---
title: 'The Biggest Lies You''ve Been Told About Social Media'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=DFSU-YPRTs8'
video_id: 'DFSU-YPRTs8'
date: 2026-08-05
duration_sec: 1165
---

# The Biggest Lies You've Been Told About Social Media

> Source: [The Biggest Lies You've Been Told About Social Media](https://youtube.com/watch?v=DFSU-YPRTs8)

## Summary

In this video, Callaway, a personal branding expert with over a million followers, debunks nine common myths about social media and personal branding. He emphasizes that success comes from building trust through unique, actionable content, not from following formulas or chasing trends.

### Key Points

- **No Set Content Formula** [00:43] — There is no magical formula for social media success. The only real strategy is 'time under trust'—the more time people spend consuming your content and building trust, the more your personal brand grows.
- **Trust Through Non-Obvious, Useful Content** [01:49] — People trust you when you tell them things they haven't heard before that they can actually use. Content that is obvious or not actionable does not build trust.
- **You Are Not the Niche** [03:08] — Contrary to popular advice, you are not the niche. The niche is the core topic where you have expertise. You can add personality, but the value comes from the topics and insights you provide.
- **Bad Hooks Aren't the Problem** [05:32] — Videos fail because the topic isn't something people care about, or the take isn't new or unique. Not because of bad hooks or storytelling.
- **Data-Enabled Creativity** [07:33] — Using data doesn't stifle creativity; it enables it. The best approach is to use data to identify what works, then apply creativity to remix and innovate on those insights.
- **Views Don't Equal Money** [09:48] — Not all views are equal. The right view from the right viewer can be worth 1000x a random view. Audience-product-offer alignment is more important than total addressable market.
- **Create for an Audience of One** [11:36] — Instead of creating for everyone in your niche, create for a single person—an 'audience of one'—to make content that resonates deeply and is more likely to be shared.
- **Quantity vs. Quality Phases** [12:56] — There are three phases: Phase 1 (20-30 videos) focuses on quantity to learn skills; Phase 2 introduces a quality floor; Phase 3 balances quality and quantity for long-term growth.
- **Don't Be Everywhere** [16:04] — Beginners should pick one home platform and dominate it before expanding. The modern content stack is short-form, long-form (YouTube), and email.
- **Stop Chasing Trends** [17:41] — Following trends makes you a derivative clone. Instead, aim to start trends by zagging when others zig, creating your own lane.

### Conclusion

The key to personal branding is building trust through unique, actionable content. Avoid the common lies and focus on providing value in a specific niche, using data to guide creativity, and building for a targeted audience.

## Transcript

brand on social media, there is so much bad advice you have to avoid. And the content in this era is just knowing who to listen to. So, in this video, I'm going to break down the nine biggest lies you've been told about content,
social media, and personal branding. These are by far the most common traps that keep people from winning, and they just get amplified over and over by don't know me, my name is Callaway. I have a million followers. I've done
two of the top personal brands for myself in two different spaces. This I'm going to do my absolute best to make winning on social media and building a premium personal brand. All right, line
when people say there is a set content formula for how to win on social media. That there is some magical cheat code strategy that just works every single time for every niche. This is a lie. The truth actually is there's only one
building a personal brand with content. It's called time under trust. Just like when you're working out and you need time under tension to build muscle in personal branding, you need time under trust. And all that means is the more
time someone spends consuming your content above a trust line, the bigger it. That's the whole game. That's the whole secret of personal branding. How many minutes are they paying attention to you? And are those minutes acrewing
trust from them to you? And this is why there's no set formula when it comes to personal branding. Every niche can use different formats, different strategies, different editing, top of funnel, bottom of funnel. It doesn't matter. All that
matters is that the person watches a lot of your content and trust acrruze from straightforward. You got to get them to watch more. But how do you get trust to acrue when they watch your stuff? Here's exactly how. People trust you when you
tell them things they haven't heard before that they can actually use. you tell them something they've already heard, well, that's obvious and so trust something they can't use, well, maybe it's interesting, but trust doesn't
acrue. So, all you need is non-obvious and tactically useful. Now, where do you learn these non-obvious and tactically useful things that you put in your content? You learn them from having actually done the things that you're
talking about. You have real skills, real experiences, real proof, real conversations that turn into insights that are real. This is the fundamental DNA for how you build trust. And trust is how you build personal brands. That's
branding is not more complicated than that. Now, if you've watched my stuff for a while, the reason you trust me is because I say more unique stuff you haven't heard before than everyone else in this space. And the only way I've
been able to do that is that I spend every waking hour for years actually in the trenches doing this. So if you're being sold by some fake personal formula you can follow, don't buy it.
Save your money. I'll just tell you it's more minutes and more trust. That's it. and this is the one that kills me, is you are the niche. Let me just come out and say it. You are not the niche. Jennifer Aniston, she is the niche. You
are not the niche. Now, what's the difference between Jennifer Aniston and you? The main difference is that she has actually done stuff worth talking about. All the gurus that say you are the niche, including Gary Vee, and I love
Gary Vee, that is not the right advice for someone to grow in this era. Do not document your life. Do not build in public. Do not flex your hobbies. Do not talk about stuff you know nothing about. These things are just more noise in the
sea of noise. You can do them if you want to practice the skill of making to build a personal brand or god forbid monetize something, those will not work. The value around a core topic where you have expertise, that is the niche. You
are not the niche. Now, of course, you can infuse your personality into the content. You can execute the format and the visuals however you want. The branding can be amazing, but that's not the niche. And that's not the cake. That
is all the icing. The cake is the topics you choose and the insights you have that are unique, non-obvious, and helpful. The only people that transcend their niche and become the niche themselves are people that are so big
that people actually want to hear their opinion on other stuff, not just the core topic. 99% of people watching this, me included as a creator, are not big enough to transcend bigger than the niche. When you say Callaway is the
niche, no. Marketing and social media content is the niche. Callaway is just and tactically useful people communicating value in that niche. I but you get the point. I can't stress this enough. The algorithms do not
reward channels that talk about all different topics all over the place. So, you communicating about your hobbies or in your car with random stuff that will and I will tell it to you straight. Any guru you hear pedalling this you are the
niche narrative. They are either famous or they are selling you a course to teach you on how to be the niche so that they can monetize. That's it. Nobody building any real business or any real personal brand is pushing this
getting taken advantage of with their money taken falling for this. If you marketing space, well then marketing is the niche. You talk about marketing and you add your personality on top. All right guys, you can tell my tone I'm hot
these fake gurus that repeat and regurgitate the wrong advice. So many people come and ask me for help and then I have to unwind these bad habits. So and just set it straight. Do not fall for these lies from these fake gurus.
these coaches tell you that the reason your videos are not working is because your hooks are bad or your storytelling is the problem. This is a lie. Your videos are not working because of only two things. the topic is not something
people care about or your take on that topic is not new, unique, or different. If you're a clone and you're just regurgitating something else you heard, then your take is not new and the trust does not acrue to you. In the viewer's
dopamine when they hear something new for the first time. And that is how trust actually occurs. Some of these clones have tons of views and it's international markets where those people haven't heard the source person say that
thing and so they're getting the novel insight from that clone. But real people in the game, real buyers you want, they know you're just regurgitating these points. The sad truth is if you're the fourth person to say the same thing over
doesn't trust you. Even if what you said is the right answer in content, having the unique non-obvious perspective is everything. That is how you build a defendable personal brand. So the entire game can really be boiled down to topic
and contrarian take. If you have a validated topic and a non-obvious take that you explain fluidly with high speed value, you will win. Now, here's the to help you come up with these non-obvious takes. You take whatever
your topic is and you ask yourself, what do I believe to be true about this topic that 99% of other people either haven't heard of or would disagree with? That's obviously matters, but unless you have a contrarian take that is different and
won't land. The storytelling and the editing and the posting and the captions and the take. The truth is, and this is a brutal truth, the goats of content, they're spending all day finding and refining these topics and takes. That is
where all the juice is. And the reason this game is so hard and keeps getting harder is because there's less and less new stuff, less and less new takes that right, line lie number four that you often hear especially from like creative
artistic type people is that using data doesn't make you creative. And all I have to say that is guys, it's called a starving artist for a reason. I don't the content game moving forward and I've said this before is data enabled
creativity. If you go all in on data and you rig up this AI system that just to work because that will trend to average. But if you go all in on intuition and you just create whatever you feel like creating just guessing,
you'll miss and your following will not grow. Your views will not get traction. You'll be an artist, but you'll be starving. The middle ground is where you want to be. Data enabled creativity. You use the data to figure out what has
already worked. And then that frees up your creative capacity to twist, remix, reinvent, reimagine, whatever that take is so it's fresh. Essentially, the way I think of it is you want to use the data to aim your creativity in the right
creative in the last mile. This is why with Sandcastles.ai, what we're seeing from our users that are really crushing with this, they're building workflows that pipe the data in so that when they start their creative process, they know
exactly what topics and formats have already worked. Then they go creative on and I will scream this from the rooftops. The future of content is not copy-pasting scripts from other people. A, that's corny, and B, it's
ineffective. It will just trend towards average, and you will not cut through. metaphor. When you're making content, you want to be like those guys on the beach with those metal detectors hunting for the gold. The data points the guys
to the right spot on the beach, but they still need the device to go dig and find the gold. The data doesn't just give you the gold. it points you. So then you can creativity. That is the sweet spot. Now I know we're kind of in this new world
creative. I actually made this video. It's completely free on the channel where I broke down my content workflow and how I use Sandcastles Plus Claude in each step. For topics, where do I use data? For formats, where do I use data?
For script writing, where do I use data? For coming up with my take, where do I versus creativity. And I walk through a whole flow. If you want that, I'll link All right, lie number five is a brutal one and this is where people will say
all you need to make more money from content is to just get more views. More Guys, this is a lie. And the reason why is because not all views are created equal. The right view from the right viewer can be worth a,000x a random
millions of views every single video, and I know for a fact they're only This is the core contrarian insight. If you want to make real money with content, TAM total addressable market is not the most important thing. The most
important thing is audience product offer alignment. Do you have a product audience and the content you're making? difference between $5,000 months and $500,000 months. The more misaligned
is, the worse off you'll be from a monetization perspective. And I don't to sell your own products or even to do brand deals. That alignment matters so much. The lesson is you don't want to chase big topics to get big viral views
if it means you're violating that alignment. Doing that to go for breath is almost always worse than depth. And to be honest, this is one of those areas that sophisticated. A lot of them may be good at growing channels and getting
the back end for actually building businesses and turning viewers into buyers. I've built three sevenf figureure businesses using three content. So, if there's one thing I'm extremely deep on, it's how to actually
turn views into dollars and build a content system that does that. And if you want to learn how I do it, I put together a full system. It's free where the front-end content strategy. But I think what's more interesting is my
those views into dollars. It's at shortformsystem.co. All right. Lie number six is when people say to create for everyone in your niche. This goes with the TAM point that
you want to get everyone in your TAM aware of your content. This is a lie. trying to create for everyone in your niche, you want to create for a single person. I call this an audience of one. Maybe this is a younger version of
yourself if you're in the ICP. Maybe it's a specific customer that you work with. But you want to go as far as to have this single person in mind when you write and record the content such that it would be impossible for that person
not to share it with others if they saw it. Like for me, for example, when I of this guy, my homie Ronnie Mitchell. And I was like, if Ronnie watches this video, I want him to think, hell yeah, Callaway actually knows what he's
more trust acred from him. And the reason why is because Ronnie is a proxy for the type of person I want to attract with this type of content. And so I know if it's a bullseye for him, it'll be a bullseye for others like him. Once you
build for an audience of one, you can really customize the content for them. with them. You can ignore the generalizations and go super specific. And this will make your content way, way better for your target avatar. Don't try
one person and I promise you, your content will land better. All right, lie number seven in content is when people say to go for quantity and not quality. verse quality. And I've come all the way around on this. Let me just give you the
address it. And I think this will make sense once you hear it. A lot of people say post 10 times per day. Let the algorithm decide the quality. A lot of Don't post too much if the quality is too low. So where do you actually land?
I think of this in three phases. Phase one takes about 20 to 30 videos. Phase two 20 to 30 videos. And phase three is forever. Phase one is the skill acquisition period. This is when you don't know how to make content and you
need to get your skills up to base level. So before anything else, before articulate yourself. You got to learn how to take one video through the pipeline and actually post it. So in this phase, you want quantity over
everything. You want as many videos posted with the learning between as fast as you can in a compressed timeline. You want to run up the mountain to actually People get this wrong. That means make one, post one, analyze it, learn, and
two or three per day, fine. But don't do a batch of 20 because then your learning doesn't happen until number 21. It's super delayed. Now, once you get your skills up to a 7 out of 10 or so, and that's it's mushy, but like you'll feel
it. You move on to phase two. Phase two is where we put in a quality floor. Now, quality doesn't mean the visuals. It doesn't mean the layout. Quality is the best you could have done on that video based on your skills at that time. That
research, that goes for your delivery, that goes for the way you communicate packaging, everything. And the way you get good is by instituting this floor. 10, you institute this floor and you never go below. Now, I'll just come out
and say it. The people that say quality doesn't matter, that's nonsense. Quality for sure matters. in a world of infinite supply at the average. The only way to doesn't mean better quality visuals, but it means better quality ideas, stories,
phase two, you're not just machine gunning quantity as hard as you can, unless it's at the quality bar. Now, that's phase two. You bring quantity way you get that quality floor in there, so you never dip below it. Now, after about
move to phase three, and this is the like permanent phase where you make content in forever. And this is where you get your quality about as good as Typically, you're not spending 12 hours per video, 10 out of 10, but you're at a
nine out of 10. It's it's really like maximizing the squeeze out of your skills. Then you slowly inch up quantity while holding that quality bar there. Two videos, three videos, four, five, six, seven. Then you go twice a day all
this really is the big takeaway, right? Phase 1, two, three, this is the big takeaway. You have to go through phase one, the learning phase. There is no to high school, you have to go to elementary school. Learn in elementary
elementary school you copied everyone's homework and you never learned, are you course not. You have to go through that initial phase of sucking. Every person that I've coached that's actually gotten to million view videos, they all went
it, but they got through it. Everyone I've coached that never got to million view videos, they quit during the suck. You have to stay in phase one and skill floor. All right, lie number eight, and I hate this one, is when
people say you have to show up on every platform everywhere all the time. And beginners get when they start out. They're like, "Ah, there's seven or everywhere. I have to be everywhere." This is a lie. It's not that you don't
You don't want to anchor your expectations and put such a stretch goal in phase one, closing the skill gap. All the social platforms behave very different proclivities on those platforms. For example, LinkedIn tends
to skew older, more professional, higher LTV and also behind on the trends. YouTube Shorts, on the other hand, skews younger. It's very pop culture relevant, and Tik Tok fall somewhere in between. Depending on the content you make and
the audience you're making it for, you should pick one of these platforms as of them to win. what I call the modern content stack, which is really where personal brands go, is short form home platform, long form home platform, which
is YouTube, both into email. That triangle, that's the modern content if you're a beginner. What I recommend is you pick either short form or long YouTube. If you pick short form, you pick one home platform and you dominate
there first. If you want to crossost, fine. But don't worry about the metrics. focus only on optimizing for your home platform. forget about the rest. Because quit is that they get overwhelmed with the amount of work and the amount of
posting and the amount of coordinating. Reduce all that lift. Just focus on one to earn the right to post everywhere else. All right, lie number nine. This is the last one, and this one hits close to home. It's jump on the trend when the
trend is hot. That's what everybody says. The best telltale sign of a fake got to chase the trends when they're there." I'll be very blunt with this. Stop doing the trends. Stop grabbing the exact word for word hooks people are
using. Stop using the trendy music. Stop doing the trendy formats where somebody copies it the next day. Stop doing that. You're not building a personal brand that. You're just a derivative clone. Even if it does work out well and you
get views, you're not acrewing the trust that you think you're acrewing. And your personal brand doesn't improve unless trust is being acrewed. The goal is not to follow trends. The goal is to start trends. You want to zag when everyone is
zigging. So by the time they come around, you own this lane. It's good to look at the data to see what's performing well so that you know how to remix away from what everyone's doing to create your own lane. I'm telling you,
that actually cuts through, you need to make your own trends and just doing the right, guys. That is all I wanted to cover on this video. As you can tell, I hate these fake gurus that are just regurgitating the wrong advice. Again,
want my help and then I have to unwind all these bad behaviors because they've hopefully this can be a little bit of a bible for you that you can go through thoughts, some of that bad behavior. Like I always say, my goal is to
actually help you with content. I mean that. You can hear it in my voice. All I owners make $1 million with content. That's $1 trillion of market impact. If everything. So, I know this channel is still small, but if you're rocking with
make sure to subscribe and check all the free stuff in the description. I got to if I want you guys to get there. So, it's all there for you to take if you want. All right, we will see you guys on the next one. Peace.