Yes, it is still relatively easy to go viral on TikTok.

The easiest platforms to go viral used to be TikTok and LinkedIn. But the difficulty has increased significantly for LinkedIn in the last few months.

The platform that has taken the place of LinkedIn right now is Threads. It is very easy right now to go viral on Threads.

More about Threads in another article. For now, let’s talk about TikTok.

What’s No Longer Working on TikTok

Just because it is relatively easy to go viral on TikTok doesn’t mean that you can do what you did last year or 2 years ago (to go viral) and get the same results.

No. These platforms are often a moving target. And if you are not the type that pays attention and experiments, you should stick close to someone (like me) who does.

There are two major things that people have relied on for virality on TikTok that are no longer working.

The first is polished videos. Fancy editing and impeccable style used to be the thing that moved the needle. Now, it is a bottleneck.

Super pretty videos now flop a lot. Why? I guess people are tired of them. And the TikTok algorithm has picked up on it.

By the way, the TikTok algorithm is the fastest and most advanced interest-based algorithm of all the social media platforms. It detects fast and reacts even faster.

People taking a lot of time and energy to make pretty videos when their genre doesn’t necessarily require it are flopping now. They are flopping big. And many are still confused and bewildered.

My advice to you — don’t do pretty videos.

Raw videos are winning. Super useful raw videos are killing it right now on TikTok. Stop worrying about how pretty your video looks, start worrying about this question…

Is my content really useful to somebody?

The second thing that is no longer working is creator search insights. If you are an active TikTok creator, you know what I am talking about.

This used to be the guide for content creators to see what they should make content about. They see what is trending based on how the TikTok algorithm perceives their account. And it makes suggestions on the kind of content to create next.

Now, this is not totally useless. I still take a look at it in my account. However, I don’t use it to determine the kind of content I make. I use it to understand how the TikTok algorithm currently sees my account.

The suggestions of creator search insights tell you who the TikTok algorithm is sending your content to. And that is a valuable piece of information.

But don’t use the suggestions to make new content. Instead, use it to think. Now, you have to come up with new ideas on your own. Ideas from creator search insights won’t help you much.

5 Things That Will Make You Go Viral

On TikTok, one of the things you cannot afford to take for granted is your hook.

Weak hook = weak content

Most people don’t spend enough time brainstorming hooks. If you are really serious, you should be brainstorming at least 10 alternative hooks for one piece of content.

And you must first be a pro at hooks. How good are you at writing hooks?

I have been writing catchy hooks since 2020, and I know for a fact that most people suck at writing hooks. Even big brands.

Experienced pros can fall off and start writing weak hooks when they decide to be lazy. If you get good at hooks, you will be in the top 0.1% of TikTok accounts.

Hook is a broad answer. But the 5 specific things to go viral on TikTok are:

1. Text on screen
2. The first 5 seconds
3. Purpose
4. Relatability or instant usability
5. Cliffhanger ending

The text on your screen is the first thing people read when they stumble on your content. Most people will read it as fast as they can instead of waiting for you to talk. That is a vital hook point.

The first 5 seconds of your video must give people a compelling mental thirst to keep watching.

There are 2 main content purposes on TikTok — entertainment and education. You must be clear about where your content stands and lean heavily into it.

Relatability or instant usability determines whether 200 people see it or 200k people see it.

A cliffhanger ending means you make people want to write comments after watching the whole thing. Or you end it in a way that people want to watch it again.

Conclusion

If you get these 5 things right, you will go viral on TikTok — text on screen, your first 5 seconds, purpose, relatability or instant usability, and cliffhanger ending.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Cheers!

P.S. I have taken the time to teach these principles more elabourately here — contentca.teachable.com/p/100kv

I Can Make You Go Viral on TikTok was originally published in All Things Social Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I get this question all the time in different forms.

And it often comes from startup founders, consultants, coaches, and business owners who sell services. They feel like going viral should create a crazy influx of inbound leads.

They are often disappointed when I tell them that going viral doesn’t necessarily correlate with getting a ton of leads. In fact, a more common situation is — businesses getting leads from social media posts that have fewer than 5 reactions.

The kind of posts that get potential clients knocking on your door are the kind that never go viral, IF you are in B2B.

Virality only correlates to sales in B2C. But that doesn’t mean they are useless for B2B. For B2B, they are social proof. And they serve as a very important piece in client retention.

So, the reason your amazing social media posts are not generating inbound leads to you as a B2B business is that it is NOT designed to.

Social media content is NOT designed to get you inbound leads in B2B

Now, this doesn’t say it cannot happen. It could happen. But it is an anomaly. If you build your entire business model on inbound leads from social media, you will not have a business for long.

The first problem is that most of the inbound leads will be people who don’t qualify. And the people qualified can get cold feet anytime.

Social media content is a good defense (or backup move) to go along with outbound. Let me explain…

Assume you are a business person on LinkedIn. You spend roughly 20 minutes each day on LinkedIn, catching up with important messages.

Then, you see a message from someone extending an offer to you. The offer looks good and tailored to what your business needs at the moment. What do you do next?

Do you reply immediately? No!

You go ahead to check the person’s profile. You want to know who they are and what they’ve been doing.

Now, imagine you get there and you see a rough, scanty page. You look at their recent posts, and you barely see any engagement. What would you think?

Most people would lean towards the negative. They will either ignore the message or reply in the negative. Only very few (or desperate people) will still try to answer in the positive.

Meanwhile, if they checked your profile (after the outbound message) and they see that you have a ton of followers, your posts get a lot of engagement, and you have a charming personality, more people are likely to say yes to you.

So, the social media content is mostly to support the outbound outreach for B2B. Your viral posts are to make you look good to the prospect you are pitching.

And by look good, I mean, look like you are an expert in the subject matter that you want them to pay you for.

Yes, some good leads do come inbound from content, but you cannot count on them. Lead gen for B2B comes from outbound. And if you are B2C, do paid ads too.

Paid ads also work for B2B, as long as your targeting and offer are structured right.

I rest my case.

P.S. If you want to learn how to win with social media content, take a look — contentca.teachable.com/p/100kv

Why You Are Not Getting Inbound Leads From Social Media was originally published in All Things Social Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The most important thing in social media content today is positioning.

It is not about what you say. It is not about how you say it. It is about who you are to make such a claim or statement.

If it is bold enough, you will go viral. How viral you go depends on the platform, though.

Some platforms make it easy, and some make it almost impossible.

This is why I built a guide that isn’t limited to any platform. Guaranteed to get you 100K views if you implement it properly.

The Keys to Success

To succeed this big on any platform, you need to know the following:

• The platform that is right for you and plays to your strengths
• Your ideal audience avatar, to be clear about who you are talking to
• Your niche and that which people come to you for
• What makes you unique, different, and believable
• How to pick subjects that people care about
• The viral content framework
• How to write headlines and killer hooks
• The principles of foreshadowing and how to make people linger on your content
• How to script to make sure you don’t lose momentum
• An understanding of trigger words that makes people pay attention
• The big deal about retention
• How to nail a dramatic ending that people want to see more than once
• And how to do CTAs and lead gen on your content to get business value out of your content

And of course, there is much more. I highly encourage you to give it a look, even if just to see how I have done it for myself and a couple of other people. It will be the best investment you make in your content creation this year.

100K Views

I rest my case.

I Can Make Anyone Reach 100K Views With Ease was originally published in All Things Social Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I have 169k followers on Medium. I would be lucky if my post reaches 400 views nowadays.

I have 5k followers on LinkedIn. Sometimes, my post struggles to reach 100 impressions.

You can complain and whine about it all you want. But the reality is that the era of follower count is dead. Social media is no longer social.

Let me explain…

Social Media is No Longer Social. What happened?

I can only give you my guess of how this came to be. But the reality now is that social media platforms are not designed to be social anymore.

The dawn of social media began with Facebook becoming the online place to connect with friends and acquaintances. Of course, there were iterations before Facebook, like MySpace.

But the success of Facebook led to the rise of other social platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. As the category grew, so did what people did with the platforms.

For example, the idea that you could sell on social media was very strange at first. Around 2009, when I started using Facebook, it was just a place to see what friends and colleagues were up to. Almost nobody was selling.

But today, you have Facebook Marketplace. You have Meta Business Suite. If you are not selling online today, do you even have a business?

But that’s not where it ended.

The people who jumped on the platform early and decided to be the first version of what we now call content creators quickly grew their online following.

Social media was minting its own celebrities, faster and better than TV. People started spending less time on TV and more time on social media platforms.

When it became obvious how much business successful content creators were driving, tons of people started to pursue it seriously. This led to the rise of YouTubers.

But it wasn’t just YouTube. It was everywhere. Everyone was chasing that follower count. This is because they know that once they have a high follower count, they are guaranteed some level of success.

And this led to another problem.

Once people hit a certain high follower count, it becomes easy for them to add more followers. Also, their posts will get a high reach naturally because a large percentage of their followers will see it.

Posts were distributed based on follower count. For example, if you have 10,000 followers, 70% to 80% of them would be seeing your posts regularly. This made some successful content creators complacent.

This part is according to a notion I heard from someone working in one of the big social media platforms — people who had a large following were now making mediocre content (since they know they will get the reach anyway).

It became harder for new voices making great content to break through. And hence, people started spending less time on social media. To get people to spend more time on social media, the social media platforms changed their algorithms to stop using follower counts to distribute posts.

Instead of follower count, they started using user interest. This means that the algorithm will study every user and try to feed them content that is similar to what they enjoy. And with that, people will spend more time on the platform.

That is the official narrative.

But there is a conspiracy theory version…

The Conspiracy Version

This version has some elements that I believe. I don’t believe in global coincidences, and there are some very stark coincidences in this transition of social media to interest media.

First, the rise of TikTok. TikTok was the first platform to use the new interest-based algorithm. They started with it. And that is what made their platform unique.

In 2020, TikTok usage exploded. We all know what happened in 2020 that changed the behavior of a lot of people (with regard to where they spend time).

Other social media platforms saw this explosion and blindly decided to capitalize on it too. They all changed their algorithms to match. This is the first layer of the conspiracy. But the rabbit hole is deeper if you choose to explore.

The other social media platforms weren’t performing badly relative to TikTok. TikTok was relatively new and was growing at a faster pace. It made no sense that ALL social media platforms just decided to ditch what was working for them to have a TikTok-like algorithm.

The conformity was so strong that it felt like it was an enforced order from somewhere. Even when it was to the detriment of some platforms, they still continued with it.

One of the deep layers of conspiracy is that the new algorithm was designed to help silence some voices. Ideas that the “state” does not want thriving, they can kill them in their infancy (at scale) without drawing any attention.

Previously, if a large account on a social media platform made a post, it would get a lot of reach regardless of its content. And you know that “conspiracy theories” went unhinged in 2020. And so today, it doesn’t matter how big your account is — the reach can be killed automatically.

This new algorithm gives the “state” more control over the dissemination of information.

Of course, not total control. But it is much better than what previously existed for them. Some say this is why the social media platforms can’t return to the old algorithm, even when it is obvious that the new algorithm is hurting them badly.

What This Means for You

Social media is no longer social. It is now interest-based. You are shown content that is similar to the content that you previously liked or engaged with.

This is why, as a user, you should be tactical about how you use social media. Don’t just “like” or “love” a post because you find it cool or nice. Those days are over.

You react and engage with a post so that the algorithm will keep showing you stuff like that.

And you also quickly scroll away from a post you don’t want to see more of, even if it is something you are interested in. In my case, I like to go to the options on the post and click the “do not show me posts like this again” button. All the platforms have it.

However, as a creator (and as someone who makes posts), the follower count has been dethroned. Yes, it is still very good and useful for social proof. But not so much useful beyond that.

The new king here is NICHE.

I rest my case.

P.S. To learn more about niche and how to use it to win on social media, get 100K Views — contentca.teachable.com/p/100kv

Why Your Follower Count Doesn’t Matter Anymore was originally published in All Things Social Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

One of my work hobbies right now is to find content creators (that I think are interesting) and figure out why their content is successful.

Or sometimes, figure out why it is flopping.

I have done this several times. And I never get tired of it.

Recently, I found a TikTok account that I liked. It’s a lady who tells dad jokes. That’s all she does.

She’s fairly new, but she has 10K followers already. Why?

It didn’t take me long to decipher the truth. And this is a lesson for everyone trying to make content for their business or brand…

She does only one thing.

She tells dad jokes and nothing else.

She doesn’t talk about family. She doesn’t talk about life. She doesn’t motivate or inspire. She doesn’t do any stunts. All she does is tell dad jokes.

The best way to go about content marketing on social media in 2025 is to stick to one thing and one thing only.

But as human beings, it is hard for us to do.

We want to talk about our dog. We want to talk about our vacation. We want to talk about our love life. We want to talk about politics and the economic landscape.

In fact, we cringe when we see people who know us for just one thing. We all have many sides, and we get bored with showing only one side. We get bored with talking about the same topic, again and again and again.

This is why non-personal accounts are now growing at a faster pace on social media than personal accounts. This is because when it is non-personal, you just focus on what the account is made for.

But when it is personal, we get the feeling that the achievement of the account is our own achievement. We translate people following our content to people following our person.

We make a deviation, and we get sad that no one cares about the other things we care about. All the social media platforms online are like this.

They are no longer “human to human”. They are now “interest to human”. The moment your favorite creator starts making content different from the one you liked initially, you stop seeing their posts.

It gets trickier. The moment you stop spending time on the same type of posts that you used to like, all the creators you follow who make such content are off your radar.

And our tastes as content consumers are always changing. It is never static. We consume social media like TV. We used to flip channels — now we scroll without end.

So, when we see someone or a creator we like. We like them for the content they make. We know them for one thing. The moment we know them for too many things, they start to fade from our minds.

This is unlike your neighbor (or friend), who you know their many sides. But that comes from spending a lot of time with them.

The point here is that social media is not friendship. People are not following you. They are following your content.

If you want to win on social media, talk about one thing to the exclusion of everything else.

I rest my case.

P.S. There is so much more from where this came from. If you want to learn how to win on social media, take a look — contentca.teachable.com/p/100kv

If You Want More Online Visibility, Do This was originally published in All Things Social Media on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.