How to ACTUALLY Grow on Social Media in 2025 (Evidence-Based)

0:00right now is the best time in history to be making content it is a generational opportunity so in this video I'm going to walk through the full guide for how to actually grow on social media and this is what I personally use to go from zero to 1 million followers in Just 2 years it completely changed my life now to grow on social media you really only have to do three things the first one make valuable videos for a single audience Avatar consistently for 12 months second get a healthy percentage of new viewers to go down the fan funnel and become super fans and third activate

0:31the social algorithms to work for you essentially turning them on so they turbocharge your growth automatically that's it that's all you have to do make valuable videos convert strangers into super fans and then hack the algorithm so it makes you grow faster if you can do all three of these things for just 12 months you will grow bigger and faster than you can possibly imagine now obviously that is super high level so let's go down the rabbit hole for each one and I'll tell you exactly what to do and how to do it but I will warn you this is going to sound way different than any other social media growth

1:02Playbook that you've ever heard because I not like the others I approach this stuff like a Content engineer my only goal is to build viral machines so if you want to build a system that puts time in one side and gets millions of views out the other this is exactly how you do it okay so the first piece is to make valuable videos for a single audience Avatar consistently for 12 months now there are four components here number one make valuable videos number two single audience Avatar number three consistently and number four for 12 months so let's go through each one and break down exactly how to win at

1:35every step okay let's take the first one make valuable videos well this breaks down into two things valuable and videos let's start with a simple one First videos so why videos and not text images live streams or any other content format and the answer is simple right now video has the highest Roi on time compared to any other content medium so for every 1 hour you spend making video you'll get the most growth back out and this is because video is the richest form of media and the quickest vehicle to build max trust and with video the viewer just gets more information per unit consumed that's why it works it's the same reason

2:09why you feel so much more connected to someone after a FaceTime than just a voice call or text and video is the fastest growing content category every single social platform is pivoting to maximize for video Instagram is going Allin with short form video on reals LinkedIn Just Launch short form video x is launching short form video Tik Tok is obviously video YouTube has been doing video for decades it's pretty simple to grow fast on social media you need to be making video now with video you have two options short form or long form and I'm not going to dive into the short form versus long form debate here I've

2:40detailed that in many other videos on my channel but the short answer is for most people it's much much easier to start with short form learn content fundamentals build social proof invest get cash flow out and then use those resources to scale long form once you've got short form mastered this is the order of operations that I did and to be honest I would have have failed if I did it in the reverse and started with YouTube now if you want help with short form video everything from ideas to strategy to storytelling to editing I have a free short form Community with over 12,000 creators and entrepreneurs

3:11it's called wavy world and I got an invite link for you in the description okay so the other piece of this first step was valuable you need to make valuable videos but what does valuable really mean valuable means either interesting or helpful to your specific audience so let's also break those things down interesting and helpful now interesting is typically something that someone hasn't come across before but they find compelling usually it invokes curiosity so for example if I told you that all grapes originated from Antarctica and you cared about fruit you would find that pretty interesting cuz you probably haven't heard it before but if I told you most grapes are purple

3:47well that's not really that interesting because almost everybody has heard that so interesting really means uncommon or different or unique to your specific audience in a way that intrigues them usually it comes from some kind of information or set of facts now the other side of valuable is useful and useful is something that can be applied directly to solve a problem so if I tell you you could save 20% on your taxes with this specific strategy well that's super useful it might also be interesting if you care about taxes but even if you don't it's for sure useful but if I told you that every $5 bill has

4:18a linkoln on the face well that's not that useful to you if you care about money or currency you may think it's interesting but it's really not that useful so useful trumps interesting but they can both lead to valuable and the most Val valuable stuff is usually both useful and interesting to win on social media you need to make valuable videos okay so the next question is where do valuable video ideas come from valuable ideas really come from three places lived experience so you saw something in your field that you could relay back to others breaking news so you've come across something brand new in the field

4:50or hidden gems you've researched and uncovered something that most people don't know this is why content ideas and the process of idea mining is so so important to winning on social media if you don't have any lived experience you don't know how to find hidden gems and you can't curate breaking news chances are your content ideas are probably not interesting or useful and therefore they're not that valuable if you make videos but they aren't that valuable you're probably not going to grow because you're just adding noise to the already vast static of the internet now if coming up with these valuable video ideas is something that you struggle

5:23with let me know in the comments and I'll make a separate video fully dedicated to ideas and idea mining okay so as a reminder to reorient us we are on the step one of three in the social media growth Playbook and step one is make valuable videos for a single audience Avatar consistently for 12 months so we just covered make valuable videos and exactly how to do that the next step is single audience Avatar and this breaks down into single and audience Avatar and this piece is so so critical to get right let's start with the easy one which is single once you've identified an ideal audience Avatar or

5:55an ideal viewer Avatar single means you need to stick with just serving them that one single audience Persona the tighter you can serve just them the easier it will be to trigger on the algorithm to help you and I'm going to get to that in a bit later but just know you need to pick an audience Avatar and then stick with that single one the super common framing of you are the niche where you serve multiple audience avatars and you are the common thread yeah that's nonsense throw that idea out completely that does not work in this era if you actually want to grow that was a huge mistake I made and a common

6:26mistake for many many many beginners a single audience Avatar served with high Precision consistently is what you want all right now let's get to the other piece which is the audience Avatar the audience Avatar is basically the who who are you making these videos for it's really important that you define this Avatar super deeply and then pick one that you could stick with for a while and it makes sense why this is so important it's really hard to pick video ideas that are useful or interesting when you have no idea who you're trying to make them useful or interesting to so there are two key criteria factors that

6:56must be true when you're picking your ideal audience Avatar the first one is that you are confident that you can make at least a 100 videos serving and talking to this audience Avatar and this is critical because it will help with forced skill development the second one is that you genuinely enjoy thinking about and talking about this category and this will help with consistency and Longevity as a bonus if this audience Avatar is something that you've previously identified with that's just an extra Tailwind that's signaling you should pick it the key here is not actually which Avatar group you pick it's that you just pick one and stay

7:27disciplined enough to not stray away from it for a long time and this is the funny thing about social media the reason it's so lucrative to build a personal brand and content Authority is because almost nobody can stay disciplined enough to service the same audience for a long enough time for it to start working okay so now we've covered most of the first step in the Playbook make valuable videos for a single audience Avatar consistently for 12 months the last two pieces are consistently and 12 months so let's just break those down quickly consistently means you're posting at least three to five shorts or one YouTube video per

7:58week and if you try growing on social media before you've probably heard all the gurus harping on consistency and why is it so important but really if we dive in what makes consistency so valuable there's three things for one consistency is the forcing function of skill development for you if you're good at finding valuable video ideas but you're bad at the craft of making videos script writing storytelling editing packaging the only way to improve those skills is with reps and force consistency makes you take more reps sooner to drive that growth faster secondly consistency signals to your earliest fan adopters that your channel is worth coming back

8:34to because you're constantly dripping value so it's not just the helpful forcing function to build your skills it's actually building a habit for your viewers it's like this if there's an elephant in the desert and they see a watering hole they get water the first day and they're happy the second day they're going right back to that watering hole and if there's still water there they're going to keep coming back over and over it builds the habit but if they go back the second day or the third day and there's no water eventually they start doubting that value will be there and they stop visiting again it's the

9:01same thing with content and consistency now the third piece of consistency is that it trains the algorithm on the platform that you are a power producer of content and they begin to boost you more over time rewarding that streak so these three things is what I call the triangle of consistency it helps you it helps the viewer and it helps the algorithm connect you with the viewer so it's really important that you hit this minimum rep threshold consistently and if you don't stick to that consistency your production your operation will eventually fall off and go to zero okay the last piece in the first step is 12

9:33months if you make three to five short form videos or one YouTube video every week your life will change in 12 months that's 250 shorts or 50 YouTube videos and typically it doesn't take 12 months usually just 2 to three months to see your first hit especially with short form and once you have your first hit you'll likely stick to it and keep going because you'll realize the effort is paying off I find 12 months is a helpful Milestone because it anchors in your psychology that it's going to take a long time but it still feels achievable something you can hit so there you have it the first step in the Playbook make

10:03valuable videos for a single audience Avatar consistently for 12 months now obviously doing this consistently making the videos getting yourself going that's obviously the hard part but if you can get yourself moving and get that ball rolling I guarantee in 12 months your life will change and my entire channel is fully dedicated to helping you do this faster for free and I'm doing this because I hated the feeling of being lost myself and I wish there was a Playbook like this that I could have just followed and one and so I'm giving this away for free the pie of opportunity on the Internet is so big

10:33that every single person watching this could be a millionaire if they wanted to so this is why I make these videos and again if you're trying to do this and really take this seriously there's so much free stuff in the description make sure to check that out okay let's move on to step number two and as a reminder step two is to get a healthy percentage of those viewers down the fan funnel and convert into super fans so for part one we were really focused on the positioning who we're making videos for the medium the fact that we're making videos themselves the messaging how to create valuable videos and the process

11:02why consistency matters so much these are all important pieces to get on target viewers to pay attention to our stuff in the first place now the next piece is to do whatever we can to convert those first-time viewers into super fans and super fans are how you actually grow on social media because they become amplification engines for you when you turn a follower into a Super Fan it's basically like turning on this mini growth engine because they share all your stuff and getting a bunch of super fans builds this amplification Network effect that's how you're really going to grow so let's break down step two just like we did with step one we're

11:35trying to get a healthy percentage of viewers down the fan funnel and to turn into Super fans so there are three components with this a healthy percentage down the fan funnel and into super fans okay let's take each one we're going to start with the fan funnel the fan funnel is a series of stages that people go through from stranger to Super Fan they start out as a first time viewer and this is their very first exposure point with you all fans no matter how deep their fandom goes or where they end up they all start as a firsttime viewer next they become a casual Watcher and this is where they

12:04see a couple things from you but they're still not sure if they should follow or not they begin to build recognition of your face and your brand but they're still subconsciously deciding after that they become a new follower and this is the first time where they press that follow or subscribe button and you have a chance to earn their super fandom and this is their very first opt-in moment they're opting in to look at your stuff more actively after new followers some of those turn into growing fans and this is where they've watched a bunch of your stuff they've commented once or twice they've followed and subconsciously

12:32they've identified they're starting to like you and your content when you start to feel momentum growing on your channels for the first time it's because you've finally started converting some of those first-time viewers into growing fans and you'll start noticing the same names are showing up in the comments over and over and over now from growing fans some continue and evolve into active supporters the difference between growing fans and active supporters is that active supporters will go out of their way to find your latest content and they're going to DM you occasionally they usually do not miss when you post and they are silently rooting for you

13:01behind the scenes usually when you have somebody become an active supporter you are one of their favorite follows in the category I call this category fandom now the last step of the funnel is Super Fan and these are the best people they're the people that share your stuff consistently they're fighting for you in the comments they're dming you all the time they are your most active fans and if they're a Super Fan you are one of their favorite creators across all of social media this is what I call Peak fandom now if you want to grow on social media you ideally want as many active supporters and super fans as you can get

13:30and this because those are the people that constantly share watch like and comment shares help bring new eyes to the channel directly comments views and likes help signal to the algorithm to bring new eyes to the channel mechanically now I'm going to break down the five tactical tips that you can get more people into the top of the fan funnel and progress them through faster and this whole process of advancing through the fan funnel is a framework that I call content minutes for each section of the funnel you basically need to get each person to consume a certain number of minutes of your content think of them literally like one minute blocks

14:01of active watch time so for example to get somebody from a stranger to a first-time viewer that only takes one content minute then maybe to get them from a first-time viewer to a casual Watcher it might take five content minutes and this could be five short form videos or maybe a third of a YouTube video and so on super fandom usually takes hours of content consumed and by making content you're basically creating new content units that strangers and first-time viewers can eat up as they ascend through the funnel faster it's basically like Pac-Man eating dots and growing bigger and the more units you create and the more units

14:33you've created in the past the more potential inventory of content minutes that exist to help people go down faster when you're first starting out it's hard to instantly mint super fans and the reason is because you haven't created enough potential content units for them to consume and go down the funnel so here are five tactical ways to increase the number of people that come to that funnel and the speed that they can go down if you want to bring a ton of new firsttime viewers into the funnel without relying on posting new content the best strategy for this is the the external comment strategy you want to

15:01find 10 to 20 massive creators in your space turn post notifications on for all of them and then be one of the first five people to comment anytime they post a new video and when you comment you want to leave as high value and as in-depth of a comment as possible and by doing this it will kind of act like a barnacle on a whale if their video gets millions of views your comment will get thousands to tens of thousands of views because it's push so highly in the feed and this means that dozens to hundreds of people will click through your profile just based on that comment as a

15:29new Creator this is a guaranteed growth strategy and honestly a must do if you're trying to get off the ground okay the second tactic to convert more of the first-time viewers into new followers is to have your bios optimized if somebody stumbled across one of your videos for the first time and they liked it give them a reason to want to follow you and the easy way to do that is by optimizing your bio the first thing you want to do is have a happy smiling profile picture you want to pin the best content you've made and then for your bio you want to use a three-line system the first line

15:56is purpose how are you helping who with what the second line is proof what have you done to signal that they should trust your opinion and the third is path give them a call to action to help continue in a deeper form a link a newsletter an email lead magnet personally I also think on Instagram having well-designed video covers makes a huge difference people hit the profile and scroll down and if you can have an aesthetic look they will increase credibility as they look at your profile another super helpful tactic for bringing people down the fan funnel is to publicly reply to all of the comments

16:26on your own videos and you also want to respond to all the DMS you get privately do this as much as you can as often as you can and as in depth as you can and this helps you in two ways first psychologically people like being heard and acknowledged that their opinion mattered when you respond to their comment this creates a dopamine hit and they want to root for you more just one comment reply could trigger hundreds of views and shares down the line the second reason comments matter is because they actually provide more surface area for Content minutes because people love reading the comments the more value you

16:58put into them the more there is to read and learn and teach and people will spend longer on the comments if they spent 1 minute watching your video but 5 minutes reading the comments that's actually six content minutes not just one all right the last tactical tip for accelerating how many new fans get down that fan funnel is by building a binge Bank a binge bank is just a ton of high quality content around a topic dedicated for somebody to binge once they find the first one you want to give them a rabbit hole so they can plunge down into it and Ascend down the funnel in a single

17:27session if each video is One content minute then they may peel off 10 to 20 minutes in a single session and that happens because of the binge Bank okay the final step is to activate the social algorithms to work for you so we've talked about making the videos who to make them for and how to actually activate viewers down the fan funnel into super fans but the final piece is just the Rocket Fuel and that's to turn the algorithm into a helper if you help the alos the alos will help you now I've covered the social algorithms a ton in other videos but as a summary this is

17:56all that matters social platforms have one job increase user minutes on the platform the more user minutes the more ad Revenue it's that simple now there are two sides of this that the algorithm has to figure out what content does the viewer actually want next and what content will you actually make next if it has a high confidence that you will make a certain type of content and that that content is what the viewers want to watch it will show your stuff to a lot of those viewers if it doesn't have confidence that your stuff will be consistent or that those viewers will want to see it then it's not going to

18:26show it to a lot of those viewers it's that simple and I call this principle audience matching and audience matching is the most important thing to get right to get the algorithms to help you for example if you make 10 videos in a row about NFL football the algorithm is going to be pretty sure that your 11th video will be about NFL football that means it will feel more comfortable blasting out video1 to NFL fans people that want to watch NFL content those NFL fans in turn are then really happy with the algorithm because they're getting served things they want to watch so they watch more share more like more and then

18:55the algorithm Works to find even more of those NFL fans simple enough this is an example of a good audience match but if you make your first video about NFL football and then your second video an NYC Vlog and then your third video about YouTube strategy the algorithm has no idea what that fourth video is going to be and so it's scared to put it in front of people because it won't know who will like it and this is an audience mismatch so all you need to do to get the algorithm to help you is to pick a single topic for a single audience and stick with that audience for a long time

19:24the more you do this the more it helps you the less you do this the less it helps you there's there's obviously a ton more Nuance that we can get into about this but really it is as simple as that if you optimize for your audience match the algorithm becomes Rocket Fuel so again this is the Playbook all you have to do to guarantee growth on social media is these three steps first make valuable videos for a single audience Avatar consistently for 12 months second get a healthy percentage of those viewers down the fan funnel and to convert into super fans and then third activate the social algorithms to work

19:54for you essentially turning them on so they supercharge your growth if you do this for 3 to 6 months you will be at 25 to 50,000 followers and you can repeat this until you're as big as you want to be once you've gotten big enough you can start monetizing on that channel and then you can chill grow or move on to the next Channel and this is all you have to do and the bar is extremely low because nobody can focus on serving a single audience for a long time now before I wrap up the video let me just walk through the three reasons why you're going to fail with this even

20:19though I just gave you the full Playbook and obviously I'm sharing these to help you avoid these mistakes the first one is you don't have the willpower patience or Focus to put in the work for 12 months necessary to do this and I actually can't help you solve this problem but I'm assuming if you watch this video and you got this far you don't fall on this bucket now the second one is you have the will power to do this but you just don't have the time and all of my free stuff linked below and the academy that I run for entrepreneurs that'll help you do this

20:43and compress the time to get there the fastest so if you have the desire but you don't have the time check down below there's invites and free stuff for everything and the third reason you'll fail is because you just don't have the ability or knowledge to iteratively improve and this means you have the willpower and you have the time but you're just not getting better from rep to rep again I saw for this in all my stuff below it's all free so that you can get there faster coming up with the best ideas and going from idea to post this takes a ton of time and practice

21:09but the reason it's worth it is because it's just hard enough that not everybody can do it anyone can but almost no one will because it's hard and all of my videos on this channel are specifically designed to try to make this stuff a little bit easier so if you need help check those out all right guys that's all I've got for this video I know it was a jam-packed one but hopefully this Playbook makes it super simple to follow if you have any ideas for what I should cover next please drop them in the comments leave a like share the video and until the next one we'll see you

21:35guys then peace