0:02 Social media is the biggest opportunity
0:04 of the decade, but most people fail at
0:06 it because they follow outdated
0:08 strategies. I've built an audience of
0:10 millions of followers across multiple
0:12 different platforms. And today, I'm
0:15 giving you the exact blueprint I'd use
0:16 if I had to start growing from scratch
0:19 in 2025. Let's dive in. Most people
0:22 think social media is oversaturated, but
0:24 the truth is, it's actually never been
0:26 easier to grow if you know what you're
0:28 doing. Here's the cool thing that no
0:30 one's talking about. With platforms like
0:32 Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, they're
0:34 actually prioritizing new creators more
0:36 than ever. And here's a prime example of
0:39 this. Have you noticed that people just
0:41 go viral on these social channels when
0:43 they have little to no followers? It's
0:45 because social media is now
0:47 democratized. See, there was this guy
0:50 one day whose car broke down and he had
0:51 to go to work. He didn't have any
0:53 choices. So, what did he do? He busted
0:55 out his skateboard and he decided that
0:56 he was going to get thirsty on the way
0:59 to work. So, he decided to drink a big
1:01 bottle of cranberry juice at the same
1:03 time. How did this new creator with
1:05 barely any followers get hundreds and
1:07 millions of views over all these social
1:09 platforms? Well, the way their
1:10 algorithms work now, and it didn't work
1:12 this way in the past, is that even if
1:14 you only have a 100 followers, and let's
1:16 say you post a video, they may not show
1:17 it to all 100 followers, but if they
1:20 show it to 10 of them, and all 10 watch
1:22 the whole entire video each and every
1:24 single second, it tells these platforms,
1:27 hey, people really love this content. We
1:29 should actually go and show it to a,000
1:31 and then 10,000. And if all of those
1:33 people engage and they watch the
1:35 majority of the video, it then tells the
1:38 platform, "People love this content.
1:41 Show it to everyone on YouTube or Tik
1:43 Tok or Facebook that may be interested
1:46 in it, even if those followers don't
1:48 actually follow the creator." That in
1:50 essence is how social media works today.
1:53 All they care about is your view length.
1:54 Are people sticking around for the
1:56 majority, if not the whole video? If you
1:59 can get that done, your video will go
2:02 viral. One of the big keys to doing well
2:05 on social media today is knowing what
2:07 these platforms push and what they
2:09 prefer versus what they actually don't
2:11 care for. So, what I want you to do is
2:12 go to
2:14 answerthepub.com. On answer the public,
2:16 you can actually type in different
2:18 queries related to your industry and see
2:20 what's popular on different social
2:23 platforms like YouTube or Instagram or
2:25 even Tik Tok. This will help you
2:27 determine what kind of content you
2:29 should create for that platform. Because
2:32 if Answer the Public tells you, hey,
2:34 these topics are popular on this
2:36 platform, creating more of them is more
2:38 likely to get you more views. Then
2:41 focusing on the topics that aren't that
2:42 popular on that platform. Because if
2:44 it's not that popular and you create
2:46 content around it, you're not going to
2:49 garner that many views. Even if you have
2:51 zero followers, you can get millions of
2:53 views if you follow this strategy. But
2:55 one key element that you need to also
2:57 include in this strategy is a hook. What
3:00 can you do to not just get people's
3:02 attention, but also keep them there?
3:04 Microsoft Canada did a study and they
3:06 found that humans actually have a
3:09 shorter attention span than a goldfish.
3:10 So, you want to make sure that you're
3:13 using a peeling hook at the start of the
3:14 video. This way, you're not really
3:17 drawing people in, but it also helps
3:18 convince them to watch the rest of the
3:20 video. Now, throughout the video, when
3:23 you're discussing other subtopics, I
3:25 want you to also think about what hooks
3:27 you can use throughout the video to keep
3:29 people engaged and help keep their
3:31 interest so they watch the rest of the
3:33 video. And on top of this, other
3:36 dramatic shifts with social media means
3:38 it's becoming even easier to grow from
3:40 zero followers. If you've noticed with
3:42 all these social platforms, whether it's
3:45 Tik Tok or YouTube or Facebook, they're
3:47 all talking about how they're using AI,
3:49 this AI technology that they've built
3:52 analyzes a lot of your past data to
3:54 figure out what you're going to want to
3:57 watch next before you even realize it.
3:59 So, that makes it even easier to
4:02 generate more views, even if you have
4:04 little to no followers. In essence, this
4:07 just means engagement is king. If you
4:09 can get someone to watch all of your
4:11 content, you're going to crush it and do
4:13 well. But the key to that is to make
4:15 sure that you keep people engaged
4:18 through sub hooks. Sub hooks keep them
4:21 wanting more. Think of them as titles of
4:24 a chapter in a book or subheadings of a
4:26 section. This way, they know what
4:27 they're going to anticipate. That's
4:28 going to leave them on the edge of their
4:31 seat wanting more. The way
4:33 recommendations work on these platforms
4:35 is they look for patterns. Imagine
4:37 there's a million people using YouTube
4:39 and you yourself also use YouTube. You
4:41 watch videos on it each and every single
4:43 day and so do these other million people
4:45 and you guys watch actually similar
4:46 types of content. But out of that
4:49 million, there's a subset of a 100,000
4:52 people that watch the same exact content
4:55 as you. Not similar, but the same exact
4:57 content. So what they'll start doing is
4:59 looking at all the people in that
5:01 100,000 group. what are all the videos
5:03 that people watch and what are the
5:05 videos that some of them have watched
5:06 that others haven't. They'll start
5:09 showing people all the videos that they
5:11 miss because they know you're just like
5:12 each and every single one of those
5:15 100,000 other people. And they'll show
5:17 you those videos because they know
5:20 you're so likely to watch that video,
5:22 which creates more engagement on their
5:24 platform. And in your head, you're like,
5:26 "Wow, how they realize this is the exact
5:29 video I wanted to watch right now during
5:30 this time." It's because they're
5:33 analyzing patterns. And with AI, it's
5:36 even easier than it was before. Now, if
5:37 you don't believe me that you can go
5:40 viral with very little to no followers,
5:42 I want you to think about all the people
5:44 that have gone viral in the last year
5:46 that you've seen online from people like
5:48 that girl who said that she was looking
5:51 for a man in finance who was 6'5 with
5:55 blue eyes or the person who said Hawkua
5:57 or the person who was drinking cranberry
5:59 juice on that skateboard. These are all
6:01 examples of people that none of us
6:04 really knew but went viral because of
6:06 their content, not because of their
6:08 follower count. Finally, you'll need to
6:10 understand that different social media
6:13 platforms can help you grow faster and
6:15 in different ways. Different social
6:17 platforms have different strengths
6:19 depending on your goals. For example,
6:21 LinkedIn is great for B2B. YouTube is
6:23 great for evergreen content. See,
6:25 YouTube isn't really the social network
6:27 that most people think it is. It's more
6:29 so a platform for streaming where people
6:31 can go to get advice or learn about
6:34 something at any given time, even if a
6:37 topic was talked about 3, four, 5 years
6:40 ago. Instagram and Tik Tok are great for
6:42 what's happening right now. And Facebook
6:44 is great if you want to appeal to an
6:46 older audience. See, each of these
6:48 platforms have different strengths and
6:50 weaknesses. What you want to do is
6:51 adjust your content based on their
6:54 strengths. That way, you can maximize
6:56 your reach based on the platform. If I
6:58 started social media today, I would
7:00 focus on these platforms. My favorite
7:04 platforms today are X, Instagram, and
7:06 YouTube Shorts because they're
7:09 prioritizing discovery over followers.
7:10 There's a lot of options out there, but
7:12 what you want to do is focus on the
7:14 platforms that will give you reach even
7:16 if you have no followers. Now, once
7:18 you've figured out what platforms that
7:20 you're going to post on, a mistake I see
7:23 most people make is they start posting
7:25 content the wrong way. See, the way most
7:28 social algorithms work, if you just keep
7:30 posting content randomly and it gets
7:32 little to no engagement, what it tells
7:35 that social platform is, "Hey, Neil or
7:37 John or Becky, post mediocre content
7:39 that no one really cares to engage with.
7:41 And then when you post a really amazing
7:42 piece of content that you know
7:44 everyone's going to love, it won't do
7:46 that well." Why? Because these platforms
7:48 have been taught that you tend to post
7:50 mediocre content. Sure, you'll get more
7:52 views than your average mediocre post,
7:53 but you won't get the amount of views
7:56 that you deserve. Now, the real key to
7:57 making sure that these platforms don't
7:59 hate you is to first test your content
8:02 on X. X is a very different type of
8:04 platform than all the other social
8:06 platforms. If you keep posting on X
8:08 multiple times, even if it's junk or
8:10 mediocre content, it doesn't penalize
8:13 you if your next post is amazing or
8:15 terrible. They look at each one
8:17 independently. Now, the other social
8:19 networks, yes, do look at each piece
8:21 independently as well, but your previous
8:23 posting history does affect from what
8:26 we've tested your future reach. And you
8:28 can retrain those other platforms, but
8:30 it takes a while. X, on the other hand,
8:32 you can just post as much as you want.
8:34 It could just be word vomit. Literally,
8:35 just post different types of textbased
8:37 content or video- based content and
8:40 you'll see quickly what is getting tons
8:42 of engagement on X. You then take your
8:44 winners from X, the ones that did really
8:48 well, that top 10% or 20%, you then
8:51 repost those on Instagram, Facebook,
8:54 YouTube, LinkedIn, and Tik Tok. When you
8:56 do that, what you'll find is the content
8:58 you're posting on the other platforms
9:01 are much more likely to get tons of
9:03 engagement and potentially even go
9:05 viral. And if you look at what I do on
9:07 my own social accounts, if you look at
9:09 the Neil Patel handle, I post on X
9:12 first. Why? It's my testing bed. It's
9:14 the strategy that works. This is how
9:16 I've accumulated more than a million
9:18 followers when you add up all the
9:20 networks. Heck, on YouTube alone, I have
9:22 over a million followers. Even on
9:23 Facebook, I have over a million
9:25 followers. That's how effective the
9:27 strategy is. But this isn't the only way
9:30 to consistently go viral when you post.
9:31 I don't usually tell people about this,
9:33 but there's a strategy to consistently
9:35 go viral on social media that most
9:37 people aren't using. When you think
9:40 about Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, they
9:42 all have search algorithms. When you
9:44 look at the younger generation, Gen Z,
9:46 they actually turn to Tik Tok and
9:48 Instagram to perform a search before
9:51 they turn to Google. So, if you optimize
9:54 for keywords on Instagram, Tik Tok,
9:57 YouTube, and all the other social
9:59 platforms, you can actually keep getting
10:01 more and more traffic over time. The way
10:03 you do this is you head over to answer
10:04 the public. You look at the social
10:07 network that you're optimizing for. You
10:08 type in keywords related to your video.
10:10 It'll tell you all the popular keywords
10:12 based on search traffic. You then want
10:14 to take those videos, use it for either
10:17 the title of the video or mention that
10:19 keyword within the video because all
10:21 these platforms can transcribe and they
10:22 know what you're talking about during
10:25 the video without you even uploading a
10:27 transcript. And you want to consider
10:29 using some of those keywords within the
10:30 description. When you do that, you'll
10:32 find that you'll start ranking for those
10:35 keywords when people type them in and
10:36 perform a search on these social
10:38 platforms. Best of all, that continually
10:40 drives traffic each and every single
10:43 month over time, even if your video is 6
10:46 months or even a year old. This is how
10:48 you keep getting more and more reach
10:50 from your old content. The reason you
10:53 need to optimize for these social search
10:56 platforms is because they command a lot
10:58 of searches. Did you know there's
11:00 roughly 45 billion searches each and
11:03 every single day? 6.5 billion of them
11:06 exist just on Instagram. That's each and
11:08 every single day. Pinterest even has 2
11:10 billion. All these social platforms have
11:12 billions and billions of searches when
11:14 you add it all up. Most people think
11:16 that Google controls the search market
11:19 share. Google has roughly 8.5 billion
11:21 searches out of that 45 number. That's
11:23 roughly 18%. That means the majority of
11:25 searches that happen on a daily basis
11:28 actually happen on the social web if you
11:30 combine all the platforms. In addition
11:32 to these two growth methods, there's one
11:35 more tactic I use all the time to
11:36 consistently go viral on social media.
11:38 Copy others, but it's not what you
11:40 think. The problem with just copying
11:42 others is that it's not really
11:44 innovative. If you do exactly what
11:45 someone else did, you're not going to
11:47 get as many views. It's played out. They
11:49 already did it. When everyone decided to
11:51 jump on a longboard and drink cranberry
11:53 juice, they never got the same amount of
11:55 views as the original person. When
11:57 everyone started making videos on how
11:59 they were looking for a guy in finance
12:01 that was 6'5, they never got the same
12:03 amount of views as the original video.
12:06 It's not about just copying what they
12:08 did exactly. It's about learning from
12:10 what they did that worked. When you take
12:13 the concepts from the original video and
12:15 understand what caused that video to do
12:18 well, such as the catchy lyrics or the
12:21 hook or the editing that they used to
12:23 keep people's attention or what they did
12:25 to make people laugh, you can take those
12:27 elements and create a similar video but
12:29 for your vertical. And what you'll find
12:31 is it will do better when you start
12:33 incorporating some of those elements
12:35 that have done well on the social web,
12:37 even if they're from other videos in
12:39 different industries. A great example of
12:42 this in my vertical, there's a lot of
12:43 people that talking about how you can
12:45 make money from just posting on social
12:47 media. Instead of just creating a video
12:48 that's copying it and talking about the
12:50 same ways on how you can make money by
12:52 posting on social media, I decided to
12:54 create a video on how you can make money
12:56 from AI. And I broke different concepts
12:59 for marketers, similar to how people can
13:01 make money from social media cuz a lot
13:02 of that would be for marketers. So, with
13:05 the AI video, I talked about how you can
13:07 leverage AI agents, for example, to make
13:10 more revenue. That video alone got over
13:14 a 100,000 views in the first 48 hours,
13:16 and that was just only on YouTube. Fast
13:19 forward to a week, well over 200,000
13:22 views. It all adds up over time. The key
13:24 is just learning from other people's
13:26 success, figuring out what's helped them
13:28 do well, and then taking that success
13:30 and moving it over to your industry.
13:32 Now, once you've figured out exactly
13:34 what to post on and how to post it to go
13:36 viral, you'll need to produce content at
13:39 scale. If you actually want to grow, you
13:41 need to post lots of content. It doesn't
13:42 matter how good you are at social media
13:44 marketing or just marketing in general,
13:46 you never truly know what's going to go
13:48 viral and what's not. What I love doing
13:51 to make things simple is testing out
13:53 textbased content on X. When you create
13:56 textbased content, it doesn't take that
13:57 much production work. The moment you
14:00 know that text is a hit, you can turn it
14:02 into a video. And with that video, you
14:04 can transcribe it into a podcast
14:07 episode. Heck, you can even take that
14:10 video and then have AI help you turn it
14:13 into a blog post and go more in depth.
14:15 Repurposing makes your life easier
14:17 because you can create more content out
14:20 of the same original piece in less time
14:22 and with less effort. You can even use
14:25 tools like Opus AI that uses artificial
14:27 intelligence to take your long- form
14:30 videos and automatically find the hot
14:33 clips that they think social users would
14:35 love. So that way you don't have to
14:37 spend as much time. If you also have a
14:39 team and a workflow, it makes things
14:41 easier as well. All these tools aren't
14:43 perfect yet, but they are getting better
14:45 and better over time. So having a team,
14:47 even if they're freelancers from Upwork,
14:49 will help you out. But at what point
14:50 should you hire a team to streamline
14:52 your social media processes? You need to
14:55 hire a team to run your social media
14:57 when you're at this point. Most people
14:58 think they need a team when they're
15:00 starting to get tons of followers and
15:01 views. That's not actually the right
15:04 time to hire a team. Why? Because a team
15:05 is going to cost you money and it
15:07 doesn't necessarily mean you're going to
15:09 make more money. The right time to hire
15:10 a team is when you actually start
15:12 getting hit up by companies to start
15:14 working with you. If large corporations
15:16 like Louis Vuitton or Chanel or Adobe or
15:18 even car companies like Mitsubishi are
15:20 hitting you up to work with you and
15:22 they're willing to offer money, it's the
15:24 time to hire a team. By hiring a team,
15:26 you'll be able to scale and make money
15:28 faster and you can focus more of your
15:30 efforts on the monetization side. And if
15:33 you can't hire a team, but you need help
15:34 in the short run, you can always get
15:37 interns from your local college or you
15:39 can hire very affordable people from
15:41 platforms like Upwork. The type of
15:43 people that you could be hiring are
15:45 researchers, people who can come up with
15:46 topic ideas and tell you what's going to
15:49 be hot and what's not. Script writers,
15:50 people who can not just outline what you
15:52 should be talking about, but making sure
15:55 that it flows well in a cohesive way.
15:57 You also want to hire potential editors.
15:59 If the editing quality of your videos
16:01 are amazing, they're more likely to do
16:03 well, especially if you're in the B2B
16:04 realm, than if you don't have that. In
16:07 the B TOC realm, editing is important,
16:09 but it isn't as important as something
16:11 that's super polished like it would be
16:12 for the B2B realm. But when all is said
16:15 and done and you have a killer content
16:17 strategy, as well as an incredible team
16:19 to back you up, the reality is that
16:21 although social media is the greatest
16:23 opportunity of the decade, it could also
16:25 disappear overnight. When platforms
16:27 change your algorithm, your content,
16:29 your reach could disappear. But when you
16:31 build up an email list and you tell your
16:32 social media followers to go to your
16:34 website and download an ebook or just
16:36 opt in for your email list, you can then
16:37 leverage that email list to continue to
16:40 sell products, services, or even promote
16:42 your social content. For example, with
16:44 YouTube, they love looking at the
16:46 engagement of video in the first 24
16:48 hours. If a video does really well, it's
16:50 more likely to go viral. You can tell
16:52 all the people in your email list to
16:54 head over to YouTube and watch that
16:55 video by doing something as simple as
16:58 just sending out an email blast. And you
16:59 can do that for free using tools like
17:02 Mailchimp. This will help ensure that
17:03 not only does your social content do
17:06 better, but it also ensures that even if
17:08 the algorithm stop favoring you, you
17:10 have some way to reach your audience and
17:12 monetize. The best part about email
17:14 list, it's that alternative secret
17:17 weapon that's yours forever that people
17:18 can't take away from you. The easiest
17:20 way to set one up is you go to
17:22 mailchimp.com. It's free to sign up and
17:24 they'll give you templates to collect
17:27 emails and templates when even sending
17:29 out emails. It literally doesn't take
17:31 more than a few minutes to set up. And
17:32 if you want to learn more about digital
17:34 marketing and how to use it to level up
17:36 your business, watch this next video
17:38 where I break down my 23 years of
