How to Make ANY Topic Addictive on Social Media (The Illusion of Novelty)

[00:01] to your content, there's one storytelling trick you should be using every single time. It's called the illusion of novelty. And if you can you'll be able to make even the most boring topics in the world sound

[00:15] people covering the sexy stuff can always hold attention. But how does someone like a dentist, a life insurance salesperson, or even a cemetery owner outperforms? The answer is this framework. Now, I know this works

[00:30] long. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views. And I've spent literally years studying how to turn any topic into a super compelling story. So, whole framework down. This is the five-step process for taking any topic,

[00:45] even the most boring ones, and turning them into a story that is addicting to watch. This is the illusion of novelty. All right, before we break down the five-step framework, let's just align on one thing. What actually makes a piece

[00:58] here is to learn how to turn any topic actually makes the best stuff addictive by default? It actually boils down to just three very simple things. The most addictive content is relevant, novel,

[01:11] and interesting. It answers yes to these three questions from the viewer. Number one, is it something I care about? Number two, is it a new concept I haven't heard before? And number three, am I intrigued to want to learn more?

[01:24] Fundamentally, that is what addicting content actually has in its DNA. Now, the hard part for people making content in more boring categories is figuring out parts two and three because you can make anything relevant to any person

[01:36] turn a topic that is boring and stale into something that is new and always interesting? That conversion process is illusion of novelty framework. We are going full water into wine here. So, for

[01:49] break down the five steps that actually help you create this illusion. Because something without novelty and building an illusion that it is novel. And to after we go through the five steps, I will break down an example live of

[02:05] literally the most boring concept I could possibly think of to show you the first step in creating the illusion of novelty is called the new reveal. A new thing feel new by revealing something has changed about it. Let's take the

[02:20] most boring topic on earth, drinking water. If I just said, "Hey, drinking immediately I've just lost your interest. And the reason is because you've heard that 10,000 times. Shout out, Mom. There's just nothing new in

[02:32] there to get you excited about. But watch what happens when I reveal a new haven't heard of. What if I said there's new research about drinking water? It turns out based on the time of day you drink it, not the amount, it'll give you

[02:45] more energy than your morning cup of coffee. Same topic, drinking water, but now all of a sudden something new has been revealed. All of a sudden, you went from immediately scrolling past to potentially locking in. Now, the other

[02:57] piece that goes with this new reveal is called outcome mapping. Because not only do you want to reveal that something new has changed, but also you want to tie that thing to an outcome that the viewer wants. So, in my water example, not only

[03:09] did I reveal that the time you drink the water matters, but I tied it to a thing morning cup of coffee. So, the formula here for this first piece is reveal new aspect of a thing plus tie it to an outcome you know the viewer wants. Now,

[03:23] content. When you're scrolling or consuming content, your brain is on autopilot and subconsciously it's designed to tune out anything familiar. those things. It only picks up and stops on things that are new. So novelty is

[03:38] required to get someone to focus. But if it's just novel and not relevant to an outcome they want, well then they still won't stop. That's why the two have to go together. The new reveal makes them look, but the outcome mapping makes them

[03:50] stay. And notice what just happened with just one of the five steps in this two of those major three questions. Making it relevant and making it new. get wrong, and this will really unlock and have the light bulb moment for you.

[04:04] that you have to be talking about a brand new topic, and that in your not a lot of new stuff. And that, of course, makes things easier, but you don't have to just use new topics. This is why this framework is so valuable.

[04:17] You can find a new angle on any old thing and make it feel novel. That's the literally in step one, you really have two paths. If the thing is genuinely method, then all you have to do is reveal that that new thing exists and

[04:33] times, like I said, in your industry, the topic is going to be old. And that's not revealing a new thing. You're revealing a new aspect or a new angle on an old thing. And this could be a new frame, a new name, a new update, some

[04:49] about. There's so many ways you can come up with this new angle. So, if you're in do I come up with those new angles that are not boring, ask yourself these two questions. Number one, what is the new angle here? Is this genuinely a new

[05:03] thing? Or do I need to find some reframe, some angle, some framework, some name to make it feel new? And number two, what is an outcome that my viewer genuinely wants? And how do I connect this new thing or new angle to

[05:16] it? Then just write the hook for your content as one to two lines that covers those two things. X new thing just changed the way you get Y result or just happened that changed the way you do X to get Z result and of course those

[05:31] are just two example ways of framing it literally don't every 1 thousand those exact things those are just examples but the point is you can see accomplish those two answers your main takeaway is this not every space has

[05:44] brand new stuff happening all the time but every space has old stuff and old stuff always has new angles your job is to find those new angles and connect that to the outcome the viewer wants. All right, step two in the illusion of

[05:56] framing. And this is the piece that takes whatever that new angle is from step one and makes it impossible to ignore. Contrast framing is when you position your new reveal against whatever the old thing was that people

[06:09] already believed in. Cuz here's the thing, new doesn't mean anything on its own unless it's compared relatively speaking to old. Your brain can't it's comparing it. This is called a comparative relationship. So, let me

[06:22] show you what I mean. Back to our water example. If I just say the timing of you more energy. Well, that's mildly interesting. It's a new reveal. But that, you might not. You could scroll right past it. But watch what happens

[06:35] when I put that up against what you already believe to be true. What if I that you need to drink eight glasses of water? Well, it turns out that number was pretty much made up. And actually, how much you drink doesn't have any

[06:47] effect on how you feel. What does is when you see the difference in that? It was basically the same fact, but because I positioned it relative to what you glasses of water per day, all of a sudden it gave merit to this new thing.

[07:01] That is contrast framing. And here's why it works so well. The moment you frame a new thing against an old thing, you create a gap. The gap is between what someone thought was true versus this new reality you're suggesting. And the

[07:13] well is because when the brain believes it might be wrong, it freezes and pauses to hear new information to recalibrate. And that unlocks the third of the three pieces we need for addicting content. Intrigue or interesting. Now, there's

[07:27] one tactical rule for how to set up these contrasts to make sure they don't break. You need to position your contrast as a true opposite against whatever the original belief is. And I see this mistake all the time. You can't

[07:39] throw out an old thing that has nothing to do with it. That doesn't create contrast. It creates confusion. So, tactically, when you're setting these up, ask yourself this one question. What does my audience already believe about

[07:51] this topic that I can hold constant as the old or original belief? Then, how can I position my new angle directly against that? Then you write it so that your new angle sits right next to that old belief directly in the script.

[08:04] Everyone thinks X, but actually it's Y. You've been told X your whole life. Turns out X is wrong. Y is actually the thing if you want to get Z result. X used to be the gold standard, but now Y makes X obsolete. And again, you don't

[08:17] have to use those three word for word exactly. I don't want everyone doing the those examples kind of work. All right, now we are on to step three. And so far, outcome mapping. And then we covered contrast framing. The new reveal and

[08:31] outcome cover something new and tie it to make it relevant. And then contrast framing really ratchets up the curiosity and interestingness of that thing. And effort to make boring things more

[08:44] there is something new, exciting, and interesting to pay attention to even if that thing is actually boring and old. Now, the third component is a little is urgency. I call this the turbo button. Think of urgency like an

[08:58] optional accelerator that you can pour on top of the first two, but you don't Here's what it is. Urgency is a timeliness-based principle. It's like, "You have to pay attention right now because something just changed or is

[09:12] about to change." If you add this on top of the first two pieces, it's adding time compression and pulls intrigue out of the person. It makes them want to a brand new AI writing tool came out that allows you to write email

[09:25] could say something like, "There's a new AI tool that lets you write email And that's fine, but what if you said, "This new AI tool just dropped yesterday, and it lets you write email newsletters perfectly in your voice."

[09:39] because your brain prioritizes things that just happened as more important mechanism has a name. It's called recency bias. The more recent something paying attention because it wants to know if that new thing has to update all

[09:54] of its thinking. Now, here's the writing rule when it comes to scripting that is optional. This is the one piece in the framework that you're allowed to the topic you're talking about. So, taking our water example, is there an

[10:08] urgency piece like something just happening or something about to stop happening that we could add in? Eh, not really. Unless a new scientific study or research came out that points to this discovery of timeliness being relevant

[10:20] for the water consumption, we don't really have an urgency lever to pull and don't want to do, and I see this mistake a lot, is people add fake urgency when Don't try to bolt on a fake deadline when it's not actually there. If people

[10:35] smell this fake urgency, immediately you lose all trust and it feels like you're trying to sell. So, only use this when you can naturally coast on something that just happened or something that is about to stop happening. That window is

[10:47] urgency. Specifically, you could say things like, "This thing just happened a few weeks ago." Or, "This only became possible a couple days ago." For years, this didn't work until this one change. And this window won't stay open forever.

[11:00] three, urgency. When you have a time you don't, go ahead and pass. It's optional, and you can use the other creating the illusion of novelty is called bullseye proof. At this point,

[11:14] your topic feels new. It feels relevant. It feels interesting. And maybe it even feels urgent if you could use that timebased urgency. But there's still one big problem standing between you and the viewer's trust. And that is they don't

[11:26] true. This is where the bullseye proof step comes in to solve it. And basically what you're doing here is showing evidence to justify why your claims on this new reveal are true. And when it comes to this bullseye proof step,

[11:39] do it. But the best proof is always going to be what hits closest to home for the viewer. And here's what I mean. Let's take our water example again. Our you drank matters more than how much you drink. Now watch the difference between

[11:52] how certain types of proof hit depending on what we attach to it. Version one, a study claims that the timing of hydration affects energy levels. Version two, I've got a buddy same age as you crashes at work every day at 3 p.m. All

[12:06] he did was change the timing when he drank water and his energy levels were reveal, but the second one had proof that was much closer to you and what you experience. That is bullseye proof. The closer the proof is framed to the

[12:19] viewer's life, the more likely they are to believe the new reveal to be true. And that psychology mechanism also has a name. It's called self-identification. party claims. What we do like to trust is versions of ourselves experiencing

[12:32] the result we want. Examples like us, case studies that sound like we do, visual examples that look like we do. That's the best type of proof. So essentially there is a trust ladder here where as you go up the ladder you have

[12:44] type of proof you're using. And you always want to climb as high as you can on the trust ladder. But again if the proof isn't there you don't manufacture a lie. Now this is the trust ladder as I see it. The top rung the bullseye proof

[12:57] is a onetoone singular example that's a mimic of the viewer. Same age, same look, same problem, same situation. If you as the creator are the exact same proof can also be a result that you experienced. That's why typically

[13:11] creators that are in the demo have success. Now, if you don't have bullseye proof, the next best proof, one layer down on the ladder, would be proof from the warm crowd. This is the generalized Wii when you just refer to like a bunch

[13:24] of say it willy-nilly. It's third party, but at least there's a proxy for people in the crowd. And at the bottom of the ladder, the worst, but still works, is a third-party verification. Some study, some article, some stat, some award.

[13:38] Those work too, of course, but it requires the viewer's imagination to who was part of the study? Were those people like me? Would this work for me? questions. So, like I said, every rung on the trust ladder works, all three.

[13:52] will be for the viewer to trust what you're saying and the more interested step five in the framework. And this is the last one that will really seal the And this one is different from the other four. The new reveal, the contrast, the

[14:06] urgency, the bullseye proof, those built up the illusion. Those are the things that actually turn the boring topic into something that's interesting. But this anything. It's about avoiding the most devastating storytelling mistake that

[14:19] will tear down the entire illusion you just built. I call it don't show the mascot. Picture a kid at Disney World. He sees Mickey Mouse walking around. He sees Goofy. He's got the $12 Mickey ice cream. Everything's great. Cinderella's

[14:31] castle. It's full magic. But then that same kid wanders behind some gate that wasn't supposed to be open. He walks through. He looks up. And what does he see? The Mickey mascot head on the ground. Some bald, unshaven, out

[14:44] ofshaped guy, sweaty, wearing a half mascot costume smoking a cigarette. Poof. Immediate magic gone. That illusion of novelty. the illusion of the magic up in smoke over in 1 second. No matter what, to preserve the magic of an

[14:57] illusion, you never show the mascot. Now, this concept is actually very in content because you don't want to break the illusion you just made. And is that you have to commit to the story line. You don't hedge and you don't

[15:11] you what I mean. Let's go back to the water example again. Let's say I did get of your water is actually more important than the quantity. But then I followed up with something like this. Of course, this phenomenon is just circadian

[15:25] for decades. Just like that, the intrigue that I just opened the loop the head off the mascot. Now you're not interested because you know that it's existed for decades. So, the rule is really simple. Never reveal that the new

[15:38] angle or the new frame you put on the old topic is actually just a mascot dressed up in disguise. And the part that makes this okay is that you're not lying. Anyone who doesn't remember or doesn't know the old frame, when you say

[15:50] the new thing, it feels new to them. So, as long as you commit to the illusion, it'll never go away. Now, the second half of protecting the illusion is what I call the gossip whisperer. And this is all about the way you deliver your

[16:02] points in general. Here's an example. Same fact, two different ways. Listen to the difference. First, you've got the town crier. Huge news. This changes now. And then you've got the gossip whisperer. Okay? Okay, so not that many

[16:15] second one is going to win every single time. And it's not close because that and the second you try to project like that, immediately people get suspicious that they're being sold to. People are trained to distrust and dismiss any tone

[16:30] that feels salesy. In 2002, that would have worked. 2026, not a chance. But when you lower your voice and it feels like you're letting them in on a secret, curtain that they shouldn't have gotten. All of a sudden, they get intrigued.

[16:42] You're not selling them on something. You're sharing something with them. That's the difference. And that is it. That five pieces is the illusion of novelty. New reveal, outcome mapping, contrast framing, urgency if it makes

[16:55] sense, bullseye proof, and then protecting the illusion. That is the topic, even the most boring ones, and making them feel novel so that people a live demo, I want to say linked below for free is a doc that breaks down the

[17:11] novelty. And my goal is that you can take this and you can feed it into whatever AI LLM you use. ChatBT, Claude, Gemini, whatever you use, put this in there and it will upskill it. Upskill Claude is what I use so that it then has

[17:26] it for writing, script writing, or even brainstorming, it will then have those for you. Links below if you want to take it. Now, there's only one thing left to do in this video, and that is to let me prove to you that this actually works.

[17:39] So, what I've done is come up with what I think is the most boring topic on planet Earth. The drinking water thing looks like the most interesting movie in root canals. So, here's how I would use this framework live to make content

[17:52] about a root canal sound interesting. Let's say you're a dentist or an oral content this week. Boom. Root canals come up as a topic. What do we do? Part one is to come up with the new reveal tied to an outcome. So, let's assume all

[18:05] something like this. There's a new way to get a root canal with robotics that uses zero needles, has zero pain, and will get you back to work in 30 minutes. expert. Let's assume that's true. But even if it's not, what you would do is

[18:19] come up with different angles for things you know to be true about root canals to the outcome that you think the viewer wants, which is no pain, fast procedure, fast back to work. Now, part two is the contrast framing, and this is setting up

[18:33] what we said against what the viewer already believed. So, I might say about root canals, you probably know historically they're extremely painful and take a long time to recover from. But that was the old way. This new way

[18:45] makes all of that completely obsolete. Okay. Now, part three is the urgency. urgency is very easy to use. So, we might say something like this. Barely technique yet. You have to look really

[18:58] offers it. And part four is the proof. Now remember proof. We want to land as close to the viewer as possible to get them to see themselves in this outcome. So you could say something like this. I just had a patient who was terrified of

[19:11] done. They got the procedure. They texted me 90 minutes later back from their desk. Couldn't believe how painfree it was. And part five, lastly, every word like you're letting them in on a new secret that just came across

[19:24] your desk and not reveal that this robotic dentistry is actually something been slowly improving over time. Now, here's what this script would sound like points and explanation. And of course, you could add more, but this is just a

[19:37] exists, but there's a new way to get a robotic root canal with zero needles, less than 90 minutes. If you've heard about root canals before, you probably know how painful and uncomfortable they usually are. But that was the old way.

[19:52] This way makes the pain and waiting basically obsolete. Now, the funny thing trained on this technique yet. So, you have to really go searching to find an patient who's terrified of needles and put this off for 2 years that was back

[20:05] done, text us from their desk, and couldn't believe it felt like nothing lot more we could have added, like breaking down how the robotic process works and what it means and all of this, but you don't need that. The point is

[20:18] this feel more interesting. Now, you could admit if you just heard a boring went through was at least a little bit more interesting. And that's from me who root canals. I'm telling you, this framework really works for taking boring

[20:33] especially if you're an expert in that topic already. All right. All right. Now, I have one final surprise for you that I want to reveal in this video. And that is that what I've been doing to you throughout this entire video was one

[20:45] giant example of the illusion of novelty. Let me prove it to you. That name, the illusion of novelty, that doesn't exist. That's made up. I just all these principles were some form of persuasion psychology that has existed

[20:58] for hundreds of years. I took something old that already existed. I put a new rapper on it and made it feel new to you. Then I contrasted it with what you walked in believing to make it feel relatively different. And that is that

[21:11] boring topics are always boring and there's no way to make boring topics you want most, which is making better content that actually grows in any niche. I showed you proof and then I told the whole thing kind of like I was

[21:24] remember when I told you at the end, never show the mascot? Well, this is me violating the main rule to give you a peak behind the curtain, a break through the fourth wall to see actually what I'm doing. Cuz here's the truth. The real

[21:36] mechanics of storytelling for boring topics, that's pretty dry. It's the kind should watch, but quietly they never would cuz it's just not entertaining. And yet, here you are 20 minutes in, still watching. So, remember when I said

[21:50] actually going through something is the thing that hits closest to home? Well, there's no better proof than this where you actually went through a live demo of framework I just used on you, now you have it and you can make any content

[22:03] about any topic interesting to anyone. That is the illusion of novelty. Now, cover in this video and a lot of people have questions about this and that is implementation of this framework is working? Like how do we measure which

[22:19] versions of us doing this have the best return? Because one thing to try this, if it's working and what to double down on when you make more videos. So, this is the exact framework that I use to look at my own video performance metrics

[22:32] to gauge when something is working. I'm going to step you through it one by one. First, I go into sandcastles.ai. This is my tool that I built for this and I pull up my channel individually. So, in this case, we'll use the Callaway Marketing

[22:44] channel on Instagram for this demo. And I like to set the date range to just right? If you weren't using this framework before you watch this video, I include videos where you're doing this. So, let's just do 2 months for example.

[22:58] And I'm going to sort these by most views at the top. Now, the first thing I do is I deep analyze all the videos in this set. That'll give me the transcript, all the social data I'd want. You can do this analysis two ways.

[23:10] You can press individually on each video. Analyze, analyze, analyze. Or you videos are in this two-month window in this case. Press bulk analyze. type that all of them at the same time. Now, once you have them deep analyzed, you can

[23:24] transcript. And if you click that little button in the upper right, that little actually reveal the sections of the script. And over time, if you do this enough, those sections should map pretty close to what I just talked to. Now, the

[23:38] real sauce is analyzing the patterns across these videos. Right now, you can two ways. The manual way would just be to start with the first one, the best performer. watch it and then flip that little arrow in the corner one by one.

[23:52] the script, you're trying to get a sense for like, what did I do on this one? Okay, next one. What did I do on this one? These are the two best performers. do on this one? And you just keep going through all your videos. You're getting

[24:05] ranking them by view. And you're trying to figure out, do I notice a pattern across any of these elements? The new reveal, the way I did the proof, the way not? Now, if you're not good at identifying patterns, not everyone is,

[24:19] you should use AI because AI is extremely good at identifying patterns, arguably the best thing that it is at. So, what you need to do is get this data into an AI LLM. And there's two ways to do that. You can either hit the export

[24:31] button on the top right, get the CSV and just drop that into any LLM you use, or you can download the Sandcastle's MCP plugin for Claude, which is basically like a data pipe that lets you talk to Claude and it can query data directly

[24:45] from Sandcastles. So, what I would do is just ask Claude, analyze the 10 videos, 20 videos, 30 videos, however many you have, and help me figure out what I did in the storytelling of the script for the winners that is a pattern that is

[24:57] doing differently and give me very specific instructions for what I should feed in the illusion of novelty doc that I gave you for free that we linked below I talked about before. You can feed that into Claude and say, "Hey, this is what

[25:11] I was going for. Look at the transcripts and try to match these up. Find the patterns within this framework." And that makes it super helpful. Doing this words, the sentence structure, the grammar, and the topics that you talked

[25:23] about in the winners that were different from the losers. And the reason this is so important is because even though the framework fits oneizefits-all, the execution will not. Whatever works for a dentist is not going to work for a

[25:35] financial adviser. And so you need to look at your own data. If you're not using your own social data to inform your future decisions about topics and playing the game on hard mode. The reason I built sand castles.ai is

[25:48] because I wanted this social data process to be much, much easier. So this is what I do every single day. All right, guys. That is all I've got for break down the non-obvious stuff that you just don't typically hear on the

[26:01] Hopefully, this one will be an absolute masterass for you in storytelling. Specifically, how to turn boring topics in boring industries into super engage. Like I said before, if you want the illusion of novelty doc, it's free.

[26:16] take it. You can get that below and upload that into any AI LLM and it would just download this framework installing this skill into whatever AI you use. Second, if you want to see a deeper dive in Sandcastles for how I actually set it

[26:30] in Claude, I've linked a video for you below. And then third, I usually don't talk about this on my videos. If you want my help one-on-one to build your one of these more boring categories. you've tried making content before, it's

[26:43] really not working, and you want to both get traffic, but also convert that into leads and sales. I do have a program where I help people one-on-one. What I with people, help them set up their pillars, and then I literally review

[26:56] every person's videos one- on-one every single week, and give specific feedback fastest possible path to find the answer. We have all kinds of these like categories in there. Digestive health, B2B sales, fitness, cleaning businesses.

[27:11] It's really all over the map. So, if you want my help one-on-one to just like reduce the learning curve and win quicker, we opened a few spots. We owner, and marketer, you can probably tell this channel will be one of the

[27:24] information you possibly could subscribe to. So, make sure to like, follow, you like the video. If you're part of the kingdom, leave the chef with the we'll see you guys on the next one. Peace.