Growing on social media is easy, actually

Growing on social media is easy. There, I said it. I never really had a problem gaining followers, but that could be unconscious competence. Note: This is a more tactical post. If you get your panties in a bunch when people talk about growing on social media, nobody is holding you hostage and forcing you to read this. There is value in talking about it. When I started on social media, I wasn’t starting from scratch. I was starting with nearly a dozen failures under my belt. I failed at digital art, drop shipping, multiple agency businesses (ads, SEO, web design), freelance photography, and more. As a teenager, my entire goal was to make some kind of online business work so that I would never have to work a full time 9-5 in my life. I was going to college simply to have a “buffer period” to make one of these endeavors work. But after all those failures, 5 years in college, and about $20,000 in student loans that continued to stack up... I had to get a “real” job at a web design agency. At that job, I continued learning and attempting to freelance. Eventually, things started to click, clients became consistent, and I was fortunately able to quit that job. That’s why I started on social media. Twitter to be exact. I saw other web designers writing content that I had the knowledge to write, and they were using Twitter as a way to attract more clients. My edge was that my failures taught me so much. Digital art taught me brand aesthetics. Facebook ads taught me copywriting. Agency work in general taught me networking and communication. Web design led to funnel design. I didn’t even realize that I had picked up all the pieces to building a successful one-person business. So when I started writing content on Twitter, things just... worked. That’s my goal with this letter. Social media is probably your first stab at business. You don’t have these other marketing and business skills. You may even be trapped in beginner hell - writing content into the void - and about to quit because you think social media is just a game of luck. You couldn’t be any more wrong. Social media has specific mechanics and levers, like a video game. If you understand those, you can predictably control your growth. You can’t just expect to send a post and watch it go viral. The problem with most beginners is that they are so accustomed to social media already that they don’t see it as an entire industry. They don’t see it as a skill that must be constantly studied and practiced. With that, there are really only 2 things you need to know. 2 levers. That’s it. That’s all you need to focus on. Treat everything else as a distraction. If you nail these, growth isn’t that difficult. People aren’t on social media to find something new. They’re on social media to hear an opinion on a topic they’re already interested in (that’s literally how the algorithm works). In fact, when I think about the content I consume, I watch the same things over and over again on YouTube. I could literally see the same exact video title every day for a week, and I’d happily watch it, because I want to listen to the creator’s opinion on that topic. I love training, and if I had an ounce of muscle for every time I’ve watched a nutrition 101 video, I’d be Ronnie Coleman. Yeah buddy. This is the single most fundamental aspect of social media growth. As an example, look at Craig Perry. His first YouTube video got 144k views. That’s absurd. That rarely happens. His second YouTube video got 254k views. Again... absurd. How did he do it? Well, the titles of those videos are: How to remember everything you read How to become dangerously self-educated (complete plan) Now, if you watch videos in that niche on YouTube, you’ve seen those before. “How to remember everything you read” is a topic that’s talked about over and over again by productivity and learning creators. Why? Because it works. “How to become dangerously self educated,” as far as I can tell, is a spin on another title structure that did very well, “How to become dangerously [articulate, intelligent, confident].” But isn’t that copying? In some ways, sure, but how can anyone take credit for a title like “How to remember everything you read?” It’s such a general topic. It’s a process. There is no one right way to read that somebody can claim. Imagine trying to say someone stole “how to remember everything you read” when the entire video itself is different. They just decided to talk about the same topic that other people want to watch. What Craig is doing here is taking an outlier that works and talking about it from his own perspective. The packaging (title, hook, and thumbnail) are simply there to grab attention. The content inside is all original to Craig. As another example: In 2019, I wrote a tweet with the hook, “How to get ahead of 99% of people.” In 2023, I knew that hook had already done well, so I used it as the title of a YouTube video. It is now my most viewed video on my channel with 1.7 million views. A few months after that, Mark Manson (author of the subtle art of not giving a f*ck), put out a video with the title, “How to get ahead of 99% of people (Starting today).” He got 4.7 million views. Then, Alex Hormozi put out a video with the same title. He got 1.7 million views. Then, Tom Bilyeu retitled one of his older videos to the same thing. It became a 28x outlier with 1.5 million views. Did it click yet? These creators aren’t creating the same video. For something as broad as “How to get ahead of 99% of people,” you can fill the content of the video, newsletter, tweet, or reel with almost anything. One persons video could be about acquiring skills faster while the next persons could be about planning and productivity. The best creators don’t just post what’s on their mind. I mean, sometimes they do, I do, and that’s great, they should, but you don’t build your life’s work on randomness and luck. You have a strategy, obviously. If I’ve been talking about my own clever ideas for too long and growth has slowed, I know I need to throw in some content that has been validated to work - that way I get more eyes on my more esoteric ideas. The best creators, most of the time, research what works first. Then, they plan out ideas. Then, they start writing. What most people do is this: They search for a creator on YouTube and filter their videos by most popular They wait for good reels or tweets to show up on their feed, then save the link in a notes app They jot down potential ideas as they scroll or when they see a piece of content working That’s fine, but it’s time-consuming and slow. (This is where I transition to a sales pitch for a second). That’s why we built the new version of Eden. You can search through our growing database of outlier content, filterable by follower count, platform, and niche. (You will not find this in any other tool, by the way). You can search for any creator on any platform and filter their content by top liked, top viewed, and top outlier. You can save any post you find to a board, then chat with it to generate more potential ideas (I chat with my YouTube swipe file board for title variations a lot). You can also write scripts, articles, and batch-written posts. I do all of my research and writing in here. We’re launching the new version of Eden starting today (here’s the story of why we pivoted). But you can get 50% off your first month throughout launch. If you are a current or aspiring creator/writer - this will give you a massive edge. Okay, sales pitch over. Onto the 2nd lever. I don’t know what goes through people’s heads when they start on social media. They think they can just post something good and hope it goes viral. Sometimes that works, for a select few very lucky people, but social media growth like any other business comes down to manual work and effort put in on a daily basis. If it were as easy as posting, everyone would do it, and that’s why almost everyone who starts fails... or gets trapped in beginner…