Over the past year I’ve noticed something that kept repeating:

I would write a post about a side project, hit publish, and get almost no engagement even when the topic seemed relevant.

At first I blamed the project, the copy, or my timing. But after repeating the same pattern a few times, I realized something else was happening:

Similar posts, sometimes almost identical in wording or topic, would get responses and discussions in one subreddit and die in another.

This made me start thinking about the problem differently. Instead of only working on the product or copy, I began exploring distribution signals before posting

For example: - how much recent activity there has been - whether questions or discussions get more replies - how fast other posts get engagement - day/time patterns

I loosely built a simple tool to help evaluate these signals not a predictor of success, just a way to reduce obvious wasted effort.

In practice, it’s probabilistic and still very rough, but it’s already shifted how I approach posting and distribution.

I’d love to hear from others who: - spend effort on distribution before launch - feel like timing/context matters more than content quality - have patterns or heuristics that seem to work

What do you pay attention to before hitting publish?