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THE 1-THING RULE: THE BORING SECRET TO VIRAL GROWTH
If I could only use 1 content strategy for the rest of my life, it would be this...
Niall Ratcliffe
January 04, 2026
In partnership with
Morning!
How is it 2026 already? I swear it was 2015, then I blinked and here we are. But I’m very excited for this year. I think I’ve said this in the last 3 newsletters now, but I’m taking this newsletter to the moon in 2026 (and even changing its name in the process… RIP Growing Viral).
But first, it’s time to start the year off with a bang. I want to show you an incredibly simple strategy that we should all have in our minds this year. If you spend any time thinking about socials or content marketing, this essay should be glued to your desk.
I’ll also show you an easy example of how someone built a 500,000 follower audience using it to promote their app.
Let’s get into it!
THE ESSAY
How much would you pay for 500,000 followers who are interested in your niche?
My answer: A lot of money.
I was curious to see just how much it would be worth, so I asked Gemini for an honest value assessment of 500,000 engaged followers around a niche topic…
It estimated between $5-$10 million. So it’s safe to say it’s pretty valuable. Yet time and time I’ve seen people use this one strategy to built an audience like that in 12-18 months.
The secret? Do 1 thing consistently, for a long period of time.
This sounds extremely boring at first, but when you study how brands or creators amass 100,000s of followers, there are a gazillion different ways they do it. Some jump on trends and are constantly having to adjust their content to suit pop culture. Others spend £100,000s on crazy content ideas like blowing up a car with dynamite…
But when I look at content strategies like that, it feels unachievable and unrealistic to attempt to copy. I don’t want to jump on every trend, or blow up my mum’s car with dynamite. I want a strategy that is simple, easy to stick to and compounds over time.
THAT is this strategy…
Pick 1 thing
Do it consistently
Then stick with it for a long period of time
Perch App & Startup Archive is the perfect example of that in action.
In 2023, Michael McGuiness co-founded a new reading app called Perch. It’s a simple app that helps high-performance individuals consume the great content they want to consume without being drowned in AI slop or bad content the algorithm throws at them.
Perch brings all your newsletters and blogs into one app so you can read them like a social media feed - avoiding the noise.
But while it seems like a great app, getting eyes on the app wasn’t going too well at first. After years of posting about it online they couldn’t gain any followers. Even today, they only have 2900 followers on Twitter (their biggest platform).
So Michael had another idea to get their target audience’s attention. He created a media brand called ‘Startup Archive’.
His thesis was simple:
Their main target audience was founders, business owners, and high performers
These people are interested in start-up advice from the world’s best founders
So he built a page that shared insights on start-ups from the world’s best founders. Then he continued to do it consistently.
At first, he had a couple of posts get 5-10k views. Then he had a viral post, and another and another.
This video above has 30M views on it alone. With other posts even being retweeted by Elon Musk himself…
They got the attention they wanted, but what happens next? How do they turn it into app users? Well, that’s the easy part. They start to funnel their attention towards their app.
A few simple ways Perch does this:
Email newsletter - The Startup Archive has an email newsletter with 11,000+ subscribers. Once they collect emails, they’re able to market to them about Perch or run ads in the newsletter promoting Perch.
Comments & Followers - Using the comment section to divert some attention to Perch. They also only follow 2 pages (1 being Perch’s), which is how I found out about the app
I think Startup Archive has been running for about 2 years now, which coincides perfectly with the fact that Perch just got named as one of the ‘Top 15 Best Android Apps’.
All they had to do was 1 thing consistently for a long period of time, and it worked.
But let me show you a different example, because a very similar thing (but in a different style) happened with the drinks company Mixoloshe.
In April 2024, the non-alcoholic cocktail brand handed over their Instagram account to its new young intern, Nicole Wingard.
At the time, they had:
No followers.
No social presence.
And no playbook.
But Mixoloshe had the crazy idea to give their new intern full creative freedom and hope for the best.
The idea she came up with? Smashing cans.
Every day, Nicole filmed herself destroying a can of Mixoloshe in a different way.
Sometimes with a shovel. Sometimes with a baseball bat. Sometimes in a costume. It was simple, but it absolutely blew up. Within just 60 days of her smashing a can every day, the account had over 500,000 followers and sales spiked by 800%
It worked so well that Mixoloshe rebranded to be called “SMASHD” to go with the social content.
Again, it’s the same thing as we talked about with Perch.
1 thing
Done consistently
For a long period of time
That’s enough examples, let’s get into why it works and how you can replicate it.
Why does it work?
It comes down to two simple principles. One I learned from Shaan Puri and the other which is human psychology.
Community is built on shared interest - I once heard Shaan Puri talk about this on a podcast and it’s been etched in my head ever since. Think of any community ever, every single one was built on shared interest.
Whether it’s a church group interested in god, a girls group interested in gossip, or a football club interested in playing football. They’re all built around an interest everyone involved has.Humans hate the unexpected - We love to know what we’re getting. That’s why people binge-watch the same show 17x or keep watching a Netflix show they know is terrible. Because having the guarantee of bad is better than the risk of trying something new. The same goes for social content.
People want to know exactly what they get from you and what they can expect in the future. Sticking to one thing gives them that.
The ‘Why’ is pretty pointless though, unless I give you the ‘How’. That’s the real million-dollar question. So let me introduce you to what I’m calling the Accordion strategy.
Playing the accordion is a constant cycle of expansion and contraction - pulling it wide, then squeezing it tight. If you stick with just one or the other, no music is played. The same goes for your content.
The chances of you magically thinking up a format to share consistently and it being a smash hit is unrealistic. Instead, you have to start broad and then narrow in.
Your strategy should look something like this:
Pick one singular topic to talk on
Start with a broad range of content formats (videos, long text posts, carousels, etc)
After 6 months, analyse the stats and see what people enjoy most
Narrow your content formats down to the ones they love most
Start posting more of the narrow formats people love
It’s easier said than done, but when done right, you can build a 500,000+ person following like Perch did.
Right, that’s all I’ve got for you today. I hope you enjoyed this one. Maybe next time I email you this newsletter will have a new name… let’s see!
Until next Sunday!
— Niall
P.S. What was the best essay you read from me last year? Trying to figure out what to do more of in 2026. Just hit reply and I’ll get back to you :)
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