with some crazy out-of-the-box ideas. Then I read the Dhando Investor. A book written by Monish Pabrai, one of the most successful investors of all time.

In the book, Moish explains that the best entrepreneurs of all time are ‘Cloners’. They don’t constantly reinvent the wheel and come up with magical inventions. Instead, they find pre-validated ideas (things that are already working) and then find ways to clone them. Just take a look at Bill Gates & Microsoft…

• Microsoft Word → Stolen from Word Perfect

• Microsoft Excel → Stolen from Lotus 1-2-3

• Microsoft PowerPoint → They acquired

• Microsoft Explorer → Originally licensed from Spyglass

• Microsoft Windows → Stolen from Netware

• Xbox → Stolen from Nintendo

• Bing → Stolen from Google

They’re cloners!

The same methods also apply to marketing.

At the start of this essay, I told the story about how I had no idea where to start when first creating content on TikTok. My answer to this now is you start by studying people you want to emulate.

Because when you do this, you’re able to skip the testing part and instead use what I call ‘Pre-validated ideas’.

For example:

I once posted a graph like this on LinkedIn that went viral…

You may not want to talk on the same topic, but now you know that a graph image like this on LinkedIn works. You know this because my post showed it. So, even if you’re talking on real estate rather than marketing, you have a pre-validated content format.

To find pre-validated content formats like this, all you need to do is:

• Find 4-5 people whose content you want to emulate

• Find 3 of their highest-performing posts this month

Then move on to step 3…

Step 3: Create A Swipe File Of Their Best Content

Once you’ve found 9-12 great posts from the top people you want to emulate, start to store them in a ‘Swipe File’. That could be:

• A notion page

• A Google Drive

• A Word doc

Where you store them doesn’t really matter, the key is that you do store them. I also like to separate them into categories. So for LinkedIn (the platform I post on most) there are a limited number of content types:

• Carousel

• Infographic

• Text post

• Image + text post

• Reel-style video

• Landscape-style video

When I’m saving posts to the swipe file I like to store them based on the format. So when I want to create a carousel, I can go and study all the best carousels I’ve saved.

Then all I need to do is clone them…

Step 4: Clone It With Your Content Themes

Now comes the part that actually takes some skill.

Let me start by saying cloning DOES NOT mean copying. If you want to be known for Local SEO, do not go and save an SEO carousel from LinkedIn and then recreate it in your brand colours - that’s not how this works.

Instead, you want to clone like this:

(For this example, let’s say I want to create a carousel for LinkedIn and I want it to be around our big message for 2025 - that LinkedIn is the biggest opportunity in B2B)

1. Go to your swipe file and start to study the best carousels
   
   At this stage, I’m just looking for patterns. Do they all have similar front covers? Do they include a number on the front cover? What’s the hook? Etc.
   

2. Pick out 1 carousel that stands out that I want to emulate
   
   For this example, let’s say I love this Jake Ward carousel that breaks down ‘Old Vs New SEO’. I like how technical it is, yet simple. It clearly resonated and people enjoyed it because it has 1000s of likes.

   

   
   

3. Clone it
   
   I then want to apply my belief and my message to this pre-validated format. In this case, I want to show people that LinkedIn is the biggest opportunity in B2B.
   
   So I would go and create a carousel that showcased ‘Old Vs New LinkedIn’, breaking down how the platform has gone from a glorified job searching platform, to the perfect place to start conversations with key decision makers.

The more content you post, you can then move into pre-validated series rather than just cloning. So rather than finding other people’s carousels, you go back and find your top-performing content and turn it into a series.

So you may have:

• Old Vs New series - Where you break down the old way vs the new way in your niche. If you’re an SEO agency, you could do:
  
  - Old Vs New SEO
  - Old Vs New Blog writing
  - Old Vs New Technical SEO
  - Old Vs New Backlinks
  - Old Vs New Digital PR
  

• Brands doing X right - Where you break down brands doing something right. If you’re a B2B marketing agency, you could do:
  
  - Brands doing B2B content right
  - Brands doing B2B Ads right
  - Brands doing B2B lead gen right

These are both series I’ve used in my content which have gone viral time and time again.

If you look at some of the biggest YouTubers or creators on the planet, they all use this same cloning technique. Just look at Mr Beast’s top 12 videos of all time. 4 have nearly the exact same title, just cloned to a new idea. It’s a series that’s already pre-validated and works again and again and again.

There are nearly 2 billion views on those 4 videos - yet it is just content cloning.

I feel like I’m giving away some real behind-the-scenes secrets in this one. Yet I must admit, it is slightly tougher to do than I made it seem here. You need taste, and you need to understand what good content looks like. Other than that, this method will send you to the moon.

Right, that’s all I’ve got for you today.

I appreciate you reading. Especially if you get this far down the essay. I spend 3-4 hours on these every weekend and it means the world that 1000s of people actually read them. So thank you :)

Until next Sunday,

— Niall

P.S. Take a second to rate the essay below, it helps me know what to write about next week :)

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