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Lessons - The Viral Content Formula That Built Millions of Followers | Brendan Kane - Social Media Strategist · Success Story with Scott Clary

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  In this lesson's episode, discover how early content creators broke traditional film rules
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  and built deeper connections by making social media personal. Learn why storytelling still drives
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  attention in a crowded digital space, learn how today's viral content relies more on retention,
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  then follow account, and learn why building trust with your audience through organic content
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  creates long-term business impact.
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  When you when you started to look into what these individual content creators, like really early
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  nascent stages of social we're doing, it's interesting. I'm sure you saw it from a professional lens
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  because this is what you went to school for and you worked with the best to the best. But were they
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  doing anything that was taught in film school at all in sort of best practices for creating
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  compelling content at all? Was there any similarities or was this radical shift in almost a 180
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  from the way Holly was doing it actually serving them better?
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  Yeah, so it's a great question. There were some major differences and there was also some
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  similarities. So in terms of the differences, one of the big differences that was kind of overlooked
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  in the beginning was you have these most of the kind of like the bigger influencers at the time.
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  Again, they weren't called influencers, but there are people in their bedroom on web cameras.
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  And a lot of people wrote them off because of that. They're like, oh, it's just some
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  kid in their bedroom on a web camera. But the difference was, if you think about movies and
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  television, it's a very passive experience. You're just kind of engaging this with this content
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  from a passive. You're just watching it, consuming it versus in the, and it still holds true today
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  with social media. It's a very active experience. The first YouTubers would let you in like
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  their your friend, like they're connecting with you in a one to one basis. And that's a big mistake
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  that people make with social media is they think it's one to many when it's really a one to one
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  platform. Because if you think about one, we're mostly consuming social media, we're sitting on a
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  couch on the train on the bus, whatever that may be by ourselves consuming that content. So that's
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  a big distinct difference. Now, similarities is you're still having to tell a story. Like you need
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  to be able to grab that attention and hold that retention through retention and have some type
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  of payoff. And that's what a lot of the top creators were doing at the time. That was a different
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  type of storytelling. They're not using like the three-act structure in terms of how those stories
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  were unfolding. But they were still telling stories, even if it was about their day of what unfolded
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  or things of that nature. That was causing the people that were really rising to the top to connect
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  and you know, generate that level of engagement initially. Yeah. No, I just if I think about,
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  I mean, I've looked at a lot of your work and you really pinpoint and you like you you slay some,
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  you know, sacred cows and really some really sort of you kill some ideas about what creates great
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  viral content that I think are incorrect. I think that's probably some of the best work that you do.
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  And I think that you sort of reposition and refocus people on what they should be focusing on.
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  And what they should be sort of over indexing on what they should be paying attention to when
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  it comes to creating viral content. That's really, in my opinion, like that is your life's work.
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  And when you think about what has created these early influencers versus what creates viral content
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  today, do you think it's the same things? Do you think it's changed over time? Do you think that
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  it's evolved or are like there's core fundamentals that you have studied? You believe to be true?
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  You've seen replicated again and again and again and again that hold true over the lifetime of
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  social media. I think it's definitely changed and there's one, there's one key ingredient that's
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  caused that dramatic shift and that's the number of people using social media. So when I first started
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  like back in 2005, we're talking maybe a few million people on these platforms. Today it's close
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  to five billion. And the reason that shifts that dynamic is the sheer amount of content that's
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  being produced. And what that means is you have far more competition. So what worked and broke through
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  in 2005, 2006, 2006, even through 2010, the barrier of entry is much lower. So your storytelling
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  didn't really need to be as dialed in as it needs to be today. In addition, people have been using
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  social media for so long that they've become professional consumers of content on these platforms.
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  Meaning they can tell within like a split second or less than a second. And it may not be a
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  conscious decision. It may be subconscious. Am I going to consume this piece of content or am I going
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  to scroll to the next one? So there's a lot of fundamental kind of storytelling dynamics
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  and nuances that go into what makes successful content today versus if you were doing it back
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  in like 2005 through 2010. But I want to I want to differentiate between successful content
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  and viral content. Are they are those different kinds of content or in your mind can all content
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  be viral content? I love that question that that's such a great question because
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  virality is a term that's like thrown around. And in some people think of virality as Mr. Beast,
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  but other people getting like 50,000 views on a post is going viral. Like to me, it's like what is
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  important for your business? What is important for the impact that you're trying to have and the
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  brand that you're trying to build? Now when we're analyzing content to try and understand what are
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  the patterns? What are the structures that we need to emulate? We're looking at a certain benchmark
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  of in the millions of views to kind of gauge and dissect the content. But for an individual for a
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  business or brand, 50,000, 100,000, 200,000 may be considered viral or more may be success. And
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  that's more kind of what we're after is like what is going to have the impact the bottom line that
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  you're going after with your content? And not saying that like if you're a you know a dentist
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  or a nutritionist or something like that, maybe 100,000 views is all you need and you can consistently
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  do that and you have more business, more impact than you know what to do with. And that's
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  completely fine. You know, you've put out work about how to build a massive audience, massive
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  following. In your mind now, if you sort of like if you look at what's been most impactful in
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  your life, in your career, in whatever metric you're tracking, do you think that brand should
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  even focus on that because a lot of people throw around the world like vanity metric and is it
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  useful? Is it not social proof? Does it add value? Is it actually driving leads revenue? All that.
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  So I mean, you wrote a whole book on how to grow your following. So is that a metric people should
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  even track anymore? Was it ever a metric people should track? Talk to me about that.
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  Yeah, it's there's a lot of levels to that question. And it's really intelligent question.
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  So when I first wrote the book, one million followers, that was 2017. I wrote the first version of
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  it. And I've released like three or four different versions of that book. But back then,
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  following meant a little bit more than it does today from the standpoint is the amount of reach
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  that you would get with each post. Like you around that time, if you had say a million followers,
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  you could get like reach of like 30 to 40 to 50% of that audience with the content that you're
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  publishing. But as we just recently discussed, like the more people are on the platforms,
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  the algorithms really have to determine like, what are the pieces of content they're going to
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  retain audience? Because there's a lot of demonization and missing around the algorithms. They're
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  there to serve one goal. And that's just to keep people in the platforms longer. The longer people
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  spend on the platforms, the more as they can serve. 99% of the time they're not shadow batting
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  your shadow batting your content, but not suppressing it to get you to pay for reach. It's just
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  they're looking for the best content that can grab and hold attention over other content.
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  So if any one of us opened up our favorite app today, like whether it's TikTok, Instagram,
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  YouTube, Facebook, there's probably 150,000 pieces of content I could see to us,
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  Facebook, they constantly follow the content that we've engaged with. So they can't just because
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  you're following an account, make sure that every piece of content they're going to see because
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  there's all this other competition out there. So just because you have a lot of followers,
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  doesn't mean you're going to reach a lot of them. So that's kind of number one. I always kind of say
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  focus less on the number of followers and focus on like, what is the impact that you're having
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  with that content? Typically, we're looking at at views to see, is it breaking through? Is it holding
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  attention? But to your point is like, why are we doing social media? And for people, it's different
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  reasons. Like for some people, it's like pure leads. Like I need to generate leads for my business
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  and I need to generate, you know, sales calls, sell products, whatever it may be, whatever that
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  foundational piece is, like that should be your guiding light in gold there. For some people,
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  it is, you know, getting kind of the recognition you're having a number next to their name so they
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  can get on stages, get book deals and things of that nature. So it really kind of depends on the
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  individual. The one thing that I will say though is there is a big distinction between organic social
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  and paid social. And a lot of people misunderstand organic. They think that organic social is meant
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  to sell your product. It's meant like, I'm going to do a product shot. I'm going to talk about my
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  product and things of that nature. Organic social is about building that trust that what we call to
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  get people to know, like, and trust you. If people know, like, and trust you with organic,
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  they're ultimately going to want to buy from you and take that next step. But you can't lead with
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  the sale. You know, paid media, you can kind of lead with the sale and go more direct response.
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  But that's a big distinction is like organic is really about how you build that relationship,
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  how you tell that effective story so that ultimately people want to take that next step.
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  Then as you get more experience and more success, you can play paid and organic off of each other.
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  That's where you can really maximize it. I'm just to give you an example of that because it kind
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  of scenes counterintuitive is like, why am I going to make content if it's not selling my product?
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  We were working with a leather craftsman, his name is Tanner Leatherstein and he came to us,
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  really struggling with social media to have a lot of experience. He has like 2,000 followers and
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  the challenge and probably he was having was he was trying to sell his products. And what his
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  products were with leather goods. It was like leather handbags and purses and wallets. But we took a
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  step back and said, well, what is the way that we could best express his expertise and genius through
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  a storytelling format, build that no like and trustworthy motivates people to go and buy the product
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  without having to talk about his products. So we helped them design a format called Is It Worth It?
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  Where he'll be like a $500 Chanel handbag deconstructed on the screen and tell you whether it's
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  worth the money that you paid for it. So that format took him from 2,000 followers to 2.5 million
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  across all of his social channels. And if you watch his content, there's no CTAs. He just has
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  the link in his bio. And previously he was spending ads on like paper click advertising,
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  search advertising, he was generating at 10,000 visitors a month. But when the organic took off,
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  it jumped to 100,000 purely organic and his most expensive items, the items he was selling for
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  thousands and thousands of dollars, they were custom made. He couldn't keep them on the shelves.
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  So I just use that as an example is first he's a very niche kind of like expertise,
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  but also he's not trying to kind of sell you the product. He's trying to kind of build that
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  relationship. And by building that relationship, it ultimately pays bad dividends. And you think
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  about like why do why does Nike and Reebok and Adidas and in all these beauty companies spend
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  billions of dollars on like celebrity endorsements, athlete endorsements and things of that
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  nature because that inherent relationship is already built there that you're just tapping
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  into it that leads to that ultimate sale and conversion. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this
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  valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want
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  to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full
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  episode. See you in the next one.