Summary
- Social media is the biggest opportunity of the decade, and new creators are prioritized more than ever before.
- Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are designed for everyone to potentially go viral, not just those with many followers.
- Creating engaging content with strong hooks can keep viewers interested, increasing chances for a video to go viral.
- Use tools like Answer the Public to identify popular topics in your industry and create content aligned with those trends.
- Engagement is king, and AI helps platforms recommend content viewers are likely to enjoy, boosting potential reach.
- Each social media platform has strengths: LinkedIn for B2B, YouTube for evergreen content, Instagram and TikTok for trending topics, and Facebook for older audiences.
- Platforms like X are great for testing content because they do not penalize for previous low-engagement posts.
- Repost successful content from X to other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok for higher engagement.
- Optimize content titles and descriptions using popular keywords from platforms' search algorithms to gain ongoing traffic.
- Learn from successful viral content by understanding the elements that worked and adapting them to your niche.
- To grow, produce content at scale, repurpose successful pieces in different formats, and use tools like Opus AI for efficiency.
- Hire a team when large companies start reaching out for collaborations; they help scale your efforts and income.
- Build an email list to maintain your audience reach despite changes in social media algorithms.
- Email lists serve as a secure audience channel that can't be taken away and can support content promotion and monetization.
- Social media can be volatile, but an email list ensures stable audience engagement. Use tools like Mailchimp to set it up quickly and easily.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest starting by focusing on your social media presence, as it’s the biggest opportunity of the decade. You can make a big impact with little to no followers because platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are prioritizing new creators. Start by creating engaging content with strong hooks to keep viewers interested. A good way of doing this is by using a tool like Answer the Public. It helps you find trending topics in your industry, so you know what content to create.
When you're starting out, try platforms like X for testing your content first, as it doesn't punish you for low engagement on past posts. Once you see what's working, repost successful content across other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok to maximize reach and engagement.
I recommend optimizing content with popular keywords to increase reach through search functions on social platforms. This way, you can continue gaining traffic and views long after posting.
In addition, building an email list with a free tool like Mailchimp is essential. It ensures you maintain contact with your audience, despite social media algorithm changes. You can use it to promote content and products, keeping your engagement stable.
Finally, scale and repurpose content. Tools like Opus AI can help you turn successful text posts into videos or podcasts, making content creation quicker and easier. And when large companies start reaching out for collaborations, consider hiring a team to scale your efforts.
Quotes by Author
"Social media is the biggest opportunity of the decade"
"Most people think social media is oversaturated but the truth is it's actually never been easier to grow"
"Engagement is king"
"What you'll find is the content you're posting on the other platforms are much more likely to get tons of engagement"
"Social media is the greatest opportunity of the decade, it could also disappear overnight"
Full Transcript
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 marketing experience into a 23inut
