8.7 Workshop: Launch Three Distribution Channels

Three weeks, one primary platform, three distribution channels, and a report at day thirty. This is the first point in the book where the persona meets an audience.

Prerequisites. Identity locked (4.5) and scored (4.6). Reference libraries built (5.3). A prompt list of forty variants (5.2). A bank of fifteen posts, of which eight are finished to publishing standard. A delivery checklist that passes (6.7). If any of these is missing, do that first — this workshop assumes production works.

Week 1: setup and the bank

Day 1–2 — account setup.

Choose the primary platform (8.1) using the format you can feed for a year.
Set the handle, display name with the niche, avatar from the , bio with three lines, and the disclosure line (11.3 templates). No link yet.
Set up the secondary platform with the same handle and the same avatar. Configure it as a recycle target, not a native account.
Set up the audience-: an email list or a broadcast channel. This is 8.5's insurance and 10.1's intermediate step. Empty for now, but existing and configured.

Day 3–5 — finish the bank.

Bring the bank to fifteen posts at publishing standard, using the QA gate from 5.6.
Arrange them by the rhythm in 8.2 — no two adjacent posts with the same framing.
Prepare three pinned posts: an introduction, the strongest piece, and the conversion post placeholder.

Day 6–7 — the silence phase begins.

Publish the first three posts. No links, no calls to action, no cross-promotion.
Reply to every comment. Follow and interact with twenty accounts in the niche as a normal participant, not as a marketer.

Deliverable at the end of week 1: a live account with four posts, a fifteen-post bank, and a configured ownership channel.

Week 2: publishing without links

Day 8–14.

Publish four to five posts this week, continuing the silence phase. Still no link.
Begin 8.4's channel work: five to ten substantive comments per day on accounts in the niche, and two response-format videos.
Run the first format test from 8.2: same topic, two different lengths or two different hook types, published a few days apart.
Track daily, in a plain sheet: saves, shares, profile visits, comments. Not likes, not follower count.

Why no link yet. Two weeks of content-account behavior establishes the account's classification and gives arriving visitors something to evaluate. This is the single most-skipped step in this part of the book and the one most associated with accounts that stall.

Deliverable: ten to twelve published posts, first comparable data on two variables, an active commenting routine.

Week 3: links and the first campaign

Day 15–17 — turn the funnel on.

Build the landing step (10.1). It must capture something — an email address or a channel join — not merely redirect. One page, one goal, one action.
Set the bio link to the landing step. Not to a monetization platform directly (8.5's link hygiene).
Update the conversion pinned post to point at the same destination.
If a monetization platform is in scope, it is connected to the landing step now, not before.

Day 18–21 — the first campaign.

Choose the campaign type from 8.4, and run one: a collaboration with a comparable account, a response-format series around a trending topic in the niche, or a piece of category content designed to be found in search.
Publish a call to action in exactly one place attached to it. Not in every post. One.
Measure the full chain: views → profile visits → link clicks → landing captures.

Deliverable: a live funnel with a measured first step, and one campaign with attribution.

The metrics

Six, and the daily sheet has columns for each.

Metric	What it tells you	Where it comes from
Saves	Utility; the strongest early growth signal	Post insights
Shares	Pass-along value; distribution fuel	Post insights
Profile visits	Whether content made people curious	Account insights
Follow rate	Visits converted into follows	Follows ÷ profile visits
Link clicks	Whether the funnel step works	Link service or landing
Captures	Whether the audience is now owned	Landing page

Two derived numbers worth computing weekly.

Follow rate = new follows ÷ profile visits. A low rate with high visits means the profile is under-converting — usually the bio, the grid, or the pinned posts (8.2).

Capture rate = captures ÷ link clicks. A low rate means the landing step is asking for too much or explaining too little.

The two numbers most often ignored: shares and captures. Shares are the distribution mechanism you can influence; captures are the only audience asset that survives 8.5's scenario.

The day-30 report

Write it down, one page, whether or not the numbers are good. Five sections:

Volume: posts published, formats used, cadence achieved versus planned.
Reach: total views, best post, worst post, and the distribution shape.
Engagement: saves, shares, comments, and the two derived rates.
Funnel: visits → clicks → captures, with the leak named.
Channel attribution: where the first thousand are coming from (8.4's gate).

If nothing works

Thirty days with flat reach and no captures is a real possibility, and it is worth knowing what it means before it happens. Three diagnostics, in the order they should be checked. [UNVERIFIED] The failure distribution below reflects operator reports rather than a measured sample.

The identity is not distinctive enough. A persona that could be anyone in the niche gives a viewer no reason to remember it. Check the last ten posts' thumbnails side by side — if they could belong to any account in the category, this is the cause. The fix is in 2.2's positioning, not in the pipeline.

The hook is not landing. Reach exists but watch time or saves are absent. Check the first two seconds of the three best-reaching posts (8.3) and compare against the three worst. The fix is a regeneration pass with hook frames produced deliberately (6.4).

The format does not match the platform. A still-image account on a video-first platform, or video on a search-driven surface. The fix is the format test in 8.3 rather than new content.

What is not on the list: the algorithm penalizing a disclosed synthetic account. Chapter 8.3 explains why that explanation is unsupported and why reaching for it delays the real diagnosis.

The pivot decision

At day thirty, one of three decisions.

Continue. Reach and engagement are trending up, the funnel's first step converts, and at least two channels are producing followers. Double down on the format that worked.

Adjust the format, not the niche. Reach is fine and the funnel step does not convert. The problem is in the profile, the landing step, or the offer — not in the subject. This is the most common real outcome, and it is cheap to fix.

Pivot the niche. Reach is persistently flat across multiple formats, with the viewing pattern showing no interest even from the test audience. This is a subject problem, and thirty posts is enough signal to act on it (2.1's selection criteria still apply).

What is not a decision at day thirty: quitting because the follower count is low. Follower count is a lagging indicator (8.2); the reach and engagement trend is the leading one, and the funnel's first step is the leading indicator of revenue.

Where this goes wrong

Skipping the silence phase because the bank is not finished. The bank is the prerequisite, not a parallel task.

Turning the link on in week 1. The most common avoidable mistake in this part.

Tracking likes and followers. Neither predicts anything at this stage.

No ownership channel. The workshop's most important deliverable, and the one that feels optional and is not.

A landing step that only redirects. It adds a step and captures nothing.

A call to action on every post. Dilutes all of them.

No written day-30 report. The pivot decision becomes a feeling.

The gate

Did you complete the silence phase without a link?
Is there a landing step that captures something, with the monetization platform behind it rather than in the bio?
Do you have an ownership channel configured and receiving captures?
Is your daily sheet tracking saves, shares, profile visits, and captures rather than likes?
Do you know your follow rate and capture rate?
Is there a written day-30 report and a stated decision?

What you leave with

A three-week launch sequence with day-level tasks and a named deliverable per week, a six-metric daily sheet with two derived rates and the two numbers most often ignored, a five-section day-30 report, and a three-way pivot decision where the only thing ruled out is quitting over a lagging indicator.