Dustwave
Rise Zion on X · report · 23 September 2026
A look at 13,591 posts from 31 Latter-day Saint accounts on X, with Rise Zion measured against its peers. The headline: for most of the past year, links back to YouTube kept Rise Zion's reach restricted on X. Once the links stopped, reach came back, and a new headline style is making the most of it.
Prepared by Dustwave · comparison window October 2025 – September 2026
1 · The shift
For ten months, a typical Rise Zion post was seen by about 33 people, and 98% of posts got fewer than 200 views. During that time most posts linked back to the full video on YouTube, and X restricted the account's reach. The restriction hit every post, not just the ones with links: posts without a link did no better (a median of 36 views, against 30 for posts with one).
Each short video clip on X was paired with a “Watch Full Video Here” post linking to the full video on YouTube, posted almost every day through 31 July. The last YouTube link went out on 5 August. Views stayed at 50–80 a post for about two more weeks, then came back around 17 August. Since then the typical post gets about 2,000 views.
Views on a log scale · posts with 100+ views: hover a dot to read it, click to open it on X
Median = the middle post, so one viral hit doesn't skew it
Starting 10 August, Rise Zion also began leading with a short all-caps news headline, usually over a single image and posted in the late afternoon. The posts read like news bulletins: they open with a named leader or a concrete event, promise something new (JUST, LEAKED, UPDATE, NEW NOTES), then give a full paragraph of context.
The headline style didn't lift reach on its own. Headline posts from 13–17 August, before the restriction lifted, still got 47–232 views. Once reach was back, it made a clear difference: headline-plus-image posts have a median of 6,400 views, against 742 for posts without a headline.
The 17-meetinghouses story is the clearest example. It ran as four posts over five days: 176,489 views on the first, then 6,135, 24,308 and 23,733 on the follow-ups. Coming back to a story that's already working paid off three more times.
The main lesson: keep YouTube links out of X posts. The old daily 8:00 AM “Watch Full Video Here” link post was costing reach on everything else the account posted.
Headline = the first line is all capitals
2 · How we measure engagement
Averaging each post's engagement rate makes Rise Zion look like the leader, at 3.88%. That's misleading. When a post has 20 views, 3 likes counts as 15%, and Rise Zion had hundreds of posts like that. Averaging rates rewards small audiences.
Two steadier measures put Rise Zion near the bottom of the table: the median post's rate, and the pooled rate (all engagement divided by all views). Most of Rise Zion's posts here come from the restricted months, so these rates say more about the restriction than about the content. They're the baseline to beat now that reach is back.
Posts since 16 Oct 2025 with a view count · engagement = likes + 3×reposts + 2×replies + 2×bookmarks
3 · How peers break out
These are the peer posts that most outperformed their own account's typical post, from September 2025 to mid-August 2026. Three patterns repeat: fast reactions to breaking news (the Charlie Kirk shooting, the Grand Blanc attack), direct answers to critics (ex-Mormon therapists, Mark Driscoll), and short plain-text takes that invite argument. Rise Zion's new headline posts fit the first pattern.
Peer posts Oct 2025 – mid-Aug 2026, so the comparison with Rise Zion since 10 Aug is across different weeks
Anyone else weirded out by the ex-Mormon therapist phenomenon?? Legit they have the same play book
Charlie Kirk was just shot… more incoming.
For those who think "unmarried Mormons at BYU soak because it's a loophole..." ...explain how really bad sex is a loophole to sex. Just goes to show: - bigotry
Prayers for 2nd Counselor Ben Phelps of the Grand Blanc Ward who defended his people like an absolute stud and took one in the abdomen from the shooter. He has
Don't ya hate it when evidence against mormonism ends up being evidence to support it? Scholars confirm an English speaker who does know Egyptian copied real Eg
Worthily partaking the sacrament doesn't cleanse your sins. How many of us do not repent daily because we treat the sacrament like a "catch all"? I challenge yo
@ClassicLearner is worth studying for format: 943 posts, a median of about 11,000 views, and posts that reached 17 million. It covers American history and politics, not Latter-day Saint topics, so what transfers is how it posts. Its video posts get a median of 12,354 views, against 5,472 for text.
4 · What we can't tell yet
Competitor data currently runs through 7–15 August. We can't yet say whether peers also grew in the weeks Rise Zion did, or whether the whole topic got hotter.
Each view count was recorded once. Recent posts may still be growing, and we can't yet see how fast any post took off.
The restriction lifted and the headline style started within the same few weeks, so we can't fully separate them. Comparing post styles within the recovered weeks is the fairest test, and there the headline-plus-image posts clearly lead.
Post text was captured at about 280 characters, so length comparisons aren't reliable yet.
Nine watched accounts have no posts in this data yet, and ten have no X handle on file. The largest is followHIM.
We can see how many people saw a post, not whether they followed Rise Zion or watched the video.
5 · What's next
Reach is back. The job now is to keep it, grow it, and learn what works faster than before. Here's what we can do, sorted by effort, each tied to something in the data above. Each report updates the scorecard and the status of every item.
Never put a YouTube link in an X post. Put the channel link in the profile and in one pinned post.
Why · Links held the whole account down for ten months.
How we'll know · The report flags any post with a link.
Make the day's main post a headline over a single image, posted between 3 and 7 PM Mountain.
Why · Those posts have a median of 6,524 views (17 posts). The 1 PM headline-plus-video slot has 1,354 (16 posts).
How we'll know · Median views per slot, week by week.
When a post passes 5,000 views in its first day, post a follow-up on the same story within 48 hours (“UPDATE:”, “NEW CLUE”).
Why · The meetinghouse story ran four times, and three follow-ups passed 6,000 views.
How we'll know · Follow-ups posted, and their views against the original.
Before posting: an all-caps headline naming a leader or a concrete event, one image, a full paragraph of context, and no link. A word that says it's new (JUST, UPDATE, NEW) helps.
Why · All 9 posts over 10,000 views since August had an all-caps headline and no link; 8 of the 9 used a single image; 6 used a “new” word.
How we'll know · Share of posts that tick every box.
Dustwave and Seth: compare the week to the scorecard, open the top 3 and bottom 3 posts and name what was different, then pick one thing to change.
Why · One change a week is how we learn what actually works.
How we'll know · A short note each week: what we tried, and what happened.
Send any accounts that should be on the list. Ten wanted accounts have no X handle on file yet, followHIM the largest.
Why · The report can only compare against accounts it follows.
How we'll know · The coverage count on the report goes up.
Move the daily 1 PM video to 3–7 PM, or swap it for a headline over an image. Change only this, for two weeks.
Why · It's the weakest regular slot, and it runs every day.
How we'll know · That slot's median rises well above 1,354 views without pulling others down.
Current numbers for Rise Zion and every peer each Monday, Wednesday and Friday, replacing the mid-August cutoff.
Why · Every peer comparison in this report stops in mid-August.
How we'll know · Each report is dated within two days, with peers current.
Tag every post's opening (named leader, JUST, LEAKED, UPDATE, a question) and follow each type month by month.
Why · The new style works now. We need to know which parts keep working as the novelty fades.
How we'll know · A monthly table of headline types and their median views.
Track likes per 100 views alongside views. If views rise while likes per view keeps falling, headlines are promising more than posts deliver.
Why · It's 0.47 now, down from about 1 before August.
How we'll know · Likes per 100 views holds steady or rises.
A heads-up when a Rise Zion post is running well ahead of normal in its first hours, so the follow-up lands inside the 48-hour window.
Why · Timing is what made the meetinghouse follow-ups work.
How we'll know · Alerts sent, and follow-ups that went out in time.
A short list, each report, of stories two or more peers have started posting about.
Why · Rise Zion's biggest posts were early takes on news. Getting there first is the edge.
How we'll know · How often Rise Zion is early, not late, on a story.
Match each X post to the YouTube video it promotes, and see whether strong X posts lift the video and the channel.
Why · X views are only half the story. The full video is where the audience grows.
How we'll know · A table of X posts beside the video views that followed.
Compare how the same clip performs on X, YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram.
Why · Each platform rewards different things; the same clip can win on one and stall on another.
How we'll know · Per-clip results across platforms, side by side.
Once a month, a longer report: what changed, which tests worked, which peers are rising, and the plan for next month.
Why · Weekly check-ins catch the details; a monthly view shows the direction.
How we'll know · A dated monthly report on this page.
Dustwave
Figures come from public X posts and view counts. Medians use the middle post so a single viral hit doesn't skew them. Times are Mountain Time.