In Social Media, the Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Engagement, Engagement, Engagement!

With social media, it’s often the rising tide that lifts all boats.

If one of your videos receives a lot of engagement, then your subsequent videos will be pushed out to a larger audience.

If you continue to deliver the goods, those videos too will do well.

Recently, I asked a divisive question on my TikTok and it blew up.

👉 36k views
👉 2,250 comments
👉 765 likes
👉 24 saves

All this engagement is feeding positive signals to the algorithm.

My next videos will be pushed out to those same 36k people. Now, it’s up to me to make those videos interesting for them.

Go to ChatGPT and ask:

“I’m making videos for my business on social media and I noticed videos where I ask a divisive question get a lot of engagement, thus sending positive signals to the algorithm. What are some questions I can ask that will generate a lively debate in the comments? Please don’t ask any questions related to politics, religion, or ethics.”

NOTE: It doesn’t need to be about your brand specifically, you don’t need to show some amazing feature or benefit, or have your logo plastered everywhere. That’s not content, that’s an ad. But, it should be industry related and something your ICP would find interesting.

For example, if you are running a cybersecurity company you may ask, “What security breach will still be remembered 100 years from now? Personally, I think it would be … because… but I’m curious to know what you think.”

If you can make it visually interesting, i.e. movement, pattern interruption, animation, text on screen… you also need fast pacing, underscore with music, keep it short…

Before you post, ask yourself, is this the type of video that will get people to like, comment, share, save, repost? If not, rework the video.

You MUST have engagement or else it won’t be pushed out to a larger audience.

Do Clever or Funny Ads or Content Convert?

If someone stopped seeing your brand for 6 months, then entered the market for what you sell, would your brand come to mind? If not, you don’t have an ads problem, you likely have a branding and content problem.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, especially as I see clever or funny ads constantly being shared, praised, and celebrated online.

“This is genius.”
“This ad is so funny.”
“Whoever made this deserves a raise.”

But do clever or funny ads or content actually convert better than non-clever ones, especially when they’re only loosely (or not at all) related to the product?

Here’s where I landed.

You need a two-tiered approach:
• Entertaining content
• Strategic capture

Social algorithms reward entertainment, not value propositions.

Product pitches get suppressed.
Highly polished ads get skipped.

Entertaining content gets reach, but entertaining content alone doesn’t necessarily drive demand, recall, or sales.

If people enjoy your content but don’t remember what you sell when it matters, you’re borrowing attention… not building a brand.

The goal isn’t to choose between “fun” or “functional”, it’s to connect the two, intentionally.

Views are easier to get, but being remembered is the hard part.

Not a One-Size-Fits All Approach

A lot of people give marketing advice on social media, myself included, or praise clever or funny ads.

But what is rarely (if ever mentioned) is that it’s important to distinguish the category, and even the specific brand, this advice is geared toward. It’s not a one-size fits all approach.

Many products sell without the need for paid media, content, or branding, whereas for other companies it’s their lifeline. Take YKK zippers for instance. They have a massive share of the zipper market, yet you’ve likely never seen any form of marketing from them.

What Nike or Starbucks does or does not do may be completely irrelevant to you.

“Starbucks created a third place!” – So what, how does that help my business?

“McDonald’s arranged a bunch of phones to look like a box of their French fries!” – Cool, what do you want me to takeaway from that?

So before you copy a tactic, ask yourself: who was that strategy actually built for, and why did it work for them?

Marketing isn’t about mimicking the loudest or cleverest brands.It’s about understanding your category, your constraints, your customer, and choosing the moves that make sense for you. Not for Nike, not for Starbucks, and definitely not for a brand with a completely different set of advantages.

Continue Reading: Casey Neistat is a Master Storyteller