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Ever wondered what it really takes to make your content go viral?

Since 2005, Brendan Kane has been the secret weapon behind the viral success of some of the world’s biggest names and brands — including Taylor Swift, MTV, Sony, Rihanna, and Paramount. A true leader in the field, Brendan knows the social media game better than anyone. And in this episode, his second appearance on the show, he’s sharing the latest strategies that are driving viral success for his clients right now.

Tune in to learn: the crucial role of storytelling and metrics, why having fun might be the missing piece in your content strategy, why mastering one format is a game-changer, how to set clear goals that prime you for virality, the key metrics that will set your Instagram page up for success, and what the latest algorithm changes really mean for your content.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that this is going to be one of our most popular episodes of the entire year. If you’re a business owner, this conversation is absolute GOLD. It can literally translate into money in the bank. 

So, if you’re ready to stop guessing and start creating viral-worthy content on demand, then press play now… this one’s for you!

About Brendan Kane

With nearly two decades of experience, Brendan Kane has transformed brands, influencers,‬‭ and individuals into digital powerhouses. His data-driven approach and innovative content‬‭ models have generated 60 billion views and 100+ million followers.‬

With nearly two decades of experience, Brendan has transformed brands, influencers, and individuals into digital powerhouses. His data-driven approach and innovative content models have generated 60 billion views and 100+ million followers.

Brendan has worked closely with luminaries like Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Adriana Lima on their digital strategies and has authored multiple best-selling books including “One Million Followers: How I Built a Massive Social Audience in 30 Days“, “Hook Point: How to Stand out in a 3-Second World,” and “The Guide to Going Viral: The Art and Science of Succeeding on Social Media.”

In this episode we chat about:

• Why every content creator must master the science behind virality, communication, and social media (02:39)
• How focusing on one content format can explode your social media presence and following (09:38)
• Why your creative process should start with the format to produce viral-worthy ideas (19:12)
• Why setting clear goals is the secret sauce if you want to go viral (21:18)
• The fastest way to become a better storyteller and grow your social media following (25:24)
• The must-track metrics that will set your Instagram up for massive success (27:51)
• Why you shouldn’t be afraid to commit to a single format (32:19)
• The real truth behind algorithm changes and how they impact your content’s performance (33:38)
• Why quality content is the key to unlocking your viral potential (35:59)
• How the joy factor can elevate your content and bring out your best creative energy (37:57)
• The art of creating content that reaches your audience and captivates the masses  (40:53)

Episode resources:

• SheLaunch (join here)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• Get Brendan’s FREE The Guide To Going Viral copy (ebook)
• From Zero to One Million Followers With Brendan Kane (podcast)
• One Million Followers, Updated Edition: How I Built a Massive Social Following in 30 Days by Brendan Kane (book)
• Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World by Brendan Kane (book)
• The Guide to Going Viral: The Art and Science of Succeeding on Social Media by Brendan Kane (book)
• Brendan Kane (Instagram)
• Dr Julie Smith (Instagram)
• Ryan Serhant (YouTube Channel)

Prefer To Read?

The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] In episode 621 with Brendan Cain, we are talking all about how to go viral on Instagram. If you ever want to go viral, if you want more eyes on your amazing work, this episode is for you. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa, best selling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, Open Wide, Comparisonitis, And time magic, and I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

Each week I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible. Are you ready? Beautiful. Beautiful. Hey, beautiful. Welcome back to the show.

I’m so excited about this episode because I absolutely love and adore Brendan. I have [00:01:00] known him for so many years and this is his second time on the show. But for those of you that have never heard of Brendan, he is a social media master with nearly two decades of experience. He has transformed brands, influencers, and individuals into digital powerhouses.

His data driven approach and his next level content models have generated 60 billion views and a hundred thousand plus million followers. which is just so amazing. He has worked closely with luminaries like Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Adriana Lima on their digital strategies and has authored multiple best selling books including One Million Followers, How I Built a Massive Social Media Audience in 30 Days, Hook Point, How to Stand Out in a Three Second World, and The Guide to Going Viral, The Art and Science of Succeeding on Social Media, which we’re going to be talking all about today.

And for everything that we mentioned in today’s episode, you can check out in the show notes and that’s over at melissarambrosini. com forward slash six, two, one, grab your pen and paper. My friend, you are going to want to take so many [00:02:00] notes. This is gold. Let’s dive in.

Brendan. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited to have you here. You were on episode one, four, nine. We’re now in the six hundreds. This was a long time ago. You were on the show. So I’m so excited to have you back. And before we dive in, can you tell us what you had for breakfast this morning? 

Brendan: So I had a green juice, eggs, and avocado toast and a side of avocado.

I’m staying in a hotel, so I did good with what I could with what the hotel offers. 

Melissa: Yep, you just gotta do your best. Now, like I said, you were on episode 149 from zero to one million followers. That was your first book. Since then, you were on your third book. You have written three amazing books. The first one was One Million Followers, How I Built a Massive Social Audience in 30 Days, Hook Point, How to Stand Out in a Three Second World, and [00:03:00] The Guide to Going Viral, The Art and Science of Succeeding on Social Media.

And I want to talk about your latest book, The Guide to Going Viral, today, which I’m so excited about. So, my friend, teach us everything. How can we go viral? Give us the formula. 

Brendan: So, you know, the best place to kind of start with all of this is reframing the way we look at social media. And the blessing and the curse of social media is that it is super easy.

Anybody can pull out their phone, post something, and it has really democratized the world in terms of reaching the masses of the audience. The downside is it’s so easy. Anybody can do it. And we’ve gone from when I first started in social media in 2005 to a few million people on the platform to today, there’s close to 5 billion people on social media.

So a lot of people will go into social media expecting to go viral just because they take the time and energy and effort to create a piece of content and post it. [00:04:00] A lot of the lack of success that a lot of brands or solopreneurs or creators that we work with, it frustrates them a lot. They can’t figure out why am I not going viral?

Or if they go viral once, why can’t I reproduce those results? And it’s not because the algorithms are out to get you. They’re not suppressing your reach on purpose to get you to pay for reach. They’re not shadow banning your account in 99 percent of the cases. What the algorithms really want is they want content that can keep people on the platform longer because the algorithms have one Fundamental goal and that’s aligned with the social media’s business goal Which is keep people on the platforms longer so they can serve more ads and generate more profit Thus they’re looking for content that’s more They can grab and hold attention for as long as possible.

Now if any one of us opened up our favorite app right now, whether it’s TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or Facebook, whatever app we use the most, as soon as we open it, there’s probably over [00:05:00] 150, 000 pieces of content the algorithms could see to us based on the people we follow and the content we’ve engaged with.

So there’s a fierce amount of competition for that. So what we need to do as content creators, if we want to consistently go viral, break through and be in that top 1%, Is be able to grab attention and hold attention longer than those other 150, 000 pieces of content. So the question is, well, how do you do that, Brendan?

Like, that’s great. So you broke down the simplicity of it, but it’s not necessarily easy. We need to kind of understand the science of communicating on these platforms. So what we’ve done over the past six years is developed this creative model, which is outlined in the Guide to Going Viral book. And the foundational aspect of this model is that.

is based upon research and understanding what type of storytelling formats and structures are succeeding on social media. So our team’s done about 10, 000 hours of research studying over 220 [00:06:00] of these different formats. So what do I mean by a format? So I’ll give you like a very primitive, but very successful example of it.

There is a format called man on the street. And basically, what that means is you approach a random stranger on the street. Oftentimes, it can be casted, but you’re interacting with somebody on the street, and you’re capturing that interaction. So I have a friend, and we’ve done some work with, his name’s Alex Stemp, and he’s a professional photographer.

So he approaches random strangers on the street and offers them professional photo shoots, and shows the interaction and shows the result of it. So that’s an example of a format. Now, man on the street, there’s like 10 different versions of it. There’s another account that does really well with this called school of hard knocks.

They’ve generated millions of followers by stopping successful people on the street in interviewing about them, about their success. Another format that we talk about is called two characters, one light bulb, where basically it’s the same person plays two characters, the expert and the novice. And what they do is they debunk a misconception or myth about any subject matter.

It’s [00:07:00] used for legal, it’s used for fitness, nutrition, real estate, any type of subject matter it can be used for. So those are two examples of a format. Now there’s hundreds of these formats available, but the single truth. To consistently going viral is mastery of a single format. So you identify the format that you really resonate with.

That is the best way to channel your message, your expertise, and push it out into the world. And you master every single nuance of that format. So you may ask, well, how do I master the nuance of that format? Because most people will look at a man on the street format and see, I know exactly what they’re doing.

They’re approaching a random stranger on the street and just interacting with them. I’m going to do the same thing. But 99 percent of people that try that. ultimately fail. Why? Because they don’t know the nuances that make that format successful. So when we kind of analyze a format and do the research and kind of guide our clients, we take five to 10 [00:08:00] of the top performers in that format, and that could be 5 million views plus.

And then we’ll take You know, five to 10 of the average performers, which could be a few hundred thousand up to a million. And then we’ll take the underperformers like under a hundred thousand. And what we’re doing is we’re comparing what’s happening in those high performers, the most successful versions of it versus the underperformers.

And the reason that we’re doing that is we’re trying to see what is the difference? What’s the difference between a video using the exact same format from the same creator, generating millions, some cases, tens of millions of views versus the same creator, the same format only generating like 50, 000 views.

And what we’re looking for is not really the content, but the context of how they’re using that format. So these can be things like what happens those first three seconds? Are you using captions? What type of captions, title cards, facial expressions, body cues, environment, the pacing, the tonality of it.

And again, we’re looking at what happens in those [00:09:00] successful versions versus those unsuccessful versions. And that is the beginning place of understanding virality. Virality, it’s not luck. It is a pure science of how you effectively communicate on these platforms. It’s like any other skill set that you learn.

So if there’s people listening to this that ever had to learn a musical instrument, like if you think about learning a piano is you just don’t start on a piano and playing Mozart perfectly. The first time is you learn the keys, you learn the notes. You learn the rhythm and the pacing and the tonality and all those different elements that go into it to become successful and a great piano player or musician.

Melissa: I love it. Okay, so mastering one format. Do you not think people will get bored of just seeing the exact same format on your social media feed? 

Brendan: Yeah, it’s a great question. So I’ll start with an analogy to demonstrate that people won’t get bored with it. So I started my career in the film industry, creating social media and marketing divisions for movie studios.

[00:10:00] And I went to film school. I studied the art of making films. And the interesting thing is you’ve seen a movie that’s made in the past 50 years. They all follow the same format, which is called the three act structure. It doesn’t matter if it’s horror, it doesn’t matter if it’s sci fi, comedy, drama, a Pixar movie, they’re all following the same format.

Yet, when we sit down to watch a movie, it feels like a unique experience each time we watch it. And if you look at the best filmmakers, like a Steven Spielberg, he is not reinventing that structure every time he makes a movie. Becoming a master of the nuances of expressing it. Going back to Alex Stemp that uses man on the street for photography.

He’s been using this format for three years to amass a following of 20 million followers. So as long as your expression of the format is unique in terms of the stories that you’re telling within it. It won’t get old and it can feel restrictive when you first hear about it, but once you kind of start doing it, [00:11:00] you can come up with so many different ideas and structures to it that will drive success.

I’ll give you another example. We worked with a leather craftsman named Tanner Leatherstein that had very little success in social media prior to working with us. He thought the concept of social media was to create commercials of his products. He sells leather handbags, purses, briefcases, wallets, things of that nature.

So again, he thought creating commercials On a social media would yield success. It only got him to 2000 followers. He struggled to go through. So we, we developed a format with him called, is it worth it? So he would buy a 1, 200 Chanel purse or handbag and deconstruct it on screen and tell you whether it’s worth the money that you pay for it.

That single format took him from 2000 followers to 2. 5 million across the social media channels. Now you may think, well, how do I come up with more ideas? Well, in that format, it’s very easy. He can deconstruct a product purse or he can deconstruct, you know, a high end [00:12:00] leather bag or a briefcase or a wallet, any of those things.

It gives him a lot of creative freedom and flexibility within the confines of that format. 

Melissa: Ooh, okay. I love it. This is so good. So choose a format that resonates is the first step. And then you’ve got to look at the nuances of what makes it work. So kind of like diving into the data and the research, like doing research.

For someone who’s like, this all just sounds like too much work. Can I just read Brendan’s book and be done with it? Is there a quicker fix? You know what I mean? 

Brendan: Yeah. So it depends on, on kind of what you want to achieve with your social media. Like if you want to be at the top 1%. You know, there it’s, it’s like being the top 1 percent in any industry.

You’ve got to work for it, you know, and this is the reason that we started our company and we have a team of researchers that do this research because some people just don’t have that much time. But if you want to kind of try and cut your learning curve, you [00:13:00] don’t have to do as much research as we do.

Maybe. Identify a format. Like, so let’s just break down another one. We looked at a creator that you can look up. She’s really big on Tik TOK and she’s successful on Instagram called Dr. Julie Smith. And she uses a visual metaphor format, meaning she’s breaking down complex topics like PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, things of that nature.

And she’s breaking down these heavy subject matters by using visual metaphors. So for example, one of her most viewed videos, I think it’s like 12 million views, she has. a mini trash can on the desk that’s overflowing with papers to demonstrate what it feels like to be overwhelmed, to have anxiety. And then she explains how you can overcome that by unpacking each piece of paper, folding it neatly and putting it on kind of the table next to it until the waste paper basket is empty and there’s a clean stack of papers on the table.

She picks up the stack of paper, puts it into the trash can. So that’s an example of a visual metaphor. So yeah. If you wanted to kind [00:14:00] of cut the amount of time down, what you could do is you could take a high performer, like one of those videos that she does with 12 million views and put it side by side with one that does, you know, 100, 000 views and see if you can understand the difference at a minimum, you should at least do that.

We typically, again, as I mentioned, at least. Five to 10 of the high performers or low performers to see the patterns. But if you want to kind of get going into it, you really need to do that analysis because we can experience this with our clients and people that reach out to me after hearing a podcast or something, they’re like, Brendan, I tried this format, can you look at it?

And I asked them, well, where’s the reference that you use to create this version? And they didn’t have one. So they didn’t even bother to look and study the format itself beforehand. So it is a lot of work. But what we’re talking about here is like, how do we become the top one percent? How do we become not go viral, like one out of 50 times or one out of 100 times?

And [00:15:00] what you’ll find is there’s a lot more work up front, but that work and research and understanding will save you so much time and energy down the road. Because like, let’s just say if one out of a hundred videos right now are going viral, would you rather wait for the next hundred videos to go viral?

Or would you rather have, do more homework up front? And then maybe it’s four out of 10, five out of 10, six out of 10. So you’re not wasting so much time, energy and resources producing content. That’s not breaking through because I’ve been there. I know what it feels like that you put your heart and soul and energy, or you feel like you really have something to benefit and transform the world, but it just falls flat.

It just doesn’t get the viewership. And I can definitively tell you, it’s not about you. It’s not about your message, not being good enough. It is about the context and the way that you’re expressing it that’s causing it not to break through. 

Melissa: Super interesting. If everybody did this though, wouldn’t everyone’s content be similar?

Brendan: No, because there’s so many different [00:16:00] formats. Like our team, as I mentioned, we’ve done about 10, 000 hours of research. We’ve identified about 220 formats. We identify probably like three to five new ones a week through our team. So there’s so much opportunity out there. In addition. You ask, well, why would it feel like that if everybody does it?

I can tell you 99 percent of people on social media don’t do this. They don’t even know the concept of a format. So people listening to this are going to be ahead of 9 competitors that they have in the market because people aren’t Looking at this, most people are focused on trends like trends is the big thing, but the challenge with trends is they’re fleeting.

It doesn’t allow you to become a master communicator. Like think about like one of the biggest trends was the ice bucket challenge. Who does the ice bucket challenge today? Nobody does. They move down to the next trend, and the next trend. It’s like if you were saying, I want to learn a musical instrument, and every week you chose a different musical instrument.

Like the first week you did piano, [00:17:00] next week you did the xylophone, and then you did the saxophone, and then you did drums. If you switched every week, would you become a master of any of those? No, you wouldn’t be very good at it. So, I really wouldn’t be concerned with everybody picking up on this because they won’t.

And again, most people won’t try and actually do the work to understand what drives it. Maybe people will see a format like the two characters, one light bulb or Dr. Julie Smith, using the visual metaphor and say, Oh, I know what she’s doing, but not diving into the nuance. Like, again, I went to film school and what do you do in film?

You sit down and you watch. Classic movies, you watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie, you read screenplays, you learn cinematography and directing and acting, all these elements that it takes. If you think about pretty much everybody listening to this has gone to watch a movie, just because you’ve watched a movie doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to make a good one.

I went to film school and I studied it for years. I don’t think I could make a good movie, even if I tried now, but it takes that foundational kind of learning element to really succeed. [00:18:00] So there’s so much choice and option out there. Even the two formats that I mentioned, I’m not recommending people use those formats.

I’m just saying as a concept, those are what the format looks like, but you can find your own. Then there’s hundreds of them out there. 

Melissa: And it’s obviously important that you find a format that you enjoy and that you like doing. Otherwise, it’s going to be like pulling teeth out. 

Brendan: Absolutely. Like it has to be a enjoyable experience.

And people often ask, when should I switch up a format if it’s not working? The first thing I said, as long as you’re enjoying it and you’re following the process and understanding what drives the performance in that format. Stick with it. The performance will come. I think only switching to a different format is if you get burned out of it, or once you’ve mastered the art of like perfecting one format, then you can move on to doing a second one or a third one and interacting that into your social media strategy.

But yeah, it’s so important to have some enjoyable aspect to it, because you’re going to spend a lot of time doing it, [00:19:00] and you want that enthusiasm, you want that authentic enjoyability to come across in that video, because if you’re tense, or if you’re just not feeling it, you’re not liking it, it’s going to come off on camera.

Melissa: Mm hmm. Absolutely. So this is my strategy. I create a piece of content, like I write what I want to say. And come up with the hook and then for me, I go, what video would go with that? That’s what I’ve done in the past because I didn’t know this. So that’s what I’ve kind of done over the years. Always come up with what I want to say first and then think of like a visual creative that goes with that.

So I’ve never stuck to one particular format. 

Brendan: Yeah, so you’re not alone because in some ways it makes more sense to be like, Oh, I’m just going to come up with the ideas and let the creative outlet be dictated by the idea. And creating ideas is typically pretty easy for people. I would just say that once you have the format [00:20:00] and understand the format, the format is going to start shaping.

The ideas that you come up with. So in the beginning, it may be a little uncomfortable or a shift in kind of how you approach things, but I can tell you, once you have an understanding of the format, it’s going to be really easy to come up with ideas. And one of the parts of our model that we really recommend in the ideation process is create a spreadsheet and put all of your ideas in there and then start ranking them like one to five.

With five being the most likely to go viral, one being the least likely. Because then what it forces you to do is to really think about the ideas before you produce them. Because again, everything that we want to do in this model is save you time, energy, and resources and increase the likelihood of success.

But if we just jump to ideas without the format, we’re just kind of shifting from format to format to format or not even having a format, not understanding it. And if we’re just going to. Jumping to ideas, we [00:21:00] really have no validation process to understand whether our time, energy, and effort and resources is actually going to pay off.

And that’s where a lot of people get frustrated is like, my content’s not breaking through and I don’t understand why, or I had this one video go viral, but I can’t seem to reproduce it. 

Melissa: Hmm. Interesting. So what classes something as going viral? Like what is the number? So 

Brendan: each format that we look at. Is different in terms of its thresholds of virality.

There are some formats going viral can mean 5 million views plus. Some formats in like long form YouTube, for example, like over 500, 000 could be viral. The way that I look at virality is what is the impact on your business and brand goals? Like that’s the ultimate thing. You know, our process of looking at the high performers versus the low performers is to understand how to effectively communicate to audiences.

On social media. It’s not about benchmarking [00:22:00] yourself in terms of numbers of saying you’ve done a good job. You’ve done a bad job. People like my message. People don’t like my message. The numbers are just a blueprint of what’s working, what’s resonating from a storytelling contextual element. So what I really kind of do is like, what is the impact that you want to have?

What is your ultimate goal for your business or your brand? Some people want to get. Millions or tens of millions of views on their video. Some people may just want to get 10, 000 or 100, 000 are trying to figure that out. It doesn’t matter, you know, what your goal is, whether it’s 10, 000 or 10 million, you still follow the same process because you still need to look at people using a specific format.

And the high use cases versus the low use cases. Cause some people say, well, Brendan, the low use cases is a hundred thousand views. Why don’t I just look at that? Because that format can yield much higher. So we need to look at what it means to be successful [00:23:00] in storytelling through a specific format. I typically never say like, you need to be doing millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of views to be considered viral.

Because the goal here is not to go viral for the sake of going viral. The goal is to bring our message to the world, have impact and drive our business and brand and the goals that we ultimately want to achieve. So those numbers. Can kind of mean different things to different people. Does that make sense?

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. So a lot of my clients inside SheLaunched, they would want to go viral because they want more of their ideal clients to see the real, or the video, whatever it is. To then join their high ticket offer or whatever it is. So that’s the reason why they would want to grow and want to go viral.

Brendan: Yeah. And, and some people kind of misconstrue the word viral and they think about a silly cat video or a prank or something that’s not [00:24:00] related to your brand or business. Well, I can definitively tell you in doing this for 20 years, Any subject matter can go viral. Taxes go viral, real estate, fitness, nutrition, insurance.

It doesn’t matter the subject matter you’re covering, it can go viral. And when we’re talking about having an impact on our brand, we’re never saying we’re going to create content just to go viral. It always needs to be adjacent to our subject matter and the message that we want to put out there. I do this exercise for people listening, just think about, well, how many people on average, are viewing your content each time you post a piece of content.

For some people may be a thousand, some people may be 10, 000. Some people may be a hundred thousand. So whatever that number is, write it down or just think about it in your head. And then what I want you to do, and you may need a calculator. I’m not great with math. So I use the calculator on my phone, multiply that by 10 and then multiply that by a hundred and then multiply that by a thousand, what would be the impact?

On your business, your [00:25:00] brand, if that many more people were seeing your content. That’s the power of virality. Again, we’re not talking about just doing it for the sake of doing it. We’re doing it for the sake of having an impact on our business, our brand, our goals, our message, whatever it is that we want to achieve.

Melissa: Yes, absolutely. I love that. So knowing why you’re doing it is so important. Now you’ve worked with some of the biggest names in the world, Taylor Swift, Rihanna, amazing. Are there any other key principles or strategies that you’ve used with them or that any entrepreneur or influencer can implement to see growth on their Instagram?

Brendan: Great question. So one of the things that I learned with Taylor Swift when I worked with her, and this is one of the key principles that made her successful early on that paved the road for her. She realized something about social media that nobody really noticed. And this was like, I think like 2010.

She realized that social media is not [00:26:00] a one to many platform, it is a one to one platform. Meaning that when people are consuming social media, think about it, when do you consume social media? When do your friends? You’re sitting on the couch. You’re on the train. You’re sitting by yourself. You’re not sitting in a stadium watching social media together.

It’s a one to one interaction. The way that Taylor Swift did it is, in the beginning, she would respond to all the comments, she would make sure to speak as if it was she was speaking to an individual on the other side of the room, and then she started getting so big, she needed to find another way to adapt it.

So what she started to do is she would go to bridal showers of fans, or birthday parties, or weddings, and capture the moment. And what she was telling her fans without directly saying it is, I’m doing it for this person, but I care about all of you. I love my fans. So one of the mistakes that people make with social media is they’ll start out with, Hey, everybody.

Hey, you. Who’s everybody? You know, it’s just me. Understanding that it’s a one to one communication oftentimes will kind of help you. [00:27:00] In terms of crafting that message, you’re feeling like you’re connecting with one person. Another kind of way that it helps people is we have some people that come to us that there’s a mindset blockage.

Like, I don’t think I could communicate to millions of people, or I don’t think that this will work for me. Cause I’m not a big global superstar or celebrity. We’ve worked with people with no social media experience. That have reached millions like Tanner Leatherstein, I talked about, but what helps people overcome that obstacle is don’t focus on communicating to a million people focus on communicating to an individual, a single person and have that authentic communication with them as if they were your friend.

And that’s where you can start really start to accelerate your growth as a storyteller through the social media platforms. 

Melissa: Love it. So good. so much. Thanks. We’ve obviously spoken about the importance of data in creating viral content for someone who’s just starting out. What are the most crucial metrics that they [00:28:00] should be tracking on Instagram and how can they use this data to refine their content strategy?

Brendan: Yes. So there’s a few things to look at. So the number one kind of thing that we start at is are you generating views on your content? Because if you’re not generating views, that means your content’s not breaking through. I would say if you’re under 30, 000 views, you’re probably not really breaking through.

And let me kind of just, because I mentioned the algorithms earlier, let me just kind of break down simply what happens when you post a piece of content. So if you’re kind of at a small follower base under a few hundred thousand people, typically what’s going to happen is you’re going to post a piece of content, and it’s going to seed it to, let’s say, a hundred people.

And it’s going to measure two things. Did people stop the scroll when they stumbled upon your video? And how long did they watch for? If they, you know, stopped and watched for a period of time that is acceptable compared to the other content it could seed, then it’ll seed it to another [00:29:00] hundred people and measure the response.

And then another hundred and then another hundred until you get into the millions. However, if with those first hundred people, it doesn’t stop the scroll and hold attention. It’s going to cut the reach there automatically because then it’s not playing to the goals and objectives of the platform of keeping people on the platform longer.

No. When you get to the size of like Mr. Beast, if you watch his videos, as soon as he posts it in like the first two hours, he’s got 8 million views. How could that possibly be? Well, he’s built up so much credibility with the algorithms that they’re not gonna cede it to 100 people. They’re gonna cede it to 5 million people.

So as you become better and better as a content creator, that will ultimately kind of, you’ll build that trust. But going back to your question of like, what are the things that we should pay attention to? Views, first and foremost, like, are you breaking through, you know, 50, 000 views plus, like, ultimately, I want to see people in the hundreds of thousands of views, if not millions of views consistently, the other thing that you can look at, you’re gonna have to dig a little bit in your analytics is [00:30:00] look at how much reach you’re getting on your content, and then measure what is the number of views, it either is gonna be listed as reach or impressions, But what is going to be the ratio to the number of views to the number, the amount of reach or impressions that you’re getting on a video.

And what you really want to be is at least 40 percent or higher. If you’re less than 40%, what that’s telling you is you’re failing in those first three seconds. Just get people to stop the scroll. Now, where people usually fail in those first three seconds, Is in overwhelming the person, they’ll have like a caption, or they’ll have a meme card or title card, they’ll have captions, they’ll have people talking.

So, what’s happening is there’s too much to focus on, and the subconscious feels like it’s getting left behind. There’s not a clear visual hierarchy. And where you want people to focus, like focus on this first, this second, this third. So those are two things to focus on. Now Instagram has come out recently and said like shares are a [00:31:00] huge ranking system.

They almost say that right now shares are higher than retention of viewership, whether or not that’s the actual case. I don’t know, but their line of thinking and it makes sense. Is if you’re sharing a piece of content with somebody else and their DMS, it’s starting a conversation around that content, which again, is playing to their goals of keeping people on the platform longer so they can serve more ads.

So if I were to distill it down is how many views are you getting? What is your effective ability to the views to reach your impressions, to get people to stop the scroll? How effectively are you in terms of getting people to send or share your content with other friends? So those are some high level metrics.

But realistically, what we do is just we create a spreadsheet, and this doesn’t take a lot of time. Honestly, it doesn’t take a lot of time. And what we do is we track the number of views and the number of shares. That we get in the first 24 hours and 48 hours, because that’s typically where the most amount of engagement reviews happen.

And if you just start doing that, you’ll start kind [00:32:00] of learning, like, what are the drivers of the actual virality or breakthrough of each of your content? Because I think that most people aren’t just really taking an active approach and analyzing their content. They’re just getting stuck very surface level and not trying to kind of dig in a little bit deeper.

Melissa: So fascinating. So fascinating. I love it. So if we choose a format. How can we differentiate it so that we’re not compromising authenticity or our message? 

Brendan: So again, the format is just the vehicle of how you deliver the message. It doesn’t dictate the message that you deliver. Well, I’ll take another analogy is, is TV shows.

Like if you look at The TV show friends, you know, friends is one of the most popular TV shows. People love it. People rewatch it over and over again. If you think about each episode, each episode is the exact same format, but each story feels unique and different. And people [00:33:00] love that element of it and there’s different storylines and themes and problems and challenges that come up through each episode.

So it’s the same thing with a format. It’s just the structure and however you want to use that structure to tell a message or a story you can. You’ll see as you start doing the research that there are kind of things that help propel success versus things that drive down success. But those are, again, the contextual elements that aren’t really dealing with the message or the content itself, but more the delivery of the content.

Melissa: Yeah. So good. Now, the algorithm, it is changing. Are there any tips or timeless principles besides what you’ve already shared? That can adapt any changes that may occur in the algorithm. 

Brendan: So the shifts in the algorithm are always going to serve one purpose, and that’s to keep people on the platform longer.

So that’s [00:34:00] fundamental. Unless all of these social media platforms woke up tomorrow and said, our platforms are no longer free. We’re going to charge you a subscription for them. That’s the only way it would change. So I think what happens typically when people are talking about the algorithms It’s that they’re seeing a dip in their own content performance or other people are frustrated in expressing a dip in their content performance.

And we’ve worked with very successful content creators that have seen a dip in their performance where they on average would generate tens of millions or hundreds of millions of views a month. And typically what we go back to is what’s happening in the storytelling because oftentimes if you use a format for a long period of time, sometimes you can get lost of what actually drives the success of that format.

So one of the things again that we would do is, if that’s happening, you can pull up a successful video using that format or another creator using that format and yours and play them side by side on the same screen and see if there’s something missing. So that’s one element. The other element, it could be a mindset thing is maybe you’ve just lost [00:35:00] the enjoyment of creating content.

Maybe you’ve lost the enjoyment of using that format, and that is coming off in it. But it’s, it’s very rare that somebody is creating amazing content and has proven to use a format successfully and that it just automatically just starts to die off. There are certain times where a format can die off after a few years, but it’s, it’s pretty rare.

Uh, so most of the time that’s not the cause of the performance. So I would say 80 percent of the time you hear something about, Oh, the algorithm has changed and it’s causing issues. It has nothing to do with an actual algorithm change. I’m not going to say all the time, or you hear a lot of people saying, Oh, my account is shadow banned.

And that’s the reason. Nine times out of ten, that’s not the case. It has to deal with just a lack of performance in the content. 

Melissa: So interesting. Uh, I love this so much. I don’t do any tracking. I’m going to start tracking. I’m going to get my assistant, do a spreadsheet and put in the views. And so you [00:36:00] think the first 24 hours is the most important.

Brendan: So I’ll just kind of give you how we do it internally. And we do it with our clients in terms of how we, we, we report. Our team actually has two meetings a week, but you could have a 30 minute meeting a week where basically you have the day, the date. The title of the video, the number of shares, what is the percentage of shares to views?

And then we started tracking leads cause we do a lot of lead generation through organic and essentially literally your assistant could do this. It’ll take her like 15 minutes. It’s not a lot of time, but the sheer fact of doing that exercise and just talking through like, Oh, this one generated 200, 000 views.

That’s pretty good for us. Like what, what did we do differently? Then this one that generated 10, 000 views, or we did a video, this only generated 10, 000 views. What did we do differently than that? So the numbers itself are only telling you if something worked or didn’t work. The real part of the equation here is actually talking about the qualitative [00:37:00] elements.

That caused the success or lack thereof. Even if you just do that for 15 or 20 minutes a week, you’re going to start learning so much more about your content and start learning what it takes to succeed on these platforms. 

Melissa: Yeah, I love it. And so many people don’t do that. I mean, I don’t do that. I don’t take the time to kind of work out why that did well.

And you know, I have the conversation with myself in my head and go, Oh, it’s because of that reason. But like to really dive into the data and to take everything to the next level, you need to take this time and do this. 

Brendan: A hundred percent, because I mean, the question I ask is, would you rather have 50 videos doing 10, 000 views each or 15 videos doing a million views each?

It’s far less time and energy to produce those 15 videos. But more than that is that content is actually resonating because it wouldn’t generate a million views if it wasn’t connecting with the audience when people weren’t consuming it at, you know, a deep level. 

Melissa: Yep, so good. What else do we need to know?

So we’re going to pick a [00:38:00] format, we’re going to analyze it, we’re going to then produce some content, we’re going to capture the data, we’re going to review it, keep tweaking and iterating. What are your thoughts then, like, on Mixing it up with carousels or images. Do you just think, no, you just stick to your format.

Brendan: You know, a carousel is a format and it’s one of my pet peeves is like, you’ll see these videos. Oh, if you use this trending song, you’ll go viral. And if you dig into 99 percent of people using that trending song, it doesn’t go viral. It’s the same thing with a carousel. People say, use a carousel. You’ll go viral.

It’s not the carousel that goes viral. It’s the expression in the way that you use that carousel. Same thing with an image. The reason I say focus on a single format is just use that time to understand what it takes to perfect that format, because you’re building up a skillset. Once you’ve done it and understand how to master a single format, then you can determine whether I want to explore other [00:39:00] ones.

But if you’re trying to master three things at the same time, it’s difficult. Again, going back to the music analogy, if you were trying to master piano, xylophone and saxophone, At the same time is like, you’re probably not going to become very good at any one of those because you’re trying to do too many things.

That’s what I would kind of say to that. The one thing I do also want to say that I kind of mentioned a little bit earlier of another thing to consider is have fun with this. I know we’re kind of like diving deep into the science and nerding it out and stuff, but. It should be fun like this, like social media can and should be fun.

It’s a vehicle to kind of express yourself in a unique way to achieve your goals, to connect with people all over the world. So I just really want to reiterate that because we’re kind of going deep into the science part, but that’s a big part of this as well. 

Melissa: Yeah. So important. I’m so glad that you said that because it can feel, especially when it is.

Part of your work, you know, it can just feel like it’s another thing, but we’ve got to have fun with it [00:40:00] because people will feel that energy. They’ll feel if you’re not, they’ll feel if it’s just like something that you’re doing because you think you have to. So that energetics behind why you’re doing it and the joy factor is really important.

Brendan: A hundred percent. It is. It can feel a little bit overwhelming. It’s overwhelming. In the beginning and I’m sure there’s some people listening to this that it feels overwhelming and listen, I connect with that. I understand when I first started learning this, it can feel overwhelming, but it’s like any skill set is like just take baby steps with this and start implementing and you will learn and you will grow.

And this is no different than anything else that you learn in life. There is a skill set that you master in the beginning. It feels like you’re climbing up a huge hill, but just know that there is a method to the madness. There is a science to breaking through. It’s not just pure luck. 

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely.

Anything else that you think we need to know, besides going and reading your book and diving deeper into that there, and [00:41:00] everyone can go back and listen to our first episode together, but besides doing that, is there any other nuggets of wisdom you want to share with us? 

Brendan: Yeah, there’s one more. Before I do that, you know, just for your listeners, anybody can download a PDF or Kindle version of the book for free if they just go to hookpoint.

com forward slash Ambrosini, your last name. So we’re just giving away completely for free. If you want to dive in. The whole model, everything I talk about, we’re talking about at a surface level, but it maps out everything there. One of the last things that I’ll impart that I think is really important is what we call the generalist principle.

A lot of people have been taught this marketing strategy that was designed pre social media, and that is create a niche message for a niche audience. And that really struggles to perform as it pertains to organic social media. It can still work in paid, but as we’re talking about organic, we’re not paying for views or followers or leads or anything like that.

Again, we have to look at how do we generate millions of views on our video? [00:42:00] How do we generate millions of views on our brand on social media? Well, we have to partner with the algorithm and they want to be able to seed our content to millions of people, people that have no idea who we are, know what we talk about, our expertise, or may not have an interest in it and still grab and hold that attention.

Again, going back to Tanner Leatherstein, our client. You know, the, is it worth it format? I don’t buy Chanel handbags, but I still want to see, is it worth the money you’re doing? So as we talk about the generalist principle, it’s how do I talk to my core audience so I can hit my business goals and objectives, but also make my subject matter and my expertise.

Interested to the wider audience so that the algorithms can push it to as many people. And some people may be saying, well, Brendan, I don’t, I don’t care about having other people that are not going to buy my products service, seeing my video. That’s not the point. It’s like, let’s just say that your content today is at 10, 000 views of video.

And let’s just [00:43:00] be generous to say that 70 percent of those 10, 000 people could be the people buying your products or service. That’s your core target. But now. Let’s take it to a million views a video, and let’s just say it’s only 10 percent could be your core audience buying your product or service. We just went from 7, 000 people potentially buying our product or service, 100, 000 per video.

For people, just think about what would be the impact of your bottom line on that. I’ll give you another example. There’s a luxury real estate agent, Ryan Serhant. He just had a TV show on Netflix. His social media was successful because he understood this generalist principle. If And if you think about his core audience that drives his business, he’s selling 15 million to 250 million properties in Manhattan, New York.

It can’t get more niche than that. But he uses the generalist principle to go super viral, generate millions and millions of views a month. So he creates videos like, let me take you on a tour of a 7 million closet. Let me take you on a tour of a 250 million ranch. Anybody would be interested in [00:44:00] watching that.

Melissa: I’m like, can you send me the link? I want to watch that. 

Brendan: Exactly. So he gets millions and millions of people to watch it. And for him, if less than 1 percent is his core audience, he beats out his competition and not just beat out his competition by beats him out by like a hundred X. He’s even said he sold a 30 million property from a YouTube video.

So that’s the power of the generalist principle. It’s not about, again, going viral for the sake of viral. We’re still talking to our core audience. We’re still representing our subject matter or expertise. But it’s how do we make it interesting to anybody? Like one of the exercises that we give people is when you have an idea for a video, you know, run it by a loved one or a friend that has no interest in your subject matter.

So you can run it by a grandparent, a spouse, a friend, but somebody that has no interest in the subject matter you talk about and express the, the, the idea of the video to them. And would they get the same reaction that you said you just had of, I want to go watch the video of a 7 million closet tour.[00:45:00] 

Like that’s a real. Test in a simple exercise that you can start kind of integrating to shape your mindset in that way. 

Melissa: Oh, I love that. What was the name of the real estate guy? 

Brendan: Ryan Serhant. 

Melissa: Okay. I’m going to link to that in the show notes as well. I want to see inside a 7 million closet. Like, yes, please.

It sounds amazing. So you are generously giving us this book. Like that’s amazing. I’m so grateful. I will link to it in the show notes. There have been so many amazing tips and tricks and so much goodness in this. I’m going to re listen to this myself and take notes. I’ve just loved it so much. Is there anything else, any last parting words of wisdom that you have for us?

Brendan: Yeah, I think I just want to reiterate this because I think, you know, people listening to this just may be thinking, I don’t know that I could go viral either. I can’t see myself speaking to millions of people or my subject matter is not sexy enough. I don’t have a big team. I don’t have the skills to do it.

And I can just definitively tell from [00:46:00] my experience of doing this for so long is, you know, we work with people with no social media experience. It’s not about how experienced you are. Sometimes. Experience gets in the way because we have to, you know, get people to unlearn certain things and train them to look at social media in a different way.

It’s not about how big your team is, how fancy your equipment is. You know, we made a hand doctor go viral on Tik TOK and she’s shooting content on her iPhone and she got a book deal and a TV deal out of it. So it’s not about that. You will see the most unlikely people build an audience of millions of people.

You will see grandparents doing it. We made a gravedigger go viral. Like it doesn’t really matter like who you are, where you’re from, what your skill set is, if you really want it, it can be yours. And again, to take the daunting aspect of it, if you don’t feel comfortable in camera, it’s just imagine you’re talking to one person, the other side of the screen, you don’t have to envision millions and millions of people.

And you just get into it and you just take one step at a time. And ultimately, if you [00:47:00] follow this model, you will have success. You just have to kind of stick with it, like any skillset. 

Melissa: Yeah. Absolutely. I love that message. Thank you. That’s such a powerful thing to end on. So I love that you are a genius. I absolutely love chatting with you.

You’re so amazing. You are helping so many people. You are serving so many people with all of your incredible work. So how can I and the listeners give back and serve you today? 

Brendan: Well, I mean, if you have interest, just check out the book and you know, one of the reasons that I give it away for free is if you enjoy the book, you know, you share it with other people.

Just want to put it into as many people’s hands as possible. If there’s any people that want that extra help of the research or the strategy, they can go to hookpoint. com and just schedule a call with our team to discuss it. But I think that the most beneficial way is just go out there and create content.

Like try this process, start looking at social media. From an active experience instead of a passive experience, because every single one of my books has the same dedication. And it’s the reason I have it as I believe it [00:48:00] is. I believe there’s people all over the world. And I believe there’s people listening to this that have the power to transform the world in a very positive way with their message, with their brand, with their service, with their product.

They’re just lacking the skill set and the knowledge to be able to break through with that message. So that’s really kind of the ultimate way is just try and put some of this into practice to grow your, your message and have that impact in the world. 

Melissa: Love that. Thank you for those beautiful parting words of wisdom.

I agree. I totally agree with you. You are such a genius. I love all of your books. I love the work that you’re doing. You’re amazing. Thank you so much for coming back on and sharing and for so generously gifting everybody your book. I’m so grateful. Thank you for being here and until the next book. Hey.

Brendan: Yeah. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to connect with you again. And it was a pleasure to connect with everybody that was tuning into this. So I really appreciate their time and attention. 

Melissa: Thank you so much. How good was that? So [00:49:00] many nuggets of wisdom. I am so excited for you to take everything that he has spoken about and shared and implemented into your own life.

And I’m so excited for you to go viral. So if you got a lot out of this, please follow my show and leave me a review on Apple podcasts. If you haven’t already, please do that. It would mean absolute world to me. Send me a screenshot to hello@melissaambrosini.com or on Instagram, and I will send you a thank you meditation for just taking the time to leave that review.

I’d be so grateful if you haven’t already done that, to jump on over and do that now. Now come and tell me on Instagram what you got from this episode. I love hearing from you and I love knowing what your biggest key takeaways are. So come and share that with me. And before I go, I just wanted to say thank you so much for being here, for wanting to be the best, the healthiest and the happiest version of yourself and for showing up today for you.

You rock. Now, if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, pretty much everyone, please share it with them right [00:50:00] now. You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them, do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears.

And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word.

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