Social Media Isn’t Hard. It’s Misunderstood.

If you want to grow faster on social media, I'm going to explain exactly how to do it. Because the truth is, if you're struggling to grow, you're probably just approaching the content game with a suboptimal strategy. Now, I've cracked every social platform I've ever been on.

Instagram, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, even YouTube. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views.

And the secret is that I actually went down the rabbit hole to deeply understand how each individual platform works. The psychology, the algorithms, the core fundamentals for how to grow. So, in this video, I'm going to give you the full secret sauce.

These are five non-obvious learnings for how social media actually works. And these are the same lessons that all the big creators deeply understand and that you may not. All right.

Now, the first uncommon learning is that social media isn't actually social anymore. It's just media. And this seems like a small wording change, but it actually shifts everything about how you approach the content game.

When social platforms were originally invented, they were social first. In that old era, everything was engineered to connect you with other people and show your content specifically to people that followed you. This was OG social from 2003 to about 2020.

But since 2020, everything about social media changed because of Tik Tok. Just like YouTube, Tik Tok was not built for social connection. It was built specifically for media consumption.

Think about it. You don't come on YouTube to talk to other people. You just come on to watch interesting videos.

Tik Tok was essentially the same thing. It was YouTube but vertical. And the problem is that Tik Tok worked so well that it set off a chain reaction that caused every other social platform to shift in the same direction away from social and towards media.

All that social media strategy, you have to throw that out because the game is completely different now. The platforms are no longer focused on social. They're just focused on media.

And here's the big difference. Social is about matching content from followers only. Media is about matching content from anyone, followers or strangers.

So, if you're really trying to grow with content, the million-dollar question is this. What is the best strategy for growing faster, generating more views, and turning those views into dollars? So, I'm going to give you the full cheat code right here.

Think about this from Instagram's point of view as a business. Instagram gets paid when a viewer watches an ad. Their algorithm's only job is to keep viewers on the platform as long as possible so more ads can play.

Now, the easiest way to keep viewers on Instagram for longer is to show them videos they actually like. And it sounds stupidly obvious, but this is so critical to understand. This system of connecting random videos with viewers that actually want to watch them is called audience matching.

The better the match, the happier the viewer, the longer the session, the more ads they can run, and the more revenue Instagram generates. If you help Instagram make better matches and it makes more money, it will reward you for that. And this is the whole social media game.

It is not more complicated than that. Matching is all the algorithms are designed to do. But the difference in this nonsocial media era is that the algorithm is allowed to match you with videos from any creator, not just the ones that you follow.

So for you as a creator or a business owner, if you really want to grow on social media, your only job is helping the algorithm match your stuff with the right viewer because then you'll be happy and it will be happy. And when it's happy, it pushes your stuff more. Okay, so how do we actually help the algorithm do this matching better?

Are there tactical steps we can take? Yes, there are. In order to best match your videos with the right viewers, the algorithm only needs to understand two things.

The topics of your videos and the profiles of those viewers that want to watch them. That's all it needs. And the beauty is you can actually train the algorithm to get these answers quicker.

The first tactical step for doing this is to be militantly focused and disciplined on your topic selection. All you have to do is make consistent videos about the same topic. Precision of topic is everything.

Instead of spraying and praying across a bunch of different topic areas, pick a single topic and hit that bullseye over and over and over. If you're personally interested in sports and tech and design, don't make videos on the same channel about sports and tech and design. This will confuse the algorithm and it won't know what topic to push you for.

Pick one topic area per channel and stick with just that. And here's the real tactical secret. Most algorithms run their audience match targeting based on the video transcription and the caption.

So they look at the words you're saying and somewhat what you're writing in the caption and that's how they determine what topic you're actually talking about. Then they analyze which viewers are engaging positively with that video and they create a lookalike audience to push it further. So this is the key takeaway.

If you want to grow faster and you want to convert attention into dollars, you need the algorithm's diagnosis of what topic you're talking about and who it's for to be accurate with what you want to talk about and who you want to get in front of. If it can't diagnose this topic audience match well, it's not going to push your videos. So, when you look at your channel and you scroll through your last 20 videos, are these topics all the same?

Are they all targeting the exact same viewer avatar? If yes, and you're still not getting views, then the issue is with the video quality itself. And that is a much easier solve that I've been covering in all my videos.

But if no, and you're all over the place with different topics, then this is your big issue. The best way to make sure the algorithm pushes your stuff to the right people is to only make videos about a single topic driven from pain points of that user consistently for several months. And after doing 30 to 50 videos like this, the algorithm will learn the type of topic that you want to talk about and it will start pushing you into that community.

So, if you want to grow on social media, these are the things you do not want to do. Number one, do not make videos about a bunch of different topics on the same account. Number two, do not make videos that are not valuable or interesting to that same single target viewer avatar.

And number three, do not make broad videos that do not apply to your viewer avatar on that account. Stay hyper precise and do this over and over and over. This is all you have to do to train the algorithm.

Now, getting those videos to actually perform well once you have the algorithm aimed, well, that's a whole another set of issues. That's ideas, storytelling, script writing, editing. But the good news is I have lots of content to help you with that.

I actually put together Wavy World, which is a free community for entrepreneurs with 17,000 people in it to help with that stuff. The links in the description if you want. It's completely free.

But if you don't aim the algorithm correctly in the first place, well, then you're going to be stuck in zero view land and none of that other stuff actually matters. So, the summary here is this. Social media is no longer social.

It's just media. Media works by matching viewers with videos they want to watch, regardless of who the creator was that made them. And three, to make that match happen more successfully with your content, you need to stay super disciplined on a single topic consistently over and over and over.

All right. Now, the second uncommon lesson that I've learned about social media growth is that virality is a trap. If you want to get the ego boost of 10 million views, well, then go as broad and as wide as possible.

But if you actually want to make money from content, there is a much better way to do it. Let me break it down. There are two types of virality.

Pure virality and ontarget virality. Pure virality is virality at all costs. You intentionally pick extremely broad, extremely relatable topics to try to grow the viewer pie as much as possible.

And this is where the 10 million plus view videos come from. But it turns out this actually isn't what you want if you're trying to build a business. Because pure virality spans across too many different viewer groups.

If the video is about new tech for designing homes and you do get 10 million views, well then the chances are you've engaged tech people, architects, people that are trying to design homes, people that are interested in real estate. And despite the dopamine rush that does come from that, this is probably going to hurt your ability to monetize your audience. And the reason builds on this audience matching and targeting point I just mentioned.

The more different audience groups that engage with the same video, the more confused the algorithm is going to be about where to point your next video. And you don't want the algorithm confused because then it won't help you find more of the people you're trying to find. So, a better way to approach virality is to go for ontarget virality.

On target virality means that a large percentage of viewers within your target profile see the video, but it doesn't spill beyond that. Imagine you had one giant pie with 8 billion people in it. Pure virality is trying to get as many of those 8 billion people to see it, no matter where they fall on the pie.

On target virality is picking a super narrow slice and then trying to fill as many people within that slice but not beyond it. Now, the reason ontarget virality is a better strategy is that it lets you be more nuanced with your topic selection because broad virality almost always requires super broad generic topics. But deep trust is built when you can talk about specific user pain points in a niche and narrow way.

When you acknowledge your mission is not pure virality, you're able to come up with video ideas that widely target your narrow audience, essentially getting the highest penetration percentage of your potential buyers. And here's the cool part. It turns out that algorithms like precision a lot more than they like breadth.

It would rather you be a fan favorite in the web design niche than appeal somewhat to all creatives. And this is because cult favorites are super strong audience matches. When you're able to execute a narrow topic with constant precision, it will push you more into that niche and you will become category viral.

This is why you see so many small creatives with only a couple hundred thousand followers and cult fandom grow 7figure businesses. But these huge massive 7 million follower influencers can't even pay their rent. The riches are in the niches and the niches are best activated with ontarget virality.

Now, I want to be clear. I definitely do want virality. I just want it aimed at my category.

So, the tactical suggestion here for gut-eing your ideas and your content strategy is to constantly be asking yourself this question. Is my core audience avatar going to find this idea interesting, useful, valuable, or entertaining? If not, don't even make the video because even if you get a broadly viral hit, it's probably just hurting your potential chances to monetize.

By the way, if you want help improving your videos so they do drive more of this ontarget virality, the best way to do this is to improve your storytelling and script writing and aim it at the right audience. To make this easier, I actually built an AI tool called Sandcastles that just does this for you. It takes everything I know about formulas and formats in content and compresses it so it just does it automatically.

We have people using it right now that are writing 30 scripts per day and they're actually converting at a high level. So, if you want to try it for free, we have a free trial for everyone. Sandcastles.

ai. Check it out in the description. The third uncommon learning that I've realized about social media is that you don't need to be playing on every platform at the same time.

A common piece of advice from the social media gurus is you have to be everywhere cuz you never know where your buyer is going to show up. I think this is nonsense. You know exactly where your buyer is going to show up.

They're spending time on one of these six platforms: Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Tik Tok, Instagram, or X. All you need to do to grow and monetize on social media is to fish where your fish are. Pick the one hero platform where the highest density of your customers live, plus add email, and then only play on that combination for 6 months.

After working with hundreds of business owners on social media strategy and content over the last year, I've realized that the over complication and overextension of trying to be everywhere all at once actually is doing more harm than good. Because when you focus on a single platform, you can immerse yourself into the community and learn about the zeitgeist of just that platform so much better. And by focusing on just one, that means you can comment on other people's posts in your niche.

You can reply to every single one of your comments. You can use the secondary formats like Instagram stories if you're focused on reals. Essentially, you become a staple in your category on that platform.

And by doing this, like anything, you compound your results faster because all your attention is compressed on one thing. Now, when it comes to formats, the secret is that all the fish are migrating to video. So whether it's short form or long form video, you definitely want to be creating video on whichever platform you choose.

So the tactical advice is this. Pick your hero platform. Make sure you're making video content.

Stay as consistent as possible. Engage in the comments, engage in the DMs, and focus on nothing but this for 6 months. And if you don't know which platforms your customers are actually on the most, take a small random subset of your existing customers and ask them.

And if this doesn't work, think about who you follow and where you learn the most about the information in your space. When you're trying to be everywhere all at once and you don't have a core team to support you, everything can just get a little too complicated. So remember, fish where your fish are.

All right. Now, the fourth uncommon learning about social media is islands verse ecosystems. And this one is going to shock you.

Almost everybody on the internet is going to teach you to approach social media like one connected ecosystem. They'll say that your main goal is to get somebody to follow you on one platform and then do whatever you can to try to get them to find you everywhere else, connecting that ecosystem like a spiderweb. So they'll say you want to post about your YouTube videos on Instagram stories or post about your tweets on LinkedIn or post about your Tik Toks on YouTube.

Essentially, the advice is to find one follower and then get them to follow you everywhere else. But I think this is a suboptimal approach. The ecosystem concept makes sense in theory as a construct to describe a brand that's already well-built.

But if you're starting out from scratch, tactically this is the wrong strategy. Instead of thinking like an ecosystem, you want to treat social media platforms like individual islands that are not linked together. And let me explain what I mean.

Each social platform was developed on its own. They all steal features and UX from each other, but they all have different quirks, different algorithms, and most importantly, different platform owners. Instagram, which is owned by Meta, wants to keep people in the Instagram family, not going to YouTube, which is owned by Google.

And when you really think about it, it makes sense why platforms would reward behaviors that keep users on their platforms instead of pushing them to others. So, the first reason why you want to think of platforms in islands instead of connected ecosystems is because the platforms will actually hurt your reach when you try to push people out. When you post a URL in a tweet or a LinkedIn post, they nuke your engagement.

When you post a URL in stories, they nuke your engagement. And why do they do this? Well, simply put, the platforms don't want their users leaving.

They make money when their users stay. Now, most people that are coaching personal brand building will tell you that the cost of the platform nuking your stuff when you share links is worth it if you can grow everywhere. I disagree.

But besides this, the even bigger reason why you want to think in separate islands instead of connected ecosystems is because of the user consumption patterns. Think of each social platform like a car driving on the social media highway. Each one is going at a different speed.

Let's say Instagram is going at 35 mph. Tik Tok is at 50 mph. YouTube might be at 10 m hour.

Users go to certain platforms because they like the consumption experience, the algo targeting the sub communities on that platform. When you try to force them from one to another to build the ecosystem, they end up hitting it and then churning right away. They don't like switching.

And this causes them to either abandon watching your stuff altogether, abandon watching it on the new platform, or subconsciously dislike that you tried to force them away from what they already liked. It's better to meet each person where they are to make content native to the island and try to keep them there. And then you can use consistent branding, imagery, and storytelling elsewhere so that when they natively discover you, it feels aligned and matches.

If someone's on Instagram and they also like consuming on YouTube, let them find you on YouTube as well. Don't force them there. Now, for each island, the only ramp you do want to build is from rented to owned.

So, it's okay to ramp from Instagram to email or Instagram to private community, but you don't want to ramp from island to island, Instagram to Tik Tok. And if you do want to build a holistic connected brand cuz you're just not really fully buying what I'm saying. My frame for this is world building.

World building is creating visual consistency or cohesion across different platforms. You're not pushing people, but when they do discover you, everything looks and feels aligned and matches. Ecosystems are forcing the cross-platform discovery.

Don't force it. Just world build separately and let them discover the different islands. Now, my last uncommon learning has to deal with making money from content.

And it took me a long time to realize this, but this was one of the most important lessons that I learned. Almost everyone making content is doing it because they want to make money. Let's be honest about that.

This is the game. We all see all these influencers that appear to make insane money. And so we think we could do that, too.

And we jump in. And so, if you're like me, you probably followed a similar path. You jumped in.

You really sucked at first, but slowly surely, you started getting better and building up your skills. You grinded and grinded. You spent 12 months and hundreds of hours trying to do this.

And then finally, you started to turn on monetization and get some money coming in. And then it hit you. $52?

Is that it? That's all I'm making from YouTube AdSense? 12 months of grinding and hundreds of hours and all I'm getting is $52.

And so you keep going for another year and you spend all this time and months and months and months. Maybe you land one brand deal for $500 and maybe one for $1,000 here and there, but you're working really hard. The views are high, the followers are high, but the money just doesn't seem that high.

It doesn't seem in line with what you expected. And this is the big learning. Value does not really acrue at the media layer.

This is the lesson. There are three layers in the content stack. The bottom layer is the platform layer.

This is Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, the actual platforms. The middle layer is the media layer. That's me and you, the creators that are making content on the platform.

The top layer is the offering layer. These are the products and services and brands that make products and pay creators to make content to drive attention to those products. Most of the money gets acred at the platform layer, the Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok or the offering layer, the brands, products and services that are driving.

But very little gets captured at the media layer. All the attention is generated from the media layer, but very little of the value is actually captured here. And this is because value capture is correlated to risk.

It's much easier for anyone to start making media than it would be to start a brand or much harder to start a social platform that actually works. And so the rate paid to creators is lower. The value captured is lower.

The learning for me and probably you as someone that's trying to build internet businesses and survive as an entrepreneur is that value just doesn't acrue in a big way at the media layer. It's better to use media to gain attention and then funnel that media to owned products and services than it is to rely on the value capture AdSense and brand deals from the media. And tactically, this means building your own products, services, or doing affiliate deals with uncapped upside instead of relying specifically on AdSense CPMs or brand deals.

And I can get more into the business side of content and monetization models in a future video if you guys want, but this is a critical piece when you're trying to monetize from content. There's just not that much money in the media layer relative to the other two. All right, guys.

There you have it. Those are my five non-obvious lessons for how to actually grow and monetize on social media. To recap, number one, social media is not social anymore.

It's just media. And this means the game has changed because the media game is all about matching content with the right viewers. To help the algos do this matching, you want to stay super disciplined on a single topic for a single audience avatar consistently for a long time.

Use the words you say and the captions you say to help the algo detect what topic you're actually talking about. Number two, pure virality is a trap. If you want to make money with content, you want to go for ontarget virality, which means maximum penetration within your ideal avatar slice.

To do this, pick ideas that resonate specifically with their pain points, but wrapped with category relevant broad case studies. Number three, fish where the fish are. You don't need to be on every single social platform.

Pick the one platform where your customers live. Be video native and consistently engage in the comments and DMs. Do this specifically for 6 months.

Number four, think in islands instead of ecosystems when you're building your social brand. Platforms are built like islands. Users consume like islands.

You should treat them like islands. Build native content for the platform and don't try to force ramp people from one to another. The only ramps you should build are like ferryboats taking people from islands to email or community owned platforms from rented to owned.

And number five, value does not acrue at the media layer. If you want to actually make money from content, know that the value occurs at the platform and the offering layer. Use the media layer to build attention and then ramp that attention to owned products and services.

And remember guys, when it comes to the actual tactics of making better videos, the nuts and bolts, the click- forclick, I have tons of free resources and other videos linked below. And also, it's a shameless plug, but Sand Castles is the best AI tool for helping you ramp up your content production. So, if you haven't tried it, it's completely free to try.

You should. And lastly, make sure to leave a comment to let me know what you guys want in the next video. But until then, we'll see you guys on the next one.

Peace.