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but success hinges on understanding current platform dynamics and employing modern strategies, rather than relying on outdated methods.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it because they follow outdated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