stop creating controversial posts

(it's actually getting you less followers than you think)

and first i want to be clear, i'm talking about controversial posts done purely for the SAKE of controversy and high impressions

because i've done my own controversial posts before, but they're genuinely takes i will stand behind and deeply believe in (in which case i say, post it... within reason)

but there's this general consensus on here that controversy = growth

and when i actually ran the numbers across over 270 of my past posts, it turned out that this is actually so far from the truth

now it's a little hard to measure "controversy", so the closest approximation i got was posts that had a disproportionate number of comments to reactions (basically posts where i'd been fully ratioed)

and i found that these "high controversy" posts on average led to 0.56 followers/1k impressions

compared to lower controversy posts leading to an average of 0.89/1k impressions

and the reason why i think we have this controversy myth is because those posts FEEL like you've done something right

you have high impressions, high comments- all those numbers look good on the surface

but when you actually dig deeper, those are numbers that aren't actually converting at all. in fact, they're numbers that might just be hurting your reputation (without even giving you any growth)

so before you post something just because someone told you it will work... just double check those numbers yourself (or trust these numbers 😜)

(and ignore the mouse ears it's a really long story but i promise it's a uni thing and it does make sense 😭)