The Secret EVERY Viral Creator Knows

They have the content, but they're missing the context. What are you missing? Have you lost enthusiasm for the format? Because that can happen the first three seconds of a video. Like one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they're trying to do too much. The reality is there's 5.4 billion people across social media. There is more than enough audience for everybody. There's going to have to be clear winners and losers and the winners are going to be the ones that actually take the time to understand the fundamentals of, of what makes a great story work. It's actually something I learned when I was working with Taylor Swift early in her career that she spotted pretty much before anybody else did. In that another interesting thing is that I think people get wrong about social media and it's actually something I learned when I was working with Taylor Swift early in her career that she spotted pretty much before anybody else did. And that social media is not a one to many platform, it's really a one to one platform. So if we think about when we're consuming content on social media, we're sitting on the couch, we're, you know, in the bathroom, we're on the toilet, wherever we are, we're consuming it by ourselves. We're not consuming it in a stadium. So I think oftentimes I don't even look at like exposing myself to the world, but more so how do I help a specific individual along their journey? So I think there's two ways to kind of look at and tackle it. There is the person that doesn't feel comfortable on camera has a bit of anxiety about putting themselves out into the world. So for them, this mental exercise of when you sit down in front of the camera, just imagine that one person that you're trying to impact, transform their life, connect with them in some way, weed out all of the other noise. Don't think about thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people. Just focus. Like almost like you're having like a FaceTime conversation or you're speaking to a friend. And then the same thing goes on the opposite side of if you're a business owner, you're trying to grow your business. Well, just think about that end consumer on the other side of the phone and just imagine you saying, hey everybody. And then that person's like, who's everybody? Like, I want you to connect with me as the individual. And the minute they kind of feel like they're talking to the masses, there's a bit of this disconnect that happens. And if you think about where social media first started the first YouTubers, you know, they, this was back in 2005, 2006, 2007. They were in their bedroom on a web camera and there was an inflection point where these YouTubers were becoming more popular than mainstream celebrities. And we all know that to be true today. But, but back then that was a novel concept. Why did that happen? Because people felt a personal connection to that person. Almost felt like a friend talking to you versus like a Robert Downey Jr. Or Leonardo DiCaprio. You know, movies are more of a passive experience where social media can be a more of active approach of letting somebody in to your world and connecting with them on a deeper level. So a format is the structure. What you put into it can be original, but originality in the sense of kind of reinventing the wheel is A, overrated and B, it's going to put you down the wrong path. Structures don't restrict creativity, they actually unlock creativity. So think about Steven Spielberg, one of the best storytellers of all time. So he uses the three act structure every movie creates. But he created Jaws, then he created ET Indiana Jones, Saving Private Ryan, and then he created a movie about Abraham Lincoln. Each movie is distinctly unique, it's distinctly creative. But that format allows him to unlock that creativity because he spent his entire career mastering it. But if you're gonna go out there and say I wanna be original and I wanna do something that somebody else, nobody else has ever seen before, you're reinventing the wheel and you're ultimately not gonna have that breakthrough success. So what we see in terms of the people operating at the highest levels and consistently breaking through is they have the content, but they're missing the context, they're missing that structure. So when people are failing with social media has nothing to do with them personally. It's their message. Their brand is not the thing that's not working. It's the fact that they don't have the structure, the context to deliver it in a way that people can recognize can people can really dive in and enjoy. So I always recommend start with one platform. And that platform is typically dictated by two things. One, what is the format that you're selecting? Because there's certain formats that work for certain platforms and what is the platform that you use the most? Because you need to become a student of the game like, and if you're using a platform, you're more likely to learn from it. But what I say is focus intently on one platform and get really good at that. But you can still take that content and Post it in others, but don't worry about the performance on the others. Just focus on one. Go super deep in that platform until you master it and then take that skillset and, and that learning to the other one. In terms of hiring talent, there are definitely people that have expertise in different platforms because they're distinctly different. There are definitely YouTube experts, there's Instagram experts, there's TikTok experts. However, be careful with somebody calling themselves an expert. Make them prove that to you. Ask them to show their work. Like, have they consistently break broken through for their clients? Can they demonstrate that they can repeat success? Do they understand the difference between success and failure on these platforms? Just because somebody says they've been in social media for five or ten years doesn't mean that they're going to be able to drive success for what you're looking for. So as you really scale and as you grow, you may hit an inflection point of things may stagnate, they may, you may plateau. And the, the one question I ask people when they're at that stage is, well, let's look at what is happening between what you're posting now versus when things were working. And again, we will do this hook point, mirror test. We'll put their high performer on one side of the screen and the low performer on the other side of screen and just see like, what are you missing? Did you change something in the execution? Have you lost enthusiasm for the format? Because that can happen. And if you've lost enthusiasm, if that is the reason, well, then we can find a new format to take it to the next level. But a lot of times it's just, they've been missing something in the execution standpoint. And I'll give you a prime example is we, we did a session with Alex Stemp, this professional photographer that does man on the street for photo shoots. And he built an audience of 20 million people with that. But the performance started to stagnate with it. So we looked at like what was happening between the high performers and, and kind of the more recent low performers. And we just saw some subtle tweaks that needed to be made in order to that for that format to get back on track. And when he saw that, he was like, oh, yeah, I see that. I'm going to go back to it. But there may be an inflection point where you just want to try something new, you want to go in a different direction. And that's completely okay because you've already mastered one format. You know what it takes to master a Second one in order to A, master hooks, but then B, have longevity with them is understand how and why they work. If you use a hook like three steps to this because somebody told you to do that and you don't understand the psychology behind why that works, then you're ultimately going to struggle to, to have a lasting impact or if a certain hook starts to fall by the wayside, how to replace it. So that's kind of the biggest thing is understanding the elements of it. And a hook like the first three seconds of a video, like one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they're trying to do too much. So they'll have like a title card at the top, they'll have captions and then they'll start talking. Like one of the aspects that people don't really talk a lot about hook is like what is the clear visual hierarchy. Sometimes you don't even need words. Sometimes it's a movement, sometimes it's a gesture. It can be words, but it doesn't have to be. So if you want to make sure that you can always come up with new hooks, new creative ways to make sure people are stopping and paying attention from you is constantly learn the psychology, the science behind why certain decisions are being made. And this is one of the the larger concerns that I have with AI. AI is a powerful tool, but it is not a solution. It's not going to make you go viral on a consistent basis if you don't have the understanding of how and why things work. Like the analogy I give is, if every single person on the planet woke up tomorrow and is making content with AI, there's going to have to be clear winners and losers, and the winners are going to be the ones that actually take the time to understand the fundamentals of what makes a great story work. The reality is there's 5.4 billion people across social media. There is more than enough audience for everybody. And again, my biggest advice to you is put out all the noise. Put out all the noise. Push everything aside and just figure out how you can tell the best story about who you are and what you do. If you focus on that, it doesn't matter about what other competitors because I can tell tell you that 99% of your competitors are not doing social media right. So you do not need to worry about your competition like doing better than you, because so many people are getting it wrong. But if you just focus on understanding what tells the best story, how do I have the most powerful impact on the viewer on the other side of the screen. Then you ultimately will find your way. Sam Sa.