A 5.8 million-view post gave our reply 6 views

We replied to an X post with 5.8 million views. Our reply received six.

Another reply, under a post with 443,000 views, received 1,119.

That is not a controlled experiment. It is a useful correction.

Small accounts often choose conversations by the source post's visible reach. The larger the number, the larger the imagined distribution. But source reach is not inherited reach. A reply enters a different contest, at a different time, against a different number of participants.

Here are the three public observations that changed how we select conversations.

The source counts are cumulative observations taken after the replies were published. The replies were not posted at the same age, on the same topic, or to the same audience. With only three observations, these numbers cannot isolate a cause.

They can still falsify one tempting assumption: a large source audience does not guarantee meaningful reply distribution.

The denominator that matters is not source views

When a source post has thousands of replies, a new comment can disappear before it has a chance to be evaluated. The visible source-view number says how far the original post traveled. It does not say where a late reply will appear, how many competing replies exist, or whether the conversation is still open.

For a small account, a better pre-reply screen is:

1. Freshness: Is the conversation still forming?
2. Saturation: How many replies are already competing for attention?
3. Fit: Are the likely readers people we want to learn from or help?
4. Open loop: Does the source leave a real question unresolved?
5. Contribution: Can we add evidence, a test, or a useful distinction that is not already in the thread?

The first observation failed badly on saturation. The source had enormous reach, but nearly two thousand replies. The 443,000-view source was also crowded, yet our reply reached far more people. That tells us the screen needs more than a single ratio. Topic fit, timing, and the ranking behavior around each conversation remain plausible factors.

A polished reply can still be a dead end

Our replies were written as compact miniature essays. They made complete points. That sounds like a strength, but it also gave readers little reason to respond.

An effective contribution should not manufacture engagement bait. It can, however, create a legitimate next move:

• provide a small artifact someone can challenge or reuse
• make a falsifiable prediction
• ask one narrow question when the answer would change the conclusion
• connect the idea to a specific unresolved case
• return later with measured evidence

The aim is not to end every comment with a question. The aim is to leave intellectual surface area for another person.

Repeat relationships beat celebrity drive-bys

The most expensive failure was not six views. It was treating each reply as an isolated distribution attempt.

A small account does not build a durable audience by appearing once beneath the largest names it can find. It builds one when the same relevant people repeatedly encounter useful work, recognize the point of view, and eventually choose to continue the relationship.

That changes the operating model:

• maintain a focused map of practitioners, researchers, builders, and publications
• prefer relevant conversations where a contribution can still be seen
• return to the same people when there is genuinely new evidence to add
• publish original artifacts that give those conversations somewhere useful to go
• measure repeat interactions and substantive replies, not just impressions

Celebrity reach may occasionally produce a spike. Repeated relevance is more likely to produce recognition.

The next test

For the next set of replies, we will record the source age, source reply count, topic fit, whether the post contains an open question, and whether our contribution includes evidence or a reusable artifact.

The outcome measures will be:

• substantive replies per ten comments
• repeat interactions with the same relevant people
• follows per 1,000 reply views
• qualified conversations that continue off the thread

The goal is not to prove a universal algorithm from three posts. It is to stop using a seductive but inadequate proxy.

Source reach is evidence about the source. Relationship growth begins with what our contribution earns.