Find What Works in Your Niche on X (Without Copying)
To find what works in your niche on X, read three things on a schedule: the top posts for your niche’s keywords in the last day, the day’s trends, and the most popular posts of a few accounts your audience already follows. Note the patterns, such as the format and the first line, then write your own posts in that shape, about your own experience. You are studying what your readers respond to, not collecting posts to copy.
Why guessing costs you
Without this step, every post is a fresh guess. You write what interests you and hope. Some posts land and you don’t know why, so you can’t repeat it. Others fall flat and you can’t tell whether the idea, the first line or the format was the problem.
The cost shows up after a few months: lots of posts, little to learn from. Reading your niche first turns posting into a series of small experiments.
Step 1: Search top posts by keyword
Pick three to eight keywords that describe your niche, the words your readers use, not your product’s name. For a developer tools founder that might be “devtools”, “API design”, “developer experience”.
On X, search each keyword and open the Top tab. To filter out noise, use X’s Advanced search page: set the language, exclude replies, and set a minimum number of likes that fits the size of your niche. A small niche might use 10; a big one 100 or more.
Read the posts from the last 24 hours. Skip anything older for this step: you want what works now.
Step 2: Read the day’s trends, selectively
The trends list shows what many people are talking about today. Most trends won’t fit your niche, and that’s fine. When one does, it’s a chance for a timely post: a reaction, a lesson, a take. When it doesn’t, skip it. Forcing your niche into an unrelated trend reads as a stretch.
Timely posts have a short life, so post them the same day. Kalen calls these “moment” posts and only schedules them within 48 hours.
Step 3: Pick reference accounts
Choose three to ten accounts in your niche whose audience you’d like to reach. They don’t have to be huge, just relevant. Look at their most popular posts, not their latest, because popularity is the signal you’re after. The latest show what they’re doing; the most popular show what their audience rewarded.
Once a week is enough for this step. Popular posts don’t change daily.
Step 4: Write down the patterns
Keep a short note. For each post that did well, record:
| What to note | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Format (how-to, list, story, take, question, news) | Shows which kinds of posts your niche rewards |
| Length (one line, a few lines, near 280) | Tells you how much your readers will read |
| The first line | The hook is what earns the rest |
| Link in the post or not | Shows how your niche treats links |
| Media or text only | Tells you if images pull their weight |
| Posting hour | Feeds your posting window |
After a week you’ll see clusters. Maybe short takes get the replies and long lists get the reposts. Maybe posts with an image do no better than text. Those clusters are your guide.
Step 5: Turn patterns into your own posts
Here’s the line between learning and copying. You keep the shape and change everything else.
- Copying: taking a popular list post and rewording each item.
- Learning: noticing that “mistakes I made” lists do well in your niche, then writing about your own mistakes, from your own work.
Use your facts, your numbers, your stories. Your readers can tell the difference, and so can X’s duplicate checks.
Then check your own account the same way. Your best posts from the last few months are the most direct signal of what your followers want from you. How to reuse your best tweets covers turning them into new posts.
What you end up with
After a week you have a one-page note: the formats your niche rewards, the length it reads, the first lines that stop it, your posting window. That note makes every draft better, whether you write by hand or with an AI. It’s also the best context you can paste into Claude or ChatGPT before asking for posts. See writing X posts with ChatGPT and Claude.
How Kalen does this for you
This research loop is the core of Kalen. Every day he searches the top posts for your niche’s keywords and reads X trends. Each week he pulls the most popular posts of your reference accounts and your own. He counts the patterns in code, from median length to the hours the top posts went out, so your AI writes to your niche’s real habits instead of generic advice. When you ask your AI for posts, Kalen hands it all of that as a briefing, then scores each draft from 0 to 100 against what works in your niche. Setup takes a few minutes: connect Kalen to Claude, ChatGPT and Cursor.
Doing this by hand is free and works fine for a weekly habit. Kalen is worth it when you want the research every day without the searching, and you already write with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Claude Code. He can’t help if you don’t use one of those.
FAQ
How many keywords should I track?
Three to eight. Fewer misses parts of your niche; more pulls in posts from neighboring topics.
How often should I redo this research?
Top posts and trends daily or a few times a week; reference accounts weekly; your own best posts every few weeks.
What if my niche is small?
Lower the like threshold in your search, and lean more on reference accounts and your own posts.
Can I quote or mention the accounts I learn from?
By hand, yes. Through an automated tool, X restricts @mentions of people outside the conversation, so Kalen never adds them.
Start today
Start with five keywords: write them down and run the first search now. For how this fits into a weekly routine, read how to grow on X as a founder, or see Kalen’s plans to have it done daily.