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Written by a growth lead who's taken consumer apps from zero to millions of installs on organic short-form. This is not a marketing guide. Every section below is something you can act on in the next hour.
How to use this guide
Don't read this front to back. Go straight to your app's category in the module index below, steal the 5 angles and 10 hooks written for it, and shoot something today. Come back to the shared sections (hook library, in-app loops, ASO, measurement, calendar) once you have your first few posts live and need to scale or diagnose why something isn't working.
Every hook in this guide is copy-ready. There's no [insert benefit] or [your app name] — swap in your actual numbers and screens, don't rewrite the structure.
The 15-minute quick start
- (2 min) Find your category in the module index below. If your app spans two categories (a habit app with a finance angle, say), read both and pick the sharper one to start.
- (3 min) Pick one hook from that module's list of 10 that you could film right now, using a screen or moment you actually have — not the one that sounds best on paper.
- (5 min) Screen-record the app moment the module tells you to record (see "The app moment" in your category's module). Use your phone to record yourself reacting to it, or record the screen alone with the hook as an on-screen caption — whichever format your module lists first.
- (3 min) Cut it to under 20 seconds. Delete your intro. Start on the hook line, word one.
- (2 min) Post it with the caption format from the same module's hook list. No link in caption, no "link in bio" — the app moment does the convincing, per The content-to-install path.
That's a shipped post. The rest of this guide is what you read once you're doing this daily and need to know why some posts 10x and most don't.
Module index
Shared systems — read these once, they apply to every category:
- Viral mechanics — the six reasons anything gets shared, and how to build a post around one deliberately
- The hook library — 50 hooks sorted by mechanism, category-agnostic
- In-app viral loops — the product-side half of this: share moments, milestone cards, referral triggers
- ASO and the conversion path — what happens after someone watches, from tap to install to first session
- Measurement — the 6 numbers that tell you if a post is working before the install data even comes in