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Strategy · 5 min read

Copy the move, not the post.

Every brand that grows on social learns from posts that are already winning. The ones that get caught are the ones who copied the wrong layer.

Here is a post that's working in your niche. A founder holds the product, looks at the camera, and reads a comment out loud: "Does this actually work on oily skin?" Then answers it. Twelve seconds. Thousands of saves.

You have two options. You can film yourself reading that same comment about your product. Or you can ask why it worked.

The post is the surface

The post is the specific thing you can see: the words, the product, the person, the music. Copy that and everyone can tell, because they saw the original last week. Your version looks late, and a little desperate.

The move is what's underneath. In this case: open on the exact question a buyer is already asking, and answer it with the product in frame before they can scroll. That move has nothing to do with skincare. It works for coffee, software, dental clinics.

One question before you shoot

"What did this post do in the first three seconds that made someone stop?"

Answer that in one sentence, without naming the product or the person. If your sentence is "they read a comment about oily skin," you're still on the surface. If it's "they opened on the objection and killed it," you've found the move.

Now make yours

  • Take the move, not the words. Find the objection your buyers actually raise. It's in your comments, your DMs, your sales calls.
  • Keep the shape, change the skin. Same length, same opening beat, your product, your face, your setting.
  • Change one thing on purpose. A different format, a different setting, a different ending. Now it's yours, and you'll learn something the original didn't teach.

How you know you did it right

Put your post next to the original. A stranger should see two brands who understand the same thing about their customers, not one brand and its shadow.

That's the whole game. Every good creator does this by instinct. The tools below make the first half quick: keep the post, get its words, and you have the move in writing to work from.

Tools for this