How This Journaling App Generated Over 5.5M Views in Just 3 Months
Day One Journal is a digital journaling app that’s actually been around since 2011. It lets users create private multimedia journal entries, think of it as a mix between a diary, vlog, and a vision board.
The app has a decent user base and solid revenue (over $200k / month on iOS alone according to FoxData), but what caught our attention is what they’ve been doing on socials since September 2025.
In the space of three months, Day One launched a managed UGC campaign across 20+ creator accounts and generated over 5.5 million views. Here’s what we found when we dug into the data.
The campaign at a glance
Day One’s approach seemed straightforward enough: Recruit a network of creators, have them post on their own newly launched accounts, and test content formats at scale. The accounts we found all followed a consistent naming pattern (@asu.journals, @lexi.journals, @kimberly.journals, etc.) and most of them began posting within days of each other in late September 2025.
Across these accounts, we tracked:
5.5M views (From Sep 2025 - Dec 2025)
4.9M views on Instagram, 600k+ on TikTok
Over 160k total engagements
20+ creator accounts across both platforms (40+ accounts in total)
One thing worth noting is that Day One’s main TikTok account (@dayonejournal) has over 64M views alone, but nearly ALL of those views are from content they posted in 2022-2023. In fact, only 5.5k of those views were from 2025!
Day One also seemed to have partnered with a few influencers in the past, for instance:
This video published by @aliabdaal in 2023 which gained 5.8M views.
More recently, I found this video published by @papernroses in November 2025, which gained 108k views - but unlike the previous video, this didn’t have a “sponsored” tag, so we can’t say for sure whether this was an influencer collaboration or if it was true organic UGC (Where the creator posts about the product without being paid to do so).
With that in mind, Day One's managed UGC campaign represents a clear strategic shift: from posting content on "branded" accounts and occasional influencer partnerships towards a high-volume creator network model. Here's how they executed it.
Day One's Hook Replication Strategy
The most noticeable pattern in Day One’s campaign was how they tested and scaled winning hooks.
One hook in particular appeared more often than others, with minuscule variations:
“I LOVE gen z bc what do you mean there’s a private diary that looks like a pinterest board?!”
In fact, from all the accounts we’ve found that are a part of this campaign, these are the top four performing posts, and they’re all from the same creator:
Do you see the difference? It’s just very small variations in the follow-up copy:
"Like it's literally a blog, a journal, and a pinterest board all in one"
"Daily prompts, can upload pics and videos, and organized entries? Yes please"
"Daily prompts, mixed media, and organized entries? Yes please"
"Like it's literally a vlog, a journal, and a pinterest board all in one"
The format is consistent:
The hook is the text overlay
The video starts with the creator showing a relevant emotional reaction (e.g., surprise)
Transition to a quick app demo
Benefit-focused text overlay with the transition
In the above videos, what changed is the specific way the benefit is being highlighted in the closing copy. This is A/B testing at scale: You find a format that resonates, then iterate on the variable (in this case, the closing copy) - and you see which version drives the most engagement.
Side note: We’ve actually seen this same hook used in several UGC campaigns run by other apps, all with varying levels of success. This strengthens the argument that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to succeed with UGC, you just have to find your winning angles and double down on them.
The @asu.journals account stood out, with an average engagement rate of 19% on Instagram. This is significantly higher than platform benchmarks and is a sign that there is a lot of resonance between the product, the content, and the audience. Some posts from the same creator hit 40% engagement too, though they had smaller view counts.
But Day One weren’t putting all their eggs in one basket. While some creators did follow the above format, we’ve seen a few different angles being tested:
The relationship shock angle: “no bc I stole my gf’s phone, opened her journal… and got a whole breakup masterclass”
The problem-solution angle: “Me when my hands are too busy to journal but I need to vent asap”
The manifestation & self-improvement angle: “If you came across this video this is a sign that you’re about to manifest your dream life”
This variety suggests they’re testing multiple angles and hooks simultaneously to see what sticks. Definitely a best practice and aligns with our approach when running a UGC campaign.
Instagram is Outperforming TikTok (By a Lot)
It’s interesting to note that Instagram was driving over 8x the views of TikTok in this campaign.
This might seem counterintuitive. TikTok is usually seen as the default platform for UGC campaigns, especially for apps targeting younger demographics. But Day One’s numbers tell a different story: nearly 5M views on Instagram vs. 600k on TikTok
In our experience, we’ve seen similar patterns with other apps in adjacent categories: calorie tracking apps, fitness apps, religious/spiritual apps tend to see stronger performance in Instagram as well.
The common thread seems to be wellness focused positioning. These apps benefit from the slightly more curated / aspirational tone of Instagram content, as well as the “aesthetic” factor that Day One heavily leans into with its Pinterest board comparisons.
That isn’t to say TikTok doesn’t work for these categories, but it’s a good reminder that platform selection should be informed by testing, not assumptions, and you should never put yourself in a corner by focusing on only one platform.
One thing worth sharing here is a unique difference we’ve noticed in how viral hits are treated on TikTok vs. Instagram:
While viral hits do positively affect overall account performance on both TikTok and Instagram, we’ve noticed that the knock-on effect seems to be stronger on Instagram. In other words, an Instagram account's videos will likely see more of a lift if a post goes viral.
Download Correlation
On iOS, Day One’s downloads showed some correlation that aligned with the campaign’s activity, but Android downloads tell an even better story.
For context, the 2025 weekly average on Android was around 2.4k downloads. October saw sustained weeks at 3-6x that baseline, which aligns with the period when the creator accounts we’d identified were posting (and winning) most frequently.
Week of October 6th: 6k+ downloads
Week of October 13th: 7.8k+ downloads
Week of October 20th: 14.8k+ downloads
Week of October 27th: 14.6k+ downloads
This pattern is consistent with what we’ve come to expect from mass UGC campaigns: sustained content output across multiple accounts creates compounding visibility, which translates to more download activity over time.
What This Means for Similar Apps
Day One’s approach isn’t unique, but it’s well-executed. The main elements were:
Volume through creator networks: 20+ accounts posting consistently beats relying on a handful of influencer partnerships.
Systematic hook testing: Find a format that works, then iterate on the variables while keeping the structure intact.
Platform-informed distribution: Instagram outperformed TikTok for this app. The data should guide where you double down.
For apps in similar niches: journaling, habit tracking, wellness, self-improvement, etc., Day One’s campaign offers a useful template.
The barrier is never creativity. It’s operational: managing 20+ accounts per platform, maintaining consistency, and testing & iterating on content without losing momentum.
That’s where results come from. Day One's numbers weren't because of a single breakout post. They came from a coordinated network of creators posting steadily, testing formats, and doubling down on what worked. The download spikes followed.
Jan 6, 2026