Growing on Social Media is Easy

I'm going to sound arrogant for a second, but growing on social media is easy.

Most people struggle because 99% of "social media growth gurus" are leaving out what actually works.

The goal of this article is to help you ignore everything that doesn't matter, and focus on the two first principle levers that do matter. To get you out of the social media growth/make money online search, and into actually doing it.

• The first lever is doing what works from your own perspective.

• The second lever, don't run away when you hear it, is networking.

The entire reason you want to start on social media is probably because you saw someone posting about knowledge or experience that you already have, and getting a lot of attention for it.

So why can't you do the same?

You can, and Eden helps. That's the whole pitch, I wrote it in one sentence so you wouldn't have to scroll.

Beginner hell is a good opportunity, if you treat it that way

Growing on social media isn't luck based on an algorithm.

Social media is like a video game. There are specific mechanics you can learn and levers you can pull.

Beginner hell is the stage of any pursuit where you don't know any of those mechanics or levers. And so much of your attention is focused on learning them that you can't even play the game. The task in front of you seems impossible.

On social media this looks like posting into the void without gaining any followers.

And even if you do, having a social media post go viral does not mean you will make money. People treat the idea of their posts blowing up like it's going to blast money into their bank account or something. It will not. Monetization is a skill in and of itself.

I've seen creators with hundreds of thousands of followers who make $0 because they have not learned enough business, marketing, and sales to monetize.

That might sound like bad news, but it's actually good news if you're starting.

Because it means that you don't need a bunch of followers to monetize successfully. You're also in the perfect position to learn the skills that will let you build and rebuild forever. Social media is a very viable business model especially for one person and especially with AI as a support.

Lever one: do what works, from your own perspective

A big problem that beginner creators have is they always think, "Oh, I don't have anything new to say." As if people are on social media to see something new.

They're not.

If you start to reflect on how you consume content, this becomes obvious.

What happens when you watch one video on a specific topic? Your feed gets more and more videos on the same topic. You get more of the same.

Beginner creators have a romanticized misconception that making something "new" is the win condition that will make them succeed.

This is not only a mistake, it sacrifices a necessary first principle behind social media.

Repetition.

Not only do you want to watch the same things over and over again, like some kind of psychopath. You also need to create the same things over and over. Within reason, obviously.

It is from that foundation that you add your own unique spin, which could be even a 1% difference on an idea.

Everything is "standing on the shoulders of giants," so to speak.

Proof: Craig Perry's first two YouTube videos

These are his first two YouTube videos ever. Ever.

They're up to 533k views and 151k views. They've been steadily growing for months.

He did what works from his own perspective.

Look up how to remember everything you read in the YouTube search bar and you'll see 10 to 20 iterations of those videos.

How to become dangerously self-educated is a bit more unique, but it uses the same validated structure as "how to become dangerously articulate," "how to become dangerously confident," etc.

And it wasn't a copy. He pulled from his own experience, from his own perspective. It's his own opinion on how to do it.

The first lever is to study what works and create your own opinion on it.

That's how you start practicing writing good content.

Lever two: networking

The second lever, you're going to hate this word, but it's networking.

If you're at the very start, in beginner hell, posting into the void, you can't expect the algorithm to just launch you into the ether and give you a ton of followers. Especially on certain platforms like Twitter/X where the algorithm is kind of non-existent.

I guess you can expect it, but your expectations will be brutally shattered.

Followers come from people seeing your post on their phone and then clicking your profile and being interested enough to follow you.

If the algorithm is like the lottery, and people aren't going to see your post on their timeline organically, how can we manually get people to see your posts?

You have to think, where is the source of followers or people on social media?

It's in other people's audiences.

You can get in front of other people's audiences for free.

Eden has a free plan btw. I just felt like I should mention that.

All it boils down to is making friends.

I know that sounds simple because it is.

30 minutes to write, 30 minutes to reach out

Yes, that means that you're going to have to talk to people. On social media that happens in the DMs or in the replies, but one-on-one, it's in the DMs.

For this to work for you, I would recommend prioritizing it.

I would recommend time blocking an hour on your calendar so that you actually sit down and do it.

The first 30 minutes should be for researching validated posts and writing out ideas and actually drafting the posts. (Eden can help with this half, the second half is talking to people. I looked into it, and there's no app for that...yet.)

The other 30 minutes should be reaching out to people to get those posts shared.

The goal here is to make actual friends, because what do friends do? They support each other, they have a similar set of values, and they're usually working toward the same goal.

So if you have like five people that you're in communication with and you create a really good piece of content, then you send it to them and you say, "Hey, I put a lot of time into this. I think you'll resonate with it. I think your audience will resonate with it. Can you share it?"

It's extremely likely they will share it.

Sharing something takes no effort. It's not a big deal at all. But if the content sucks, then they're not going to want to do that. So, go back to lever one.

If you do this right, this is how you get someone with a 50,000 follower account to share your post. Now your post is in front of 50,000 people and you didn't rely on the algorithm. That's how you grow, if you turn this into a repeatable process.

Here's the process.

The seven-step DM system

Step 1: Find someone you want to DM

The first step is to find someone that you want to DM.

Obviously you shouldn't just reach out to anyone and everyone. This should be a small curated group of people that you're going to strategize and grow with over the course of 6 to 12 months or probably even longer.

So where do you find these people that you want to DM?

On social media. You kind of just take it easy. You scroll. If you see an account that you like, make an effort to DM them. Make an effort to engage. Make an effort to be seen by them and for you to show that you're supportive.

When you find someone you want to DM, click their following/followers lists to see people who are similar to them, and just go through them and see if you like any of their content.

Step 2: Send simple praise

The second thing you do is send them simple praise.

To quote Dan Koe

"Send simple praise. It's like how girls compliment each other's shoes or something like that. And then they're like, 'Oh my god, girl, where'd you get those?'"

The simplest thing you can do here is to just send a single sentence.

If someone wrote a post about how most people quit social media too early, and you've had similar experiences with that, you'd be like, "Damn, that's true. I actually quit like four times and now I'm back at it. How long have you been a creator?"

The only other tip I can give with this step is to avoid corporate speak like the plague. You're not here to connect with someone on LinkedIn...unless you're on LinkedIn, I guess.

You're here to text them like a friend.

Step 3: Show interest in them

What you're trying to do is drill into something that is important to them. For another creator, it's usually what they're building.

You can ask them, "What are you building?"

Or say something like "I see that you're building Eden. How's that going? What's the next feature you're going to drop? I actually looked into it. It looks super cool. I'm going to start using it."

Or "Oh, I was on your Substack and I went back like a year ago and you had this really good article that I read through and this part really resonated with me. Where did you come up with that?"

Just make sure it's something genuine.

Step 4: Show you are useful

Step four is to show that you are useful.

This is really where the power comes into play, but it's also the part that trips people up the most, because they don't think that they have any value to provide.

The thing here is that you personally don't need any value to provide. You just need to be someone who can connect the other person with some form of value. That can be a resource. That can be a person. If you meet another person that you think that person should meet, just be like, "Dude, I think you should reach out to this guy. He's really cool. You guys would hit it off."

Like if someone was working on an AI powered content creation and monetization platform and I saw a YouTube video about AI and how it's going to disrupt tech and how this is the way forward, I would just send them the video and be like, "Hey, you might find this interesting." I know you're building XYZ. Maybe this will impact it a bit."

That's when the law of reciprocity kicks in and they feel the need to return the favor.

If you give something, someone else is going to feel the need to give something in return.

So all you really need to do at that point is just ask, which we'll get to.

Step 5: Get on a call (optional, but highly recommended)

Step five, which is an optional step, but highly recommended, is to just get on a call with the person.

If you were meeting a friend in person you'd hang out with them one on one.

But online, you kind of just be like, "Yo, we should catch up on a call sometime and talk about business." That's it. And then you get on a call and then you come out of it with a much deeper connection.

Step 6: Keep sending resources, or check in

Step number six is to continue sending more resources or to just check in. Send them a video that you thought was interesting, send them an article, send them a tweet and be like, "Oh dude, this is exactly what we were talking about the other day." You just kind of maintain a faint connection while providing value to them.

Please don't spam them.

Step 7: Ask

Now step seven, finally.

You don't need to go through all seven steps to do this. It can just come naturally in the conversation. But this is where you ask, and there are a few things you can ask.

You can ask them to join a group chat with other people you've been talking to. Now you have this really powerful group chat where you can share strategies.

Or you send them one of your posts that you put a lot of time into.

Or you can just ask them questions.

This is also how you can come up with content ideas. In your conversation, something comes up like an inspiring problem or idea and then you can write about that thing, and send the post to them saying, "Hey, I just wrote this up. It was inspired by a previous conversation. If you hit it with a share, I'll hit you back at some point."

Or just be honest.

My favorite outreach strategy in general is just brutal honesty and be like, "Hey dude, I'm really trying to grow. If you could share this, that would be awesome. If not, absolutely no worries at all. I'm not expecting anything."

The whole system

It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to happen over the course of two weeks, four weeks, 3 months, but it will compound and you'll definitely see some growth out of this because these aren't levers that you need to guess at.

They're just levers that you pull. It's just an action that you do and you get better at.

It's a skill.

Not that you're going to DM 500 people, but if you DM five people a day for 30 days or 60 days, it's a lot of freaking people. And if one isn't kind enough or close enough of a friend to share one of your posts, then you're doing something wrong.

Speaking of building a network, we’re starting a new community for anyone who is interested in growing alongside Eden, kind of like a partnership program. If you’re interested send a DM!