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I know a thing or two about content creation. I've helped build the fastest growing personal brand in the business space, and I've grown my personal brand from 0 to 75K in 9 months. And so, in this video, I'm going to break down how
Learn how to master content creation by focusing on platform-specific content, validating topics, and standing out with unique ideas.
Key Takeaways
- Create content tailored to each platform instead of repurposing the same piece everywhere.
- Focus on serving and engaging your audience rather than obsessing over follower counts.
- Validate your content's topic, angle, and format to ensure it resonates with viewers.
- Stand out by offering unique, counterintuitive, or nuanced perspectives in your niche.
- Broaden your content scope beyond a single niche to address diverse audience problems.
What the video covers
- Repurposing content across platforms is outdated; create platform-dedicated content for best results.
- Follower count no longer matters due to interest-based algorithms prioritizing content relevance.
- Algorithm reflects audience interest; low views mean content isn't engaging, not that you're shadowbanned.
- Validate your content by topic, angle, and format before creation to increase performance.
- Use gamified video formats like ranking, tier lists, and clone videos to engage viewers.
- Create net new, non-obvious, nuanced, and observable concepts to stand out in saturated markets.
- Counterpositioning or contrarian takes help differentiate your personal brand effectively.
- Avoid overly niche content; address multiple problems your ideal customer faces to broaden reach.
- Focus on topic and idea quality over fancy gear or editing for growth.
- Recognition and direct audience engagement foster loyalty and sustained growth.
Chapters
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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to become so [ __ ] good at content creation that it kind of feels disgusting.
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Starting with repurposing content is completely dead. We're not 2016 anymore. Unfortunately, you can't just take the same piece of content and post it on all platforms and get the same performance.
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In most cases, that's called the waterfall method, where you take one piece of content and then you repurpose all your other pieces of content from that pillar piece of content. The problem with that is you're optimizing for one platform. And if you want to
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compete on these algorithms in today's age, you have to compete at the highest level, which means you have to make platform-dedicated content. And what that looks like is I like to pick a primary platform, the platform that I'm
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optimizing for. In my opinion, I think the two platforms that are performing the best right now are Instagram and YouTube. And so, if you want to get disgustingly good at content creation, pick your primary platforms and stop repurposing content. Which brings us to
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your follower number doesn't matter anymore because we went from social media where you see everyone that you're following online, your friends, all that fun stuff, to interest-based media where you see the stuff that you're interested in. And most of the people that show up
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on your reels tab, on your For You page on TikTok, on your homepage on YouTube are people that you don't follow, are people that you don't subscribe to, or the people that the algorithm thinks that you would like. And so, if you think
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that your follower number matters in 2026, it doesn't. So stop focusing on it and start focusing on serving people, getting views, and staying relevant because that is the game in today's social media age. Unfortunately, most personal brands that have grown their
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account in 2016, 2017, 2018 are dead today because they don't understand that they need to adapt this new algorithm of interest-based media. Which brings us to the algorithm doesn't hate you, you just aren't interesting enough. A lot of
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people think that they're shadowbanned on social media because they're getting 100, 200, 300 views. Unfortunately, the audience just doesn't like your content.
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All the algorithm is is a reflection of people's interest. And if people aren't interested in your content, they're not going to watch it and it's going to get suppressed. Yes. Not because the algorithm doesn't like your content, but
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because the people watching it don't like it. Whenever I'm thinking about making a new video, I'm not just freestyling my content. I like to validate a few things before I even go into making a video. And I think that's
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the reason why we've become so disgustingly good at social media. At the end of the day, a lot of people think that gear, fancy lighting, editing, design, all that fun stuff matters on social media. In my opinion, topic is king. Topic is the thing that
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matters the most. I want to go from zero to 100,000 followers with just my iPhone to prove you don't need any fancy equipment to get views on social media.
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We're already at 70,000 followers with just my phone because I'm focusing on the stuff that actually matters the most, which is topic and then the next couple of things that we're going to talk about. So, you validate topic, then
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you want to validate the angle that you're talking about the video in. As an example, if you saw a video that performed about meetings being a waste of time, and then you took that same topic and you interpret it with a new
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angle and you said meetings are the best use of time, do you think that video is going to perform the same? No, because you changed the angle. And the third thing I like to validate is the format of the video. I like to see what kind of
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formats are performing right now. By the way, as of 2026, the hottest formats right now are all in the gamified section, right? Ranking, tier list, good better best, matters doesn't matter, clone videos. Get those formats and then add them to your topics and
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angles. The algorithm doesn't suppress you. The audience just doesn't care. So, meet them where they're at because it's way easier to enter an existing conversation than to try to create a completely new one. Which brings us to your market isn't saturated. Your
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content is just too generic. A lot of people think that their market's too saturated. But if everybody else is getting the attention and not you, it's because your message is too generic and other people have original ideas. And
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one of the easiest filters that I like to take my ideas through before I even post a video is my concept: net new, non-obvious, nuanced, and observable. If your new concept is those four things, your content will perform better than
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the other person that just makes a video about random [ __ ]. And the reason being is that if you make a video about something that sounds obvious, then people are just going to scroll past you. On the flip side, if you talk about
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net new ideas, stuff that people have never heard before, value that sounds a little bit nuanced, then people are going to watch that video. And it sounds easy on the surface, but trust me, it is a little bit hard to find things that
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are net new, but there is net new stuff out there. It's all about the framing, too, right? You could talk about being more productive. You could talk about delegation, or you could assign a unique mechanism and create something like Dan
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Martell with the buyback principle. That was a non-obvious net new piece of value that was related to the topic of delegation. But he didn't say here's how to delegate your task. He said here's how to buy back your time. And so net
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new non-obvious concepts can sometimes be just about the framing. Which brings us to if everyone agrees with you, then you're probably not saying anything. If you want 100% positive comments on your videos, unfortunately, I'm here to tell you it's not going to happen because if
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they are, then you're probably really not saying anything. But how do you want to stand out on social media? You want to do a few things. You want to pick what hill you want to die on. And you
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could call this counterpositioning. You could call this contrarian takes. You could call this the purple cow theory.
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But the whole point is you want to stand out in a sea of other people that are saying all the same stuff. And so the easiest way to do this is just to sit down and ask yourself, what are the
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things people in my niche are saying that I don't agree with and that I want to go to the grave with and that I truly believe at my core is wrong? Make a video about that. As an example, for me,
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someone who's grown up in the content creation space, I saw a bunch of people talk about how lighting, camera gear setups, editing tricks are so important when it comes to social media. So, I came into the market 9 months ago saying
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that I don't think any of that is as important as your topic selection, as your idea, as what the video is about.
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And that struck a chord with the market and they started to repeat that. And so, that's what I want you to do: find one thing that you can counterposition against. And that will propagate your personal brand way further than
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everybody else. Which brings us to stop making niche content. And I'm not saying don't pick a niche or an ideal customer profile and make content for them. But what I am saying is stop putting yourself in a niche and just making
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content about one thing. And what I like to think about is what are all the problems that my ICP deals with, not just here's how to grow your sales team.
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And I do think you should pick your positioning, pick what you want to be known for, pick what you want to be paid for. Don't box yourself into just one topic. You're
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think about it is this framework from Patty Galloway. Patty Galloway is a YouTube strategist behind some of the biggest personal brands on YouTube. And he talks about this framework called CCN fit. And you want all your videos to
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have high CCN fit, which means it has high core, casual, and new audience fit.
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Your core audience, the people that follow your content for a long time that buy your stuff, resonate with that topic, but also your casual audience, the people that casually watch your content, and your new audience resonate with that topic as well. What that's
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going to do is going to allow you to get a video that gets 4 million views, but then also serves your core audience. The key here is I like to do this thing called progressive density in those videos. And what that looks like is,
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let's say we take that video again about meetings being the biggest time waster in any company. In that video, Dan shares a very clear problem that resonates with our core casual new audience, meetings being a waste of time. But then throughout the video, he
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gets progressively denser in his content where at the end of the video, we give a wink to our core audience and we share with them a very clear framework that they can use to get results. And so Dan
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goes, instead of having a lot of meetings, have very clear scorecards, KPIs, and owners for those KPIs. You don't need a lot of meetings. And what that does is it gives our core audience a piece of value at the end of the
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video, but we progressively went into the density of the video. And so that video got 4 million views, got us 10,000 net new followers on Instagram because we resonated with our core, casual, and new audience. We're not just making
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niche content, which brings us to don't monetize too early. The biggest mistake I see most new content creators make is they sell a course from day one. But the problem with that is you don't create enough compression in the market to
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create real demand. I think most people should post for at least 6 months before they offer something to their audience because you want to deposit as much goodwill into the market so that when you ask them for something the ask can
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be 10 times bigger because I believe goodwill compounds exponentially. Give, give, give and then when they expect you to ask, you give again and then give again and then give again and then give again and then you wait till they ask
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you to sell something till they ask you to start a school community or a coaching program, an AI tool and then they buy your thing because of it. you create compression in the market and you're going to make way more money but
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also preserve your brand health. So give it all away for free. Don't expect anything back for 6 months and then after 6 months once you've served your audience then you can maybe ask. But your ass should always be
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disproportionately smaller than how much [ __ ] you give. Which brings us to your content isn't a funnel anymore. It's a web. Most gurus online will teach you that you need to optimize your funnel.
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Unfortunately that was social media 2016. That was email in 2008. Now the platforms have evolved where what you want to kind of create is a web where you can capture your audience. You have your earned audience and you have your
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owned audience. Your earned audience is where you have a web of content that captures the viewers into moving them into owned audience. And so what that looks like is you make a YouTube video, you make a piece of Instagram content,
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you make a piece of Facebook content, and then you move your audience over to email SMS or even capturing their physical address. And if you think about it like that, viewers don't just watch a Instagram video, then go to YouTube,
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then go to your email list. They watch an Instagram video, then they watch a Facebook video, then they might watch a Tik Tok video, then a YouTube video, then a Instagram video again. And so you want to make sure that you're meeting
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your prospect where they're at, offering something to them, right? Ideally, a lead magnet so you can capture their email back, capture their SMS back, and then get their contact so you can sell them something on the back side. Your
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content isn't a funnel, it's a web that you need to capture people in. Which brings us to people don't follow creators, they follow characters. If you want to get disgustingly good at content creation, start defining what your character is. If you think about it,
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movies, Disney, Pixar, they create characters because they understand that people follow people for who they are, not what they say. And if you want to create a prolific personal brand, you have to understand how to communicate your character. And so that's the one
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thing that we've done really well in Dan Martell's case. We try to shine light on the things that makes him human as much as possible. He's not just a robot repeating AI and business advice. He's a family guy. He loves action sports. He
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loves peanut butter in some cases, sometimes a little bit too much. But we try to share as much humanity in what he's saying because people follow people that they want to be like. And if you're just teaching people how to do something
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and not who you are, then unfortunately people are going to resonate with you. And I think that's a big reason why people gravitate towards Dan and not somebody else when it comes to business advice because they respect that he has
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a family. They respect that he has his health together. They respect that he makes time for the [ __ ] that actually matters in life and not just focusing all his time on building his business.
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Which brings us to nobody shares your content because they want to help you. They share your content because they want to signal. And what that looks like is whenever you see someone share a piece of content on their Instagram
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story or hit that little repost button. It's not cuz they want to help you. It's because they want to signal to their audience that is how they are like. And so if you think about that, you should be making content that people resonate
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with, that people want to reshare, and people want to associate with. What that looks like is I've seen this video pop up on social media because a bunch of people are sharing it on their stories, which is basically the idea of not
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glorifying entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is hard. It's difficult. You know, long nights and a lot of sacrifice. That topic pops off because people reshare that video because they want to be signaling to their audience that they are hardworking, that they are on a mission,
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that they're making a lot of sacrifices. And so the next time that you make a video, understand that if you want people to share your content, if you want to get disgustingly good at content creation, you have to understand that
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they are going to use your content to signal to their audience. And so make content that you think they would want to be seen in. Which brings us to every movement needs a common enemy. And this is something I've talked about in
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content in the past, but I'm going to go a little bit deeper this time. We had a carousel get 10 million views, over a million likes, over 200,000 subscribers.
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That carousel was boss versus leader. It was all about like how the boss degrades you and the leader, you know, pushes you up and a bunch of different iterations of it. A big reason why that video performed is because it had a common
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enemy. It had someone that people would [ __ ] on. It had the boss and all the people in the comments were [ __ ] on their version of a bad boss. What that created was a common enemy. And the
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bigger the enemy, the bigger the hero. Movies like Avengers always make the enemy as big as possible. And at the end, when the hero defeats the enemy, the hero is perceived a lot higher. In your content, make sure that you're
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always thinking about what's the common enemy here. And if you can't spot it, it might be you. Which brings us to recognition creates loyalty. A lot of people want to cheat code their way to growth on social media. And what I found
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is that respecting your audience, engaging with your audience, recognizing your audience is usually the thing that makes you grow the fastest. Whether it's responding to YouTube comments or Instagram comments, re-sharing posts on your stories that people tag you in,
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whether it's doing giveaways, whether it's doing free meetups in person, and it could be as small as just saying thank you. We'll create a cult-like following. will create loyalty that honestly you can't bop because people want to be recognized. That's just how
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we are as humans. And when we feel recognized, we feel compelled to help the movement even more. And so make sure to prioritize in your calendar whether it's 30 minutes, 40 minutes to engage with your audience because that will
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make you not just disgustingly good at content creation, but at building your personal brand as well. Which brings us to your videos should feel like a conversation, not a presentation. And what that looks like is a couple things.
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You don't want to say you guys, y'all. Hey guys. Hey guys. Hey guys. Hey guys. Hey guys. Hey guys.
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In your videos, you want to say you. And the reason why you want to say you is because people aren't scrolling on their phone with 17 people over their shoulders looking at the same phone. And so, you want to talk to one specific
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person in your videos. And you probably noticed that I do this. And the best content creators in the world do this because they understand that we're talking to one person right now. Not a thousand, not 2,000, not 3,000 people,
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one person on the other side of this camera. And so, speak to one person. The next thing you want to do is you want to lower your tone a little bit. Content creators think that they need to Mr.
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Beast themselves into getting more views. But unfortunately, people see through that facade. And the worst thing you can do on social media is not act like yourself. And so, if you want to get better results on social media,
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lower your tone, sit back, relax, and just make a video. You don't have to be that animated. You can just chill, turn the camera on, and talk to your camera like it's a friend, and you're going to feel like you're having a conversation,
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not feel like you're on a stage giving a presentation. Which brings us to your content isn't too long, it's just too slow. The number one question I get from most content creators is how long should my videos be? Should it be 15 minutes on
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YouTube, 20 minutes or 25 minutes? Should it be an hour? Should it be six hours? Should it be, you know, 30 seconds on short form, 60 seconds or a minute and a half? What I like to say is
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your content isn't too long. It isn't too short. It's just too slow. So my answer to that question is you want to pack as much value in the shortest amount of time possible. And sometimes that might take a minute and a half, 3
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minutes. Sometimes I might take 6 hours on YouTube like my friend Kell Braston who made a 6-hour course on personal brand. Just pack the most amount of value in the shortest amount of time.
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And how you do this is you make your content feel fast. Which brings us to this principle that I like to teach my team which is asymmetric pacing. You want your videos to feel like they're going faster than they actually are. And
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what that looks like is let's say your first point is 30 seconds. Your second point should be longer around a minute.
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And then your third point should be a minute and a half. And then your fourth point could be 2 minutes. Once you start to understand this, you will see this across every industry, not just the educational space. Mr. Beast videos, the
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first section of the video is always the fastest because it creates this illusion progress. If you've ever seen an ad, right, where the progress bar goes really fast at first and then slows down over time, that's the illusion of
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progress. You want to create that in your videos by creating asymmetric pacing within the first couple minutes of your videos. Which brings us to content isn't saying new things to old people, it's saying old things to new people. And so stop reinventing the
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wheel and trying to think to yourself, you have to come up with all these frameworks. Just think about how do you package the knowledge that you know in a net new non-obvious way. And we talked about this earlier in the video, but I
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want to reiterate on this because I think it's the probably the most important thing that will make you disgustingly good at content. I try to think to myself, what is a fundamental truth that I believe about the world
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that would get someone a result regardless of external factors. I'll use my hook, explain, illustrate, teach framework as an example. That is a framework that we've developed over the last couple years to help us make better short form content. That framework went
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through a thousand different evolutions to become the hook, explain teach framework because we put it through testing and iteration. And that's what I want you to do with your frameworks and content. That's what I want you to do
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with your net new value is to create a framework and then test it. And if it fails, then create it again and then test it. The easiest way to grow on social media is to take fundamental truths and principles and repackage them
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in a new way. And that is how you will become disgustingly good at content. If you want my free YouTube scripting template that I use to script these YouTube videos, follow me on Instagram and message me the word YouTube.
Topics:content creationsocial media growthpersonal brandingalgorithmcontent strategyplatform-specific contentcontent validationcontrarian contentnet new ideasaudience engagement
