Summary
- To succeed on social media in 2025, focus on creating engaging video content, as it generates 1,200% more shares than text or images and accounts for over 80% of internet consumption.
- Use tools like Hey Genen for creating AI avatars or V.io IO for turning text into video as alternatives, but manual recording still performs best.
- Repurpose content across multiple platforms to boost views effectively, as it can generate far more visibility compared to not repurposing.
- Avoid overloading with content; instead, use tools like Answer the Public to identify new, trending topics for fresh content creation.
- Leverage live videos on platforms like Instagram and TikTok with co-hosts to reach wider audiences and boost engagement.
- Keep viewers engaged with multiple hooks throughout your videos to improve retention, which is a key algorithm signal on most platforms.
- Structure your content like a movie script with clear emotional arcs and hooks to make it more bingeable and memorable.
- While AI can assist in content creation, prioritize human-led creativity for unique perspectives and better engagement, as human-written content receives significantly more organic traffic.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest focusing on creating engaging video content since it attracts 1,200% more shares than text or images. Begin with short videos that tell a story or share personal experiences to connect with your audience. You can use free or low-cost tools like Hey Genen to make AI avatars or v.io IO to turn text into videos if you're camera-shy or short on time. However, prioritizing manual recording often results in better engagement.
A good way to expand your reach is by repurposing content across multiple platforms. This means taking a video or post from one platform and sharing it on others. Tools like Sprouto or Hootsuite can help automate this process, saving time and effort.
To keep your audience interested, use multiple hooks throughout your videos. Start with a strong opening to grab attention, and sprinkle in intriguing details or questions every minute or so to maintain interest. This approach keeps viewers watching longer, which is crucial for building an engaged following.
Consider using live videos on platforms like Instagram and TikTok to enlarge your audience. Going live with a co-host can expand your reach to their followers as well.
Lastly, while AI tools can help brainstorm ideas, rely on your creativity to provide unique, human-crafted content. Engaging and original pieces tend to get more organic traffic, keeping your followers coming back for more.
Quotes by Author
"Videos generate 1,200% more shares than text or image-based content"
"Repurposing allows businesses to scale visibility with minimal effort"
"We need original, fresh content on new topics"
"Retention is the top algorithm signal"
"Human-led creativity offers unique perspectives"
Full Transcript
If you want to blow up on social media this year, you need to know this. Everyone's trying to grow their social media presence in 2025. But most are failing because they're following the wrong trends. I've built an audience of millions of followers on social media across nearly every major platform. And today, I'm going to reveal exactly what's working, what's dying, and where the biggest opportunities are right now for you to grow. This is the most important thing on social media you need to focus on in 2025. When you look at Sprout Social, videos generate 1,200% more shares than text or image-based content. And video now accounts for over 80% of the total internet content consumption. But here's the thing. Whether you're a shy creator or a resource limited business, you can still win in video by using tools like Hey Genen. See what Hey Genen does, it creates a AI avatar of you or whoever else you want and they can do it in multiple languages. Or you can use v.io IO, which takes text prompts and turns it into video. Even though Hey Jen and V are amazing, I still recommend manual recording because it still performs the best. But if you don't want to do manual recording, I would use the other two. It's better than nothing. See, video first businesses will dominate in 2025, and there are zero excuses left to not produce it consistently. This simple content trick top creators are using will get you way more views with basically zero extra work. We did a study at my ad agency NP Digital where we looked at companies who were repurposing content and ones who weren't. The ones who were repurposing content, in other words, taking their content from one social network and placing it on multiple social networks generated 114,97 views each month versus the ones who weren't repurposing, they generated 45,516 views a month. And that analysis was on 258 brands with at least 50,000 to 100,000 followers. So, in essence, you should repurpose your content. It just gives you a bigger bang for the buck. You're already spending all this time and effort and money creating content. Might as well showcase it on all the social networks that you're using. And just look at my account. I repurpose my content. It's not just me either. You can look at people like Gary Vee or even a Kardashian. They all repurpose their content. Look, creating unique content is still valuable, but it's often unrealistic. Repurposing allows businesses to scale visibility with minimal effort. Now, if you have unlimited resources and money, by all means, create unique content for each social network. That's just not the reality for most businesses. If you're wondering how you repurpose, you literally just take the content that you publish on one network and you post it on the other networks. You can do this through tools like Sprouto or Hootsweet, or you can do it manually. Everyone thinks it's important to post as much as possible on social media when they should be doing this instead. Did you know over 4.6 billion pieces of content are created each and every single day? Guess what's happening with that number due to AI? It's increasing. And as users, we don't need more content. There's enough to choose from. The reality is is we need original, fresh content on new topics, not regurgitated information that people are talking about over and over and over again. For example, who really cares for more content on the nutrition facts of bananas? It's been beaten to death. And we have tools like Answer the Public help uncover untapped rising keywords and topics. Through Answer the Public, you can type in a keyword and they'll tell you what's trending on these social networks and what people are looking for right now. It's not talking about the keywords that people were searching and looking for years ago. It's looking to see what's up and coming at this moment and increasing in volume that a lot of people aren't focusing on. Those are the keywords that have demand, but not enough people are creating content around those subjects. So, if you create content around those subjects, it's much more likely to do better. If you're not doing this on social media in 2025, you're missing out on explosive growth. Platforms like Instagram and Tik Tok boost live videos through the algorithm, especially if you go live with the co-host and the other person's also on that platform. So, then it goes live to not only your followers, but their followers as well, which allows you to reach both audiences in real time. and the lives start growing at a much faster pace. Look, social platforms are trying to compete for your attention. They're not just trying to compete with other social platforms. I get Tik Tok competes with Instagram, but they also compete with television and Netflix cuz you only have so much time in the day to consume video content. So, they're prioritizing live, raw, interactive content to boost the platform's retention. This way, they're hoping that you spend more time keeping up with the Kardashians on Instagram than Disney or Hulu. But the key with going live is to do it with other collaborators because this instantly increases your exposure and builds trust. Plus, you're taking advantage of their audience and they're taking advantage of your audience. So, you both will get a boost in follower count from this as well. Top creators are using this strategy to keep viewers engaged longer, leading to way more views. If you look at Adam Meri, who runs Instagram, he's emphasized that retention is the top algorithm signal. And it's not just with YouTube, it's with most platforms. And when he's speaking of retention, it's when someone's watching your video, how long are they staying for? It matters more than shares or comments or likes. So, you want people to stick around as long as possible, ideally more than a minute. And no matter what industry you're in, there's one top performing strategy that works to keep people's attention, and that's to keep having reoccurring hooks. So, when you're creating content, you hook someone so that way you get them to watch more of your video. But why only have one hook when you're discussing different topics? So, for example, in this video, I'm talking about trends. I would use multiple sub hooks throughout the video to keep you engaged. So, that way you stay hooked and you keep watching more and more of the video. In essence, have a hook, ideally at least one per minute. That way, people stay retained throughout your whole video. Structure your posts like this if you want to go viral in 2025. Too many creators storytell by jumping from one idea to the next. Instead, you want to build every video or even post like a movie script. You want mapped out points, emotional arcs, and embedded hooks. Storytelling without structure creates confusion. And that emotion driven sequencing, happy tension, relief, makes content bingeable. Powerful storytelling drives deeper engagement and better recall. So more people remember, return, and take action. Stop posting with AI unless you're doing this. At NP Digital, we did analysis. We took 68 websites, 744 articles, half human written content, half AI written content. The AI written content was modified by humans. And still what we found was the human written content got roughly 5.5 times more organic traffic. People are tired of AI written content. It's just regurgitated information. They want new original content. The best way to do that is through humans. I get AI's emerged and it's great and you should be using it for ideiation and to even help rewrite or adjust the tone or even expand, but you shouldn't fully rely on it. Human-led creativity offers unique perspectives and you can even create empathy with your audience more with human created content than let's say AI created content. And by doing this, people will stay more engaged. They'll like your content. They're more likely to share, comment, link to it, which then increases your traffic and rankings. If you enjoyed this video, check out my video on how to master social media in 2025.
