SPI 885: What’s Working on Social Media Right Now

SPI 885: What’s Working on Social Media Right Now

Pat Flynn: Here’s something that might surprise you. The most successful social media creators, the ones on TikTok, Instagram Reels, Shorts, et cetera, the most successful ones are not chasing the latest trends. I know that was always a strategies. Just do what everybody else is doing, and because everybody else is watching those kinds of things, you will be seen and found as well.

And as much as that used to be, true times have changed. I mean, how many times have you gone online and have seen nothing beats a Jet2 holiday, and right now you could save 50 pounds per person. That’s not, that’s totally the wrong accent. I can’t do accents, just ask my family. They know this. But you’ve probably heard that before because everybody’s doing it and you just get blended in.

In fact, I just analyzed the strategies behind some of the biggest social media success stories of 2025, and what I found will completely change how you think about growing your audience. And right now in this episode, I’m gonna share five principles that are working right now, not just for big creators, but for everyday entrepreneurs and business owners like you who wanna build a meaningful business online.

Plus, I’ll tell you about the one mistake that’s keeping 90% of creators stuck in what I like to call maintenance mode and how to break free from it starting now.

So welcome again to session 885 of the SPI podcast. If you are new here, this is where entrepreneurs come to learn how to build businesses that serve others while creating freedom for themselves, and that’s you. I want you to have freedom as well, and it starts with getting found, getting noticed, and a lot of times online that starts with social media, and we’re gonna dive deep today on what’s working, not the shiny objects and the growth hacks, but the fundamental principles that successful creators are using to build real sustainable audiences.

And I’ve been studying this stuff this stuff very obsessively lately, partly because of my own experiments, like my Pokemon content that is generated over 4.5 billion views in about a year’s time, which is kind of crazy, but also because I keep seeing the same patterns emerge among several different creators across different platforms.

So whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been creating content for years, this episode is gonna give you a clear roadmap to what to focus on. So let’s dive in.

Before we get into the tactics, we first need to talk about the biggest and most fundamental shift that has happened in social media, and if you don’t understand the shift, nothing else I’m gonna share with you will make sense.

Social media isn’t social anymore, it’s just media. Now, I know that sounds like a small distinction, but it changes everything. In the old days, I mean, we’re talking 2010s all the way through 2020 maybe. Sad to say that that’s the olden days, but that’s how quickly this stuff moves, right? Social platforms back then were designed to connect you with people that you already knew, right?

Your content was primarily shown to your followers, your subscribers, and the goal was social connection. I missed those days. I missed when I could just publish something and know that the people who subscribe to it would see it. Now, even people who are subscribed or following your channel may not see that stuff because of the algorithms, because how things have changed.

Because we’re now talking about media. Not just social media. I think it was TikTok, you know, they came along and changed the game completely with their algorithm. It wasn’t built for social connection. It was built for media consumption, just like YouTube, and it worked so well that every other platform shifted into the same direction.

Now, instead of showing your content primarily to your followers, these platforms are focused on one thing, matching great content with the right viewers, regardless of whether those viewers follow you or not. This is actually great news for creators as much as it doesn’t sound great, because again, how could you be okay with your subscribers not seeing your stuff?

But this means growth can happen, and it means you don’t need a massive following to get massive reach, and that’s the biggest benefit. I’ve seen creators with 500 followers get millions of views on a single video because the algorithm determined it was exactly what certain viewers wanted to see. But what does this mean for your strategy?

You can’t think like you’re posting to your friends anymore. You need to think like you’re creating media for strangers who might become friends. The riches are still in the niches. But you have to understand that the niches don’t grow if you’re just sharing stuff to people who already know you exist.

You need to understand that growth happens from people who don’t yet know you exist and getting in front of them through the content that you create on social media. So here is principle number one, precision over breadth. So principle number one, precision beats breadth. Every single time. Now, don’t, don’t get me wrong here, this, there’s a little nuance in here, right?

Yes. The riches are in the niches, like I said, but on social media, you gotta understand that you still have to reach more people. And if you were to get too narrow, it is going to immediately leave people out. But here’s where the precision comes into play. It is in the theme. Style of the videos that you’re creating or the posts that you’re posting, right?

What most people get wrong is they try to appeal to everyone and literally every single problem, every single pain in their target audience’s mind, they make content about business and also fitness, and then travel and cooking, thinking they’re maximizing their opportunities, right? That’s, that’s too broad of a channel to then want to subscribe to and build a following on.

People want people who they can understand that every video or every post or every podcast is going to be essentially of the same nature, not exactly the same, obviously, but not outta bounds. So you don’t wanna confuse the algorithm by confusing the humans that are there subscribing or following you.

Right? The creators who are winning right now are laser focused on a specific topic. They might be talking about it in a broad way, but they’re talking just about one topic, right? I think it’s Jordan Fisher. He’s cast a very wide net with tens of millions of views per month by talking about communication.

Now he’s a lawyer. But he’s picked one thing and one thing only, and he talks about it in different kinds of ways, but it’s still all about communication. Here are three things to say. If somebody’s being rude to you, here are five ways to respond to somebody who’s trying to put you down. These are all communications strategies.

What is his business? Well, his business is he, he’s a lawyer. He’s, he’s an attorney. He wants clients. So he’s going broad in terms of appeal and theme, but sticking with the one theme of communication. So even in my own example, right from my own experience, when I started my Pokemon content. On Deep Pocket Monster, I didn’t make videos about Pokemon and then business and productivity and family life, and even within the Pokemon space, I didn’t create videos about the investment side of it, about the historical side of it, about the, you know, how to all, all that stuff, right? I made videos about Pokemon and mystery boxes at first, which then blended itself into challenges, and that’s, that’s all I’m doing.

On the shorts channel, it was purely opening one pack a day and for 350 straight days I went every single day talking specifically about a new pack that I could open, and people knew exactly what they were gonna get. It was even themed as, should I open it or should I keep it sealed? So with some built in mystery and now four and a half billion views later, we’re approaching episode 400.

Now, actually it’s only been a little over a year and the channel across all those platforms ’cause I am repurposing the same short form video about 60 seconds on YouTube Shorts, on Instagram Reels, on TikTok, and now also on Facebook. And I’m trying Snapchat as well. The same videos, it’s just an additional two to three minutes per platform.

Now that I, now that I have that sort of seed video, if you wanna call it that we’re at 10 million views per day. That is insane. Now you might be thinking, well, doesn’t that limit you, that precision? No. It actually is something that is more easily graspable. It’s easier to share. Oh yeah, that guy who’s hitting a golf ball over his house every day and whatever day it is, is how many chances he gets. Right. Very clear and easy to share. Not Oh, yeah. Pat Flynn, the entrepreneur who, you know, I watched his podcasting videos, but then he did like an SEO one the other day, and then he did one about short form video content, but then he talked about audio podcasting and then mindset and, and, and relationships and building partnerships in, in the, in this, like, it’s so hard to grasp your mind around all those different things.

Yes, it’s about entrepreneurship, but there are many entrepreneurs who are focused solely on things like. How to master sales calls and every video you understand that you’re gonna master sales calls, hear a sales call, you’re gonna get the script for a sales call. All those things kind of within. So again, the riches are in the niches, but through that you can create it in a way that has broad and mass appeals that it’s interesting to more than just those who just want the video script, right? It just to use that as an example. So start with one topic, one audience, one clear value proposition. Master that, and then you can expand on that if you want to. Alright, let’s move on to principle number two. Again, we’re creating really important distinctions here between, you know, different ways that people teach social media and different things that you might’ve thought about or, or, or have learned and what actually is working right now.

And principle number two here is the idea of focusing on, on target virality, not pure virality. So most creators are chasing the wrong kind of viral content, right? It’s almost like a dream that everybody wants to go viral, but not all viral is created equal, right? They want the 10 million view video that gets shared everywhere.

It makes them feel like a celebrity for a week. But here’s the problem with pure vita virality it often hurts your business more than it can help. When you go purely viral, you’re reaching people across kind of too many different demographics and interest groups, right? The algorithm gets confused about exactly who your audience is, and your future content suffers because it doesn’t know where to distribute it, right?

Instead, you wanna do something that I’ve once heard called on target virality content that goes viral within your specific niche or industry or in and around it, or because of it, right? So you could have a business channel but then go viral because you tripped over a fence and landed into a lake and, and you know, that’s funny.

But what does that have to do with your business and the lead magnets that you have and where you’re bringing people to? Right? If you can create viral content within the space or industry that you’re in, that means many, many more people are gonna see it, but they’re gonna clearly understand what this is about and who you are and what this is for, right?

This is where you get maximum penetration with your ideal audience without spilling over into a relevant demographic. Now again, casting a wider net on social, especially short form videos is fine. But again, if you’re getting viral views for just, you know, some humorous reason or, or something that just has nothing to do with what you’re doing there’s gonna be zero connection between all those people and ultimately where you can take them.

It’s, it’s a hard ask to ask a general audience there for something completely different to then go down a path to whatever offer that you might have down the road versus something that’s at least in and around that realm that they can get interested in or go vi, you go viral for that, then kind of lets them understand, okay, here’s how else they can work with you.

So imagine it this way. Imagine there’s a giant pie with 8 billion people in it. I’m not saying like, this is a pie anybody’s going to eat, but just like a, like a pie graph with 8 million people. Pure virality is trying to reach as many of those 8 billion people as possible. On target virality is picking a narrow slice of that pie and trying to reach as many people as possible within that slice.

Okay, so for example, I could probably create a video about the life hacks everyone should know. And yes, they might get millions of views across all demographics, but that wouldn’t help really my business at all. I mean, they could be life hacks about you know, everything from saving money on your electricity bill to you know, getting your stove to turn on when it doesn’t want to turn on, and ways to get rid of viruses on your computer.

Like completely random life hacks that don’t have anything to do with me teaching you how to start your business. Right. And if I go viral for that, I mean, cool. I got lots of views. But that kind of skews the numbers because the chances of those people coming into my email list that’s meant to help them get their first dollar is, is not, there’s just no connection there.

Right? That wouldn’t help my business at all because most of those viewers aren’t interested in entrepreneurship or online business. Instead, if I were to create a viral piece of content that is maybe business lessons from Pokemon, so now I’m combining something that I know is very hot and something I know about with business, right. I’m getting on target. Virality. It reaches a lot of people. It’s the right people. And even if it brings in quote unquote Pokemon people, because it’s business lessons, you can already get a sense of what this is for, who it’s like, and the algorithms will do the filtering job for you. Not every video, not every piece of content’s gonna hit, but when it does, you can be sure that at least if you are going with on target virality, you are, you know, essentially giving your chance the best chance, at least to find the right people.

The tactical application here is really to always just ask yourself, is my core audience avatar going to find this interesting, useful, or entertaining? If the answer is no, then don’t make the video even if you think it might get more views. Trust me, there’s been many, many, many video ideas that I’ve personally had, of videos that I know would go viral, but because they don’t have anything to do with anything that I talk about or, or care about I don’t, I don’t do them. I save those ideas for later or give them away to somebody else who might be in that niche. And in most cases it’s just more slapstick, silly stuff that, you know, would be fun, but generating revenue from entertainment in a more fun kind of way, like that more just kind of like slapstick, kind of just like, let’s go viral, hopefully we’ll get a lot of views and get some ad revenue from that. It’s really hard to build a following, right? This is where you see a lot of influencers who have large amounts of even followers.

Not just views, but followers, because every video is sort of like a prank or something like that. It’s like, okay, cool. Now when it’s time to. You know, lead into a offer or promote something. I mean, nobody trusts that person. First of all, they’re a prank channel. But second of all, those viewers aren’t going to convert because that’s not why they’re there.

So, you see what I mean? Remember, the riches are the niches and the niches are the best activated with on target virality.

Alright, principle number three here. When it comes to what’s working today in social. Your hook is everything. The hook is everything. I don’t care if it’s written, if it’s audio, and especially if it’s video, the hook determines the success of the video or not. I cannot overstate how important this is in today’s social media landscape, if you don’t hook somebody in the first two to four seconds, you’ve lost them forever. It’s sad, but it’s true. And here’s the thing. When people share your content, whether it’s in their stories or in dms with friends or family, often only the first 10 to 15 seconds gets seen.

So even through referrals and recommendations from others who people have already earned trust with, you only have just a few seconds to work with. So your hook isn’t just about getting the initial viewer to watch, it’s also about getting the people they share it with to watch too. There is like, there’s like layers to this, right?

And I’ve been studying hooks obsessively, especially since going on YouTube and really going deep into shorts. And I’ve identified three elements. That I think can make a hook irresistible. First is some sort of open curiosity loop After the first sentence of whatever it is that you’re creating, ask yourself this question.

Is the viewer or reader or listener curious enough to want to continue to find the answer? If not, then you have to rewrite it. Oftentimes, you could start with a question as well. Do Pokemon cards, can you buy a car with Pokemon cards? I’ve actually seen that one before, and that’s a great hook. And then you kind of have to follow it up, right?

But can you, can you, I don’t know. Now I need to know and find the answer. Second, create a visual hook, not just a verbal one. So obviously if you’re an audio only format, your hook needs to be even stronger because you don’t have that visual. Maybe you can paint a visual. This is why I love, I love using words like imagine.

Imagine you’re sitting across from a, a, an actor who you really love and you enjoy their movies. What would be the first thing that you would say? You see how I already like took you there and you were already thinking about an actor or actress? Great. I’ve taken you somewhere. I’ve created a visual hook even through audio, but that’s not what we’re talking about.

I was just giving you an example. People can read faster than they can than they can listen. So if you’re using video. Put text on the screen. This is why you’ll see a lot of captions, especially in the first parts of a video, show them something visually interesting while you’re delivering your verbal hook.

So first thing is the first sentence. Ask yourself that question. Is the viewer curious enough to continue? Second visual hook. Third, deliver it quickly, and then get out of the way. Get into the content. Get into the story. Don’t linger on your hook, state it clearly create the curiosity and move into your content.

So let me give you a few examples. If, for example, you were a fitness and healthcare person, right here is a verbal hook. What if I told you that the exercise that fitness influencers swear by is actually destroying your metabolism? That’s a great hook. Now you wanna know, right? So the visuals can go there and you can go and prove or disprove that.

Let’s say that you were in the personal finance space. Here’s an example. Why are millionaires buying this worthless asset that financial advisors tell you to avoid? Oh, that’s so good. ’cause millionaires are buying this quote unquote worthless thing. The, the professionals are telling you not to buy it.

But there’s something there I need to find out. Let’s say you’re in the cooking and food niche. What’s the one ingredient that professional chefs use in everything, but never tell home cooks about. Boom. Number four, how did a 23-year-old college dropout build a million dollar business using only four hours a week?

That would be sort of a business or productivity case study that I could share. For example one more example. Let’s say you’re a creator talking about home improvement and things like that. Why are contractors terrified of this $3 tool that makes their $500 service obsolete? Right? Text over overlay could be like $3 tool versus $500 service, which is better before or after, right?

That’s, that’s, I mean, I save myself $2,000 on a bathroom renovation using this method they don’t want you to know about. Now, I know that sounds salesy when you hear things like that, but there’s a reason why salespeople use those kinds of things, that kind of language, because it works. Now, we’re not necessarily selling a thing, although in that last one with that little tool that maybe, but in general, we’re selling the time that that video or that piece of content allows, right?

We’re selling the idea that, yes, this is worth watching or listening to. So you gotta keep that in mind. It’s very, very important to have that hook nailed down. You, you have to nail down those hooks. So practice, practice writing 10 different hooks for the same piece of content. Use Poppy or ChatGPT or Claude to create various versions until one really hits home for you.

Right? Right. Principle number four, platform as islands. So you wanna treat platforms like islands, not ecosystems. Can’t remember where I heard this from. It might have been Dan Martel or Neil Patel, I can’t remember, but this goes against what most social media experts will teach you. But, but hear me up.

The conventional wisdom, what everybody says usually is to create this connected ecosystem, right? Where you’re constantly trying to move people from one platform to another. And we see this all the time for people trying to grow their podcasts, especially they go on social media, TikTok, Instagram reels are taking clips and they’re like, please subscribe to my podcast.

You can find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify. No, people will not move. It is a huge, huge piece of friction for people to move from a platform they’re already on, already comfortable on. To go to something like Apple Podcast or Spotify to then hit play to then hit subscribe. Don’t do that. Platforms don’t want their users leaving either.

So not only do the people don’t wanna leave, the platforms don’t want them to, and if people start leaving, well, they’re not gonna reward you. The platforms aren’t gonna reward you. They’re, they’re gonna, they’re gonna catch on and say, Hey, you’re tell, you’re telling people while watching on YouTube to leave YouTube.

Well, we’re not gonna send this video out to more people because you’re telling people to go away from us. They want you to keep people on their platforms, right? When you post to a platform outside of another platform, they suppress your reach. When you tell people to check out my YouTube channel and your Instagram post, Instagram punishes that content and more importantly.

Users don’t wanna be forced to switch. Like I said, they’re on Instagram because they like Instagram, they’re on TikTok because they like TikTok. When you try to force them elsewhere, you’re interrupting their preferred consumption pattern. So instead, you need to think of each platform as its own island.

Create native content for each platform that serves that platform audience in that platform’s format. So it might be born from the same piece of content, but restructured to live on that, again, specific platform in the way that that platform prefers right now with short form video, it’s great because I can just take one edit and I can re-upload it natively onto each of these short form platforms.

But there might be something where you want to bring people or feel like you want to bring people outside of that platform. Like if you have a podcast or a YouTube video and you are on social media sharing a clip of it, don’t tell people to to go watch the full thing. They can watch more clips. They can get involved with your lead magnet straight from there.

They don’t need to listen to the full episode if they’re already getting it there. The only bridge you should really build from these islands is to owned media, your email list, your community, your website, and you don’t want to do that every single time either. That’s the ferry boat. The ferry boat on that island, taking people from rented land to owned land.

So very important. Treat each platform like its its own island. This is something that was very, very difficult for me to learn when I was repurposing content for my podcast for the first time, because I was always telling people to go listen to the podcast in full and nobody did. And it wasn’t until I heard some advice from somebody, I think it was Sean West, who a long time ago was on the show.

He said, no, people are on Instagram because that’s where they want to consume content. So instead of taking people out of there from your podcast, just give them your podcast in a format that would allow them to get it. When they wouldn’t get it otherwise. And I thought that was so smart and that is very, very true today.

Alright, principle number five, value capture strategy. So this is crucial, understand where value actually gets captured. So here’s something most creators don’t realize. There are three layers in a content stack and most of the money is not in the middle layer, which is where creators live. So the bottom layer is like this, just so you can get the you can get the, the visual.

The bottom layer is the platform layer. Is Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, et cetera. These companies capture enormous value because they control the distribution. We know this. The top layer is the offering layer, right? That’s the brands, the products, and the services that pay for attention. They capture significant value because they have something to sell.

So distribution on the bottom, selling on the top, the middle layer is the media layer. That is you. Creator making content, and here’s the hard truth, very little value gets captured at the media level or layer relative to the other two. This is why you see creators with millions of followers struggling to make a living from AdSense and brand deals alone.

The math just doesn’t work unless you are in the top 1% of creators. But there is an opportunity here, you can use your media layer to build attention and then funnel that attention to your own offerings, right? You almost, in a way, become off the backs of these larger distributors, your own distributor, into your own sales and offerings.

Instead of relying on platform monetization, you create your own value capture mechanisms. So you wanna build that email list. That’s what we’ve done here from this podcast since day one. Bringing people back to the website, nurturing them. And so as you are building your social media presence, always be thinking, how does this content serve my broader business goals?

Don’t just create content for the sake of creating content. Create content that moves people toward becoming customers, clients, or community members. And when you get people from wherever they’re at to your email list, you can instead you can then have a conversation with them. You can ask ’em questions like, what are you struggling with right now?

Or What are the most concerning things in your life at this moment? What can I do to help that you aren’t getting anywhere else? These are great questions to start to utilize this following that you’re building. In the middle layer to be able to create your own offerings on top of.

So let’s put this all together into a practical action plan for you that you can actually start implementing today.

First, audit your current content strategy. Look at your last 20 posts across all platforms. How focused are they really? Are they focused on the same topic for the same audience, or does it seem to be wavering all over the place? If that’s the case, this is your first priority. Pick one topic, one audience, and commit to serving them constant consistently for at least 90 days.

Second, start every piece of content by writing 10 different hooks. This will probably be the biggest change for most people listening to this show. Don’t settle for your first idea. At least explore other options before coming back to it, and likely you’re gonna find a better one. Push yourself to find the hook that creates genuine curiosity and combines familiar elements with unexpected insights.

And third, stop trying to force people from platform to platform. Instead, focus on creating the best possible content for each platform’s native format and audience expectations. And if you’re just starting out. Just pick one platform, spend 90 days on it. Learn everything you can about it. There are people who are experts in each of these platforms, and you can go to them and, and, and learn from them.

And fourth, develop your own value capture mechanism. What can you offer your audience beyond just content? Maybe it’s a course, a community, a product, a service. Start building that now, even if it’s simple. And fifth, and finally, measure the right metrics. Don’t just look at views and followers. Look at engagement rates, retention rates, comment, quality, and most importantly, how many people are taking the next steps in your business funnel?

So here are some final things to think about, some mistakes to avoid. Mistake number one, trying to be everywhere. And I get it. You see the most successful creators literally on every platform, and you think you need to be there too. But guess what? And I know this because this was me. We didn’t start out that way.

We weren’t everywhere because we decided to be everywhere. We were everywhere because we mastered one platform, then moved to the next, mastered that, then moved on to the next, then mastered that, then moved on to the next. For now, pick your hero platform, the one where your audience spends most time, and focus there until you’ve built real momentum.

Mistake number two, copying tactics instead of understanding principles. Right. You see somebody’s viral video and you just kind of recreate it exactly. This is something that I’ve been seeing a lot people recreating my videos and the thing that they always get are my audience members discovering their videos and saying they’re copycats, that they’re just like, you know, dollar store Deep Pocket Monsters, and we don’t want that to happen to you.

You gotta understand the underlying principles behind why their tactics work, and you can utilize and use those, but don’t copy and be careful and try to put some of your own twist and spin into things as well. And of course, your personality. Mistake number three, optimizing for vanity metrics instead of business metrics.

Few views and followers, yes, feel good, but they don’t pay the bills, and I’d rather have. 10,000 engaged followers who are genuinely interested in what I have to offer, rather than 10 million passive followers who never take action. Remember, social media is a tool, not a destination. The goal isn’t to become a social media star, it’s to use social media to build something meaningful that serves others and creates freedom for yourself.

So thank you so much for listening, and I appreciate you. I hope you take at least one piece of advice from today’s episode and have yourself a Jet2 holiday. No, I’m just kidding. No, seriously, thank you so much.

Hit that subscribe button. We got a lot more coming your way to tell you about what’s working, and we’re gonna even bring in some guests to talk about some of these things in the near future as well. But yeah, this stuff’s amazing and it changes fast. So stick around and subscribe so you don’t miss out.

Cheers everybody.