You're Not Ready for the Next Phase of Social Media

[00:02] for creators, for brands, for anyone that's using content to grow a business. The game is being completely reset because the truth is, we're entering a brand new era for marketing. Now, the good news is there are lots of new ways

[00:14] to win that weren't possible before. I know this because I spend all day on the distribution. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views. patterns that are not obvious to the average person, but are massive

[00:28] going to walk through the six biggest social media trends that I see coming over the next few years. And if you care about growing your business at all, All right. Now, the first social media trend is the emergence of new social

[00:42] platforms. That's right. We are going to get new social platforms that launch in is the mega trend. Because if there's one thing the marketing world has taught me, it's how important it is to be ready when a new social platform launches. Cuz

[00:55] here's the thing. If you were given a choice, every creator and business owner on Earth would go back in time to invest more in Facebook and YouTube in the early 2010s, Instagram and LinkedIn in the late 2010s, and Tik Tok in 2020.

[01:08] Why? Because those early years are the easiest time to win. If you were to map the life cycle of any social platform, those first 12 to 18 months have user demand that significantly outpaces content supply. Literally, any piece of

[01:21] content posted works. During this period, you get massive views, massive almost no effort. It's literally a gold rush. And this gold rush phenomenon happens both when new platforms launch and when old platforms launch a new

[01:35] Instagram reels in 2022. Instagram had been around since 2010. And by 2020, it kind of felt like the game was solved. It was over. But the addition of reels in 2022 completely reset everything on Instagram and allowed a ton new people

[01:49] means is that you should always be looking for new social platforms as well as when old social platforms launch new features so that you can sprint and take here's why this all matters. I think we're about to see a few massive

[02:04] the next few years. Let me explain what they are. First and foremost, the one that's for sure happening is US Tik Tok. If you haven't been following the news, the US forced China to sell the rights to US Tik Tok to a US controlled

[02:18] clear who all the owners will be, but it's rumored Oracle, Silverlake, and potentially even A16Z will be in the to 12 months, you will see a brand new social platform emerge for the first

[02:31] time since Threads and before that, Tik Tok itself. And I'm telling you, this is the social media world since the pandemic because it's been reported that will need to rebuild their own algorithms from scratch. And that means

[02:46] already been built up on the existing Tik Tok will not port over to the US version. Everybody's starting over from scratch, including me. But this time, all the new players that will come in on day one have already built businesses on

[02:59] playbook. They know how to make content, and they're going to come ready starting making money at all from content, whether it's brand deals or to fund your not something that you should ignore. And I promise I will make a lot more

[03:14] and tactics for how to dominate on US Tik Tok as we get closer. So make sure those. Now, I mentioned at the beginning of this section that I expect to see a couple new social media platforms or features launch in the next few years.

[03:28] one. But here are two other predictions 2 to 3 years. First, I think we're going to see some new niche community feature be built on top of either Instagram threads or X. And here's why. It's no

[03:42] secret that the world is diverging. While the internet feels like everyone's getting more connected, I'm sensing a trend of private groups, member clubs, walled gardens, and private communities become more and more popular over time.

[03:54] People are sick of the feed-based media that comes without a sense of community. social features and potentially even a new social platform that takes advantage of niche-based social feeds and maybe even builds direct pipes for social into

[04:09] the evolution of the Facebook group, but completely reimagined for this era. Now, to look like, but I expect something to come out that will take advantage of the lack of digital community that we're seeing across social platforms today.

[04:22] want to be ready. And the way to be ready to take advantage of this is to community today. You want to be using social platforms to ramp people from communities. I'm telling you, that will pay huge dividends later. You want to

[04:37] prediction for new social platforms is that I expect to see a zag to the zigg been following along with AI developments. Veo3, Higsfield, Free

[04:49] Pick, Hey Genen, this AI content is no joke and is already indistinguishable truth is no one is really sure what's going to happen to human creators when the emergence of AI content increases to the point where the humans get drowned

[05:03] out. But I suspect something new is going to emerge. With every action, So whether it's a human-only verified feed or a human-on only verified platform, something will emerge to combat the evolution of AI content. This

[05:17] require some sort of digital verification to verify you're a human. or how it works, we're going to see a platforms and the invention of new ones in the next few years. And like I said

[05:30] before, the one regret I have is that if I could have gone back and went harder during those early eras, I would have. So you really want to be ready and alert am the one you like to follow for social media growth, the best thing you can be

[05:43] doing during this era is using Sandcastles. Sand castles is basically my content brain. All these YouTube videos and all my thinking on content distilled into a super tool that you can access 24/7. It allows you to import and

[05:55] analyze all the videos from the best channels you follow across Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube. You can then find the best performing videos in aggregate patterns that are working. This is my cheat code for how I make so much

[06:08] content so quickly. What I like to do on Sandcastles is find the top performing outlier videos over the last 3 months from a list of creators that I trust and then reverse engineer which topics are working. I do this every single day and

[06:21] this saves me hours on the research side and also derisks my effort so that I make winners more often. You can think of Sandcastle kind of like one of 10 or Vid IQ but specifically for short form social media, Instagram, Tik Tok, and

[06:33] of other features that make sense for social that doesn't make sense for YouTube. I'm telling you, this is everything I know put into a tool at the try for free, I've got a link below. I also linked a ton of free tutorials on

[06:46] miniourse. my gift to you in the description. All right, the second major social media trend that I think is going to emerge big over the next few years is creator moes. During all previous eras of social media, all you needed to do

[06:59] That was the only moat that you needed to win. And this was because, as shocking as this sounds, in 2025, people still were dramatically underestimating the value that came from building a personal brand on social media. So, not

[07:13] there was a huge supply demand mismatch. Well, unfortunately, in 2025, the cat It's clear that in the last 12 to 18 months, most individuals and all brands have woken up to the fact that building an organic audience is the most valuable

[07:28] because of that, we have seen a lot of new players enter the social media and content game in that period. I don't feed, I am consistently seeing banger videos from new people I've never seen

[07:41] before. there are dozens of new faces I'm getting exposed to every day and I lot of good creators out there now. Well, that feeling, if you feel it too, is there for a reason. The supply of good creators that know how to use a

[07:53] edit, is increasing exponentially. And so, if you want to win in the next era of social media, just showing up and posting consistently is not going to be three people making content in a given niche, today it's 30 and tomorrow with

[08:08] AI content, it's going to be 3,000. So, in this next era, it'll be extremely important to define your niche positioning and build a durable creator is the difference between your personal brand in a category and everyone else's

[08:21] in the viewer's mind. Here's how I think about creator modes. They're really a combination of these five things. First is your topic niche. What topic do you is visual format, and this is kind of the full package for how you visualize

[08:34] your videos. Both the layout and the visuals you use themselves. Number three how you present information and structure your ideas in a story flow that people can follow. Number four is the personality and vibe. Beyond the

[08:48] topic, beyond the story, and beyond the visual packaging, how do you come across as a vibe through the content? Right? So, this is the fourth bucket. And number five is X factor. And this really is the one of one thing about you, your

[09:01] special ability that you can add as an element or icing or a layer to the rest else. Personality and vibe is the way you come across. The X factor is the thing about you that's different from everyone else. So these five elements

[09:15] combine together to create your signature style and unlock your creator moat. In this next era, it will not be enough to just make tech breakdowns or day- in the life gym videos. You're going to need to build a visual-driven

[09:27] pops in someone's mind when they think of the topic category. Now, some and were good at this from the jump. That's why they grew so fast. But before, you didn't need to have it. Now, in the next era, Creator Moes' signature

[09:41] where if you don't have it, you just won't be able to cut through. Now, if breaking down a bunch of the signature styles that I like across different for how they make it up, let me know in the comments and I'll do that. All

[09:55] number three. If I could go all in on a single concept for social media growth over the next 3 years, it would be this, a sticky personal brand. Because I think this framework is going to be the most important building block of marketing in

[10:08] the AI era. A sticky personal brand is one that implants in a viewer's mind so that they proactively seek it out again in the future. It's the difference between a viewer stumbling upon your video in the feed and remembering you

[10:20] because they want to hear your opinion on a topic. Here's the truth. In a world of noise, it's not just signal that matters. What matters is signal that sticks in the viewer's brain long enough to convert to their long-term memory so

[10:33] they remember to go back a second time. While creator modes are the framework signature and stand out, a sticky personal brand is the reason why a viewer remembers to go back in the future. It sticks in their head. And

[10:47] here's why this concept matters so much in the next era. In a world of AIdriven content, it will be much, much harder for someone to stumble upon your content in a previous video, but imagine it like this. Think of all creators on social

[11:00] media like little bodies walking around a giant warehouse floor. you, as the viewer, go up to the catwalk on the third level and look down to see all the creators walking around. Now, if I asked you to find the person in the red shirt,

[11:14] there's only 100 people walking around. There's only a few wearing red at all. And so, you could easily pick that person out and zoom in. Today, stumbling upon someone on the social media feed is kind of like looking down at that

[11:26] If you scroll enough, you're going to see them because there's only a hundred people making content. But in the AI content world, there will be 10,000 people on the warehouse floor, hundreds of which are wearing different shades of

[11:38] red. You won't just be able to stumble upon a specific person as easily. If you're swiping, it will take 10,000 swipes just to find the right person. You have to actively be seeking them out. This is why having a sticky

[11:50] shirt color that someone actively looks to remember is so important. The feeds are going to be full of amazing videos. So many good videos, it will boggle your mind. So, what you'll need is for fans to want to proactively seek you out and

[12:03] have a way to do so. The same way you look forward to watching your favorite TV show at 8:00 p.m. every Sunday. The act of getting people to seek will be losing on social media in the future. So, your only job is to build a personal

[12:16] brand sticky enough so that viewers actually want to seek you out. And so, the question really is, how do you build a personal brand that is sticky? And how do you become such a mainstay in your category that viewers want to hear your

[12:28] opinion over everyone else's? And the answer is to build a cult-like personal brand. Now, I recently made a video deep diving on the full playbook for how to I'll link that video below. It's basically a step-by-step for exactly the

[12:41] order to achieve this stickiness around your personal brand. But just know this, if you don't have a personal brand that people actively are seeking out, you're next era of social media. All right, the fourth social media trend I'm seeing is

[12:54] the shift from quality first to quantity first when it comes to content strategy. creators about which content strategy is best. Should you focus on making more posts at a lower quality or should you focus on making fewer posts at a higher

[13:09] quality? It's the quantity versus quality debate. Some people claim that post a ton of quantity and you're just guaranteed to win by law of math. Others and if you make less but have the time to increase the quality, you'll win more

[13:24] seems like a trivial debate, but this is one of those things that I feel the most it's worth breaking down. Personally, I have flip-flopped on this several times, long time, we are shifting from a quantity first era to a quality first

[13:40] Now, let me explain what I mean. Taking a quantity first approach, just making high volume works when you don't know which videos are going to go viral. If you truly don't know and you're just waiting for random luck to strike, then

[13:53] yes, higher quantity always makes sense cuz you'll get more winners sooner. Now, a quality first approach makes sense when you do know which videos are going something go viral, you just need a little bit more time to execute on it

[14:06] approach with less reps is actually better. If that's you, your goal should be to make as many reps as you can, as long as they're above whatever the order to work. Now, you may be thinking, how could someone know which videos are

[14:21] you just remake the ones that have already worked, your hit rate is going using sand castles to basically find the winners faster, that's what they've been saying to me. Their hit rate's just gone way up because they're using a

[14:34] research-driven data first process to find winners to choose their ideas. Now, I bought into the quality first approach. Instead of making seven videos per week, I only made three, but I tried to make the quality better. I put more

[14:47] because I was a perfectionist. I liked spending a lot of time on fewer things, videos. So, that was the narrative I told myself. But then, as I began to study social media more like a scientist, I realized that the right

[15:00] answer was actually quantity first. And that was because in that era, 2023, 2024, we were still in a supply and demand mismatch. there just wasn't enough good supply to meet the demand. So, me spending an incremental hour or

[15:12] two to go from 9 out of 10 quality to 10 out of 10 wasn't worth it. It'd be better if I just made two 9 out of 10 videos instead of one. But now, as we head into this AIdriven era of social media, I think we're shifting back to

[15:25] strategy. And by this, what I really mean specifically is if you make any quantity that's below a minimum viable quality threshold, all of those videos are going to fail. So, it's not worth taking a quantity first strategy if that

[15:40] means you have to drop your quality down in order to get that volume out. Now, here's why I believe going forward in 2025 and beyond, quality first matters more. The feed is now full of really good content. There are a ton of

[15:53] good creators now making a ton of good videos. And this is only the beginning. As AI content gets better, I expect the amount of good videos to go up a thousandx in the next 3 years. This means that the average viewer is

[16:05] inundated with more and more good content. And so their baseline for what average is is slowly drifting up. If the baseline content was a 3 out of 10, well you could cut through. That baseline is now drifting from 3 to 4 to 5 to 6. and

[16:20] now it's up at 7 or 8 out of 10. People have seen so much good content that anything worse fails automatically. So, in order to have your content continue to cut through in the next era, it's either going to need to be exceptionally

[16:32] well-made, extremely unique, or both, or The truth is, the average filler volume stuff did work in the past few years and has continued to work up until around now. Moving forward, it will not because

[16:46] the baseline is increasing. So, I don't care if you post 30 videos per week, 10 videos per week, or two videos per week. If they're below a 7 out of 10 quality, they're going to fail. The viewer's eye is just trained to filter out stuff that

[16:58] doesn't look as good as what the baseline is. Now, I'll say this. There quantity first makes sense as the right strategy. And that time is at the very beginning when your skills are at a zero. You need to close the gap from 0

[17:12] the best way to close that gap is more for most people. I'll say it super specifically so it eliminates all confusion. When you're starting out, you have zero content skills. That means

[17:24] your quality is a 0 out of 10 and your quantity is a 0 out of 10. In order to get any video to cut through, you have to get the quality up to a 7 out of 10. Anything below that will fail. Now, the best way to improve your quality skills

[17:36] up to a seven is to make a ton of quantity between zero and seven. The skills increase, as long as you're learning between reps. I call this your learning era is not to grow and hit bangers. It's to increase your skills up

[17:51] to a seven out of 10 so that you can enter the game. Now, when I say do as much quantity to get to 7 out of 10 quality, what do I mean? Do as much quantity means make as many videos as you can where you can learn between

[18:03] reps. If you make one video a week, your skills are going to develop 7 to 10 times slower than someone making a video every day. Now, when I say 7 out of 10 I understand the word quality is very subjective and fuzzy. 7 out of 10 is

[18:16] very subjective. What does that actually mean? If you were to line up 10 videos on the exact same topic, 1 to 10, are you at least the seventh, eth, ninth, or tenth best video? That's a 7 out of 10. What does this really mean in practice?

[18:28] If you think about the content workflow, idea, scripting, recording, editing, posting that workflow, are you doing all the things you think you can be doing from a tips and strategies perspective in each bucket? That is about a 7 out of

[18:42] using some validated process to find stuff? For scripting, are you using a storytelling framework and a hook framework that's proven to work, or you just picking random stuff? For editing,

[18:54] proven to work, or you just picking random stuff? For recording, are you recording in a clean background that looks high quality with 4K footage, or are you just half-hazardly shooting some blurry thing with no background and poor

[19:06] lighting? Those are the table stakes that get you around 7 out of 10. Now, at creator that you really admire. Maybe it's me, maybe it's someone else, and you'll still notice a difference. That's okay. Those people are at nine or 10 out

[19:19] you're not doing those table stakes things, your quality is probably below a them. Now, once you feel like your quality on a single rep is at 7 out of think you should, but you're still not sure why your stuff does not look like

[19:34] the creators you admire, good, you're at a 7 out of 10. Now, your job is to increase quantity up to one video per day while maintaining 7 out of 10 quality. Do not dip below 7 out of 10 quality cuz as we've mentioned, anything

[19:49] below that will fail immediately. Your goal is to figure out how can I get to one video per day at 7 out of 10 quantity. That's like metric benchmark you get comfortable, you'll already be in the top 1 to 2% of creators. If

[20:02] you're making seven 7 out of 10 videos per week, you will crush. However, better. That's natural with every creator. So, you're going to want to go up from 7 to 9 out of 10. Now, when you do that, you're going to have to spend

[20:15] more time per rep trying to figure out those icing details. You're going to want to spend a couple more hours per video. When you do that, your quantity is going to drop from seven down to two or three per week. That's okay. You get

[20:27] your quality up to 9 out of 10, and then slowly you increase that quantity until you get to the point where you're making one video a day at 9 out of 10 quality. be almost indistinguishable from anyone else on the internet and your quantity

[20:40] will be outpacing them. That's how you win. The key difference with this whole section, my shift from quantity to quality is to say this. Anything below a 7 out of 10 quality will not work today and in the future. And so, if you were

[20:54] taking a quantity first 20 videos a week, super big volume approach, that's are above a 7 out of 10 quality. All right, social media trend number five is the emergence of more testing when it comes to organic video content. We're

[21:08] entering an era where content scientists that can run micro tests and AB compare different things will outperform artists. We're shifting from artists to before. Now, the most important feature in this category that Instagram released

[21:21] reels. And if you don't know what trial reels are, this is the most slept on social feature on the entire internet. Essentially, trial reels allows you to run concurrent tests of lookalike videos at the same time to nonfollowers. It's

[21:36] free ads as much as you want. So, let's say you're making a video about Meta's new Ray-B band glasses. You spent a ton of time on this video, but you're just to perform. And as we know, as soon as a viewer churns, nothing matters after

[21:50] dial the hook in. What you can do is make five different slight variations of the video. same exact body but five different hooks, whether it's what you say or the visuals you show. You can then post all five of these variations

[22:03] as different trial reels at the same time. Whichever one performs the best, you can then release that as the main one you post. Now, trial reels work so well because Instagram doesn't put those five trial reels on your profile. So,

[22:15] it's not like your grid is going to show the same video five different times. people that already follow you. So, only strangers are seeing the different variations. It's a true ABCDE test. And it's honestly insane how few people talk

[22:30] essentially what this allows you to do is test video hooks for free with zero video, well, it's worth spending an extra 30 minutes to film four additional hooks so that you can double or triple the output and make that effort worth

[22:45] it. This will help you have a much higher hit rate on your videos without if you think about it, that's really the goal of marketing. How do we get the most possible reach with the least possible effort? And if we can take

[22:57] actions to derisk that effort, even better. Now, if you think about it, all other forms of marketing have extensive testing built in natively. Most email marketing has A versus B versus C headline testing. Paid ads are basically

[23:10] ton of ads trying to see what works and double down. YouTube has A versus B vers thumbnail testing. But until trial reels, organic short form video really had no component where you could test without making a full video. You kind of

[23:24] it, and then hope it works. So the takeaway is that I think this test first approach is going to come to organic video content more in the next few a YouTube video like this, but you could upload three different CTAs that would

[23:38] automatically get slotted in and they could AB test the performance. Whichever ended up getting released. I think we are not very far away from having a really robust testing process when it comes to organic video content. So for

[23:51] you're watching this video is this. If you make short form video on Instagram, huge cheat code. All right, the last social trend number six is what I call years, we've quietly watched the emergence of an entire new class of

[24:07] people that grew up with social media and just default understand short form video, the algorithm, and attention. It is baked into their DNA. These people become clippers, Tik Tok shop affiliates. A lot of them are making 20

[24:22] to $50,000 per month just making short form videos from home. Now, here's where such a valuable trend. The future of Brand Social is going to be building pools of these cracked content natives that work as gun for hire mercenaries

[24:35] that can push any brand you want. Now, I've made a video in the past breaking out these pools of creators. If you want that, I will link it below. But the already have Discord and Slack communities full of these people that

[24:48] are upside helping crack the content code and feeding it to each other. In a head of content that spearheads the R&D. And if that person doesn't make content already and doesn't have at least 100,000 followers, they're the

[25:02] place, they will disseminate a strategy for how to activate these pods. They're testing feeding them. And there's a recursive loop of learning over and over. Content is no longer a spoke of marketing. Content is the marketing

[25:17] flywheel. And everything else are just spokes that feed the content. So, if you're a CMO or a founder of a brand, this content pod strategy is going to marketing mix moving forward. It's so important that I believe brands are

[25:30] going to start hiring creator in residence positions that are these R&D you're interested in me making another video for how brands should build out these content R&D pods, let me know and I can do that. All right, guys. That is

[25:43] the six biggest social media trends that I see coming up over the next few years always, guys, I'm trying my absolute best to bring new stuff every week that gives you a leg up on everyone else when it comes to the content game. If you're

[25:56] video, you like getting these tips, you like the way I break things down, you my free community specifically for entrepreneurs, we've got 65 free tutorials and trainings just like this in there that are sequenced so that you

[26:09] can improve your content the fastest. We have 33,000 entrepreneurs that are all content. It's really a great community and it's better than most paid programs join that for free, I've got a link in the description below. We will see you

[26:21] the description below. We will see you guys on the next video. Peace.