Video of the Day27:39Kallaway · Tutorial
How to Make ANY Topic Addictive on Social Media (The Illusion of Novelty)
A 27-minute masterclass in manufacturing perceived novelty, and a live demonstration of the exact framework it teaches.
June 18thThe argument in one line.
As AI drives content supply toward infinity, winning shifts from producing more to owning a defensible edge: memorable single-video CTAs, category-topping quality, and formats that are slow or expensive to copy.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- A creator or marketer building a personal brand or business through short-form or long-form content who wants a framework for standing out as AI-generated content increases.
- Someone running paid or organic content who wants to rethink funnel strategy around single-video conversion instead of multi-video series.
- A creator deciding which platform to prioritize (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube) as a primary home base.
- Anyone frustrated by having their content copied or reposted without credit and wanting a practical response.
SKIP IF…
- You are not making content to build an audience or business - this is a growth/marketing playbook, not general AI commentary.
- You are looking for hands-on AI tool tutorials - this is strategy and mindset, not a software walkthrough.
The full version, fast.
As AI collapses the cost of producing content, supply is exploding and audience memory is shrinking, so the video argues six shifts define who wins. Treat every single video as a standalone conversion unit driving to a lead magnet, since viewers rarely remember prior videos. Aim to be the unambiguous highest-quality creator in a narrow micro-niche rather than chasing broad reach. Expect viral outlier growth to keep happening but do not chase it; consistency and durability (the Lindy Effect) predict long-term survival better than one explosive spike. Content theft is now unavoidable, so defend with formats that are hard to replicate: in-person shoots, longer-form video, and personal, non-generic ideas. Differentiate by remixing formats from outside your own niche instead of copying competitors inside it. Finally, prioritize Instagram as a home platform for most creators, and build content types further from AI's reach (mid/long-form video, podcasts, livestreams) for durability.
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00:00 – 01:05
01 · Cold open
States the thesis: AI is rewriting the rules of social media for brands and creators; previews six shifts.
01:05 – 04:29
02 · Rule 1: Flashbang Brain
Viewers forget short-form content almost instantly; only short-term micro-memory and long-term facial recognition survive. Tactic: treat every video as a standalone CTA-driven marketing agent.
04:29 – 08:24
03 · Rule 2: Be the Gold Standard
With infinite AI supply, only the best creator in a micro-niche cuts through. Four components of best content are defined.
08:24 – 09:57
04 · Micro-niches and content-product alignment
How to pick a micro-niche: filter every content idea by whether it moves the target buyer toward the outcome your product delivers.
09:57 – 13:11
05 · Rule 3: The Explosivity Factor
The Kumar method case study of 0 to 1M followers in five days; algorithmic reach now has no ceiling, but outlier virality is atypical and should not be chased.
13:11 – 16:20
06 · The Lindy Effect
Durability and longevity predict future survival better than a single explosive spike; McDonald's vs. Dave's Hot Chicken as an example.
16:20 – 19:09
07 · Rule 4: The Stealing Economy
Content theft and ripping is now unavoidable; the only defense is originality that is hard and expensive to replicate.
19:09 – 21:40
08 · Rule 5: Personal brand differentiators
Three differentiation levers - visual, originality, tactical implementability - and transpositioning formats in from outside your niche.
21:40 – 23:42
09 · Rule 6: Formats and services
Platforms are diverging: Instagram is the best home base, followed by LinkedIn; TikTok has limited value beyond commodity/depth-building; YouTube is best for long-term lead gen but hard to start cold.
20:59 – 22:00
10 · Content type risk ranking + sign-off
Ranks content types by AI-disruption risk from short text/image (most at risk) to livestreams (least at risk); recommends 3-6 months of short-form before layering in YouTube.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- Viewers retain almost nothing about specific videos they watched even a day earlier - only a short-term memory of the last 30 seconds and a long-term facial-recognition impression of the creator survive.
- Every video should be treated as an individual marketing agent aimed at one CTA, not a chapter in a multi-video funnel viewers are assumed to follow.
- A creator grew an Instagram marketing account from 3,000 to 33,000 followers in fifty days by focusing every video on driving email signups rather than views.
- In a market flooded with AI-generated supply, the only sustainable strategy is to be the highest-quality creator in the smallest defensible niche, not the broadest one.
- An elderly retired accountant account gained a million followers in five days off five videos, proving algorithmic reach now has effectively no ceiling for the right content.
- Outlier viral moments are, by definition, atypical, and chasing them is a trap: most creators who study them get discouraged instead of inspired.
- The Lindy Effect implies that content and brands that have already survived a long time are statistically more likely to keep surviving than newer, hotter ones.
- Content theft - full video reposts, script rips, and thumbnail copies - is now a permanent creativity tax rather than a solvable problem.
- The best defense against content theft is originality that is expensive to replicate: in-person sets, long-form video, and ideas rooted in personal, non-generic experience.
- The highest-ROI differentiation move is remixing formats from outside your own niche rather than studying and copying competitors inside it.
- AI disruption moves left to right across a content-type spectrum: short text and images are most at risk, while long-form video, podcasts, and livestreams are the most durable.
- Instagram is positioned as the best home platform for most creators because of algorithm maturity and its Manychat-style link ecosystem for converting viewers into leads.
- YouTube is described as the best platform for long-term lead generation and sales but the hardest platform to start cold, favoring creators who already have a runway of prior videos.
- The recommended sequencing for new creators is 3-6 months of short-form video first to build fundamentals, then layering in YouTube afterward.
Treat every video as a standalone conversion unit, not a chapter in a series.
CONTENT STRATEGY
As AI collapses the cost of producing content, winning comes down to owning a defensible edge - single-video conversion, category-topping quality, and formats too slow or expensive to copy.
- Design every single video to drive one clear action (like an email opt-in), since viewers rarely remember or return for a follow-up video.
- Assume every new viewer has zero context on you or your niche - each video needs to work as a complete, standalone story.
- Pursue the smallest niche that still aligns with your specific offer rather than chasing the broadest possible audience.
- Filter content ideas by one question: does this move my ideal buyer one step closer to the outcome my product delivers?
- Do not chase outlier viral moments - they are statistically rare, and comparing your growth to them is more likely to cause you to quit than to help you win.
- Favor consistency and longevity over one explosive spike; content and brands that have already survived a long time are more likely to keep surviving.
- Expect content theft to be a permanent cost of reaching a large audience, not a solvable problem - plan your format mix around it instead of fighting it.
- Invest in content that is expensive to replicate: in-person production, longer-form video, and ideas rooted in specific personal experience.
- Look outside your own niche for formats and hooks to adapt - studying only direct competitors creates a race to sameness.
- Prioritize durable content types (long-form video, podcasts, livestreams) over easily-diluted ones (short text, images) if you want staying power.
- If starting from zero, build short-form fundamentals for three to six months before adding a long-form platform like YouTube.
Terms worth knowing.
- Flashbang Brain
- The idea that viewers' memory of a short-form video is wiped almost immediately after watching, similar to how a flashbang disorients and erases short-term recall.
- Gold Standard (content)
- A positioning goal where a creator aims to be the single best-quality producer of content in their specific niche, judged on value, originality, clarity, and polish.
- Explosivity Factor
- The observation that algorithmically-engineered content can now reach hundreds of millions of people within days, producing outlier viral growth with no historical ceiling.
- Lindy Effect
- A concept stating that the future life expectancy of a non-perishable thing (an idea, brand, or piece of content) is proportional to how long it has already existed.
- Stealing Economy
- The current environment where content, scripts, and even full videos are routinely copied or reposted by other accounts with little or no attribution, treated as an unavoidable cost of reaching a large audience.
- Transpositioning
- Deliberately borrowing content formats, hooks, or storytelling structures from a different niche and adapting them to your own, rather than copying direct competitors.
- Micro-niche
- The smallest audience segment that still aligns tightly with a specific product or offer, allowing precise targeting instead of chasing broad reach.
Things they pointed at.
12:00channelKumar method (viral account case study)
17:30linkContent department post on the Kumar method
17:55linkNewsletter: Kumar method growth principles
14:50productSandcastles (creator's own product - Collections + Global Search features)
21:40linkNewsletter: non-obvious YouTube principles (45-minute bible)
Lines you could clip.
00:15
“Social media is gonna look completely different in the age of AI.”
01:15
“It's literally as if after every video you watch, a flashbang goes off and clears your memory completely.”
04:05
“Everything in the middle assume zero memory and zero recall.”
07:10
“In a sea of infinite supply, the only people that will cut through consistently over time are the ones that set the standard for their category.”
08:25
“Most people's mindset is I wanna do the least to get the most... I prefer the mindset of I wanna be the best to get the most.”
14:10
“The entire content game is just about compounding reps and increasing your durability over time.”
18:05
“The dumbest thing to do in an era where anyone can copy and steal is for you to copy and steal.”
21:30
“Remixing formats from outside your niche is the highest ROI. That's where all the alpha is.”
Word for word.
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00:00Social media is gonna look completely different in the age of AI. For brands, for creators, for anyone that's using content to build a business. We're entering the next generation of personal branding and audience building, and the rules are being completely rewritten.
00:13Now the good news is this shift is creating a bunch of new ways to win that just weren't possible before. I know this because I spend all day on the cutting edge of content, marketing, and distribution. I have a million followers, I've done billions of views, and I'm starting to see trends and patterns that are not obvious to the average person, but are gonna create massive opportunities over the next twelve months.
00:33So in this video, I'm gonna walk through the six biggest social media shifts and really rules that are being rewritten as content changes because of AI. And like always, for each one, I'll break down the strategy and the exact tactics for how you can shift your content to take advantage. Alright.
00:48The first big social media shift that I'm seeing is what I call flash bang brain, and this one is really important to understand. If you spent any time on social media recently and you've watched short form videos, you'll know exactly what I'm about to say. People's short term memory and their ability to retain what they just watched is absolutely shot.
01:05For example, can you name even one short form video that you saw in the last day on Instagram, TikTok, or any other platform? Probably not. I call this phenomenon flashbang brain.
01:15It's literally as if after every video you watch, . Now I'm not here in this video to talk about if social media is good or bad for society. That's not my department.
01:27Is social media the greatest marketing vehicle ever invented? Yes. Is social media the greatest opportunity for someone with zero advantages to be able to reach millions of people for free?
01:37Yes. So whether you care about the flash bangification of society or not, I'm just here to play the ball as it lies and figure out how to win based on the conditions in the field in front of me. And to me, winning is figuring out how to use content to grow a personal brand or business.
01:52So the question is, knowing that this is happening and that people literally cannot remember what they watched five minutes ago, how do you take advantage of this flash bangification effect that's going on? Here's how I think about it.
02:02There are only two buckets of memories that people have when they watch stuff on social media. They have super short term micro memories. Literally, I can remember the last thirty seconds of what I saw while I'm on that same video, and then super long term facial recognition.
02:17Over the long term, your brain builds this like facial mosaic, where if I've seen dozens of your videos, can kind of piece together your face even if I don't remember your name. Everything in the middle assume zero memory and zero recall.
02:29So to me, this means a few things. For one, you have to assume every new viewer has never seen you before. They have no context on you, no context on your niche, your business, no priors, nothing.
02:40And so you have to approach storytelling as if this one video is the first and last time they might ever come across your stuff. Now second, and this is a big one, you wanna be a lot more conscious at trying to convert a viewer down your funnel and into a CTA for some lead magnet on every single video. And this doesn't mean selling on every single video, but it means using a lead magnet to capture their email and ramp them to another platform.
03:04Before, I was so focused on the medium term, like how many videos could I get them to watch over a month on a single topic. And like out of every 10, maybe one or two, I would try to drive them to a lead magnet. But I don't see it that way anymore because their medium term memory is so shot.
03:20So now for me, I view every video like an individual marketing agent. Overall, of course, I wanna accrue trust to the long term mosaic, but my number one goal is to use each individual video to get as many people to give me their email in exchange for a lead magnet CTA or product that I can because I need to ramp them off this , the feeds, into a slower medium that I control more of, their email.
03:45You just can't count on them watching multiple episodes of a series. You can't even count on them remembering you from one video to the next. And if you think about it, this is actually kind of freeing because it means you can now approach every single video on its own as one entity around a topic with the goal of driving someone to a CTA, and you can measure how effectively that one video on its own performed.
04:06So for example, let's say I have a product based around storytelling. I'm gonna make a video on storytelling. I'm gonna assume they don't know me.
04:12They don't know anything about storytelling, and my goal is to come up with something so good on storytelling, so tantalizing and captivating that they want to comment the word storytelling to get more of whatever I have to say. And that approach creates a much more elevated bar for how you attack your content to maximize content product alignment.
04:31Now to be clear, and I wanna say this again, nine times out of 10 or maybe even 99 times out of a 100, when I say drive the video to conversion, I'm not talking about asking for a sale. I'm still giving them net additional information via lead magnet, but I'm trying to get as many emails in exchange for that lead magnet as I can.
04:48And like I said, I'm doing that because I want to get them from the chaos of the feed into the relative calmness of the email inbox. Now this is the strategy I'm running on my Callaway marketing account on Instagram right now, and it is absolutely crushing. I've gone from, 3,000 to 33,000 followers in, fifty days, millions of views, and most importantly, tens of thousands of emails.
05:08I literally only care about email conversion and getting someone from the video off to a platform that I own, and doing that as effectively and as efficiently as possible on every single video. If you wanna learn exactly how I'm doing this, that system to drive to conversion, I've got links below. Alright.
05:22Social media rule number two, and this is really a macro mindset shift, is to become the gold standard. And let me explain what I mean by this. Everybody watching this wants to use social media to grow some personal brand or business.
05:34And a lot of people that I've talked to are starting to get afraid of what that might look like in the future as AI content starts proliferating through. To win with content, I view everything through one single principle, become the gold standard. The gold standard means you're putting out the absolute best content in your category.
05:50And by best, I mean the following things. Number one, you're talking about things that are extremely interesting and valuable for your core audience. Number two, you are sharing perspectives that are novel and non obvious.
06:01Number three, you're delivering things in super clear language that everyone can understand. And number four, you are packaging the visuals and the format with as much polish as you possibly can. This doesn't mean crazy edits.
06:12It means you're executing as high of a level of quality as you can for whatever format you choose. In a sea of infinite supply, the only people that will cut through consistently over time are the ones that set the standard for their category. My only goal when I make content across any of my three channels, my tech short form, my marketing short form, or my marketing long form, is that I wanna be the gold standard in that category.
06:34I wanna be the absolute best with every video I make. The best information, the best quality, the best clarity, the best visuals, everything the best. The aim mindset wise is to be so much better than the competition that when a viewer sees your video, they can't help but actually lock in and wipe that memory problem away and really focus.
06:52That's how good your content needs to be. Now to get there, I have to hold myself to an insanely high standard every single day and show up trying to improve and get a little bit better with each rep. That is what it takes to set the standard.
07:04Now if you approach the content game with this mindset, it's kinda like the saying of shooting for the stars and hitting for the moon. You pretty much can't lose when you're reaching for that level of quality. Now, of course, if you're a beginner and you're hearing me say this and you're looking at the skill gap between where you are today and where the standard should be, you're probably thinking, bro, just give me something tactile I can actually use.
07:23Like, this is way too theoretical. But just remember, even I started at zero. Here are some of the earliest videos I posted.
07:29Look at how bad these are. There was a day where I didn't know any of this. So this is the really important part.
07:36Aiming to be the gold standard is more of a mindset than a destination. You just wanna train yourself to believe that you can attack the content with such a high standard for quality that you're not willing to accept anything less. And when you do that, your content will get a lot better, a lot faster.
07:52Most people's mindset is I wanna do the least to get the most. And that can work once you have established credibility and traction and systems built, but in a sea of abundant supply, doing the least to get the most will not work anymore. I prefer the mindset of I wanna be the best to get the most.
08:08And so if you can shift your mind to try to be the gold standard in your micro niche, you're gonna have a lot of success. Now one point on the micro niches term that I keep saying, let me just explain that. The goal with anyone using content to grow a business is that you wanna own the minimum sized category that would align with the offer you're selling.
08:26Content audience product alignment is the key. The targeting with these algorithms is getting so good that it will be able to find whoever you wanted to find over a long enough time horizon if you stay consistent.
08:37So your focus should not be to try to get a huge amount of views and instead to stay super specifically relevant from a topic perspective for the niche you're trying to target. And this means the following. First, ask yourself what product or offer am I trying to sell?
08:52Second, what is the outcome my buyer wants most? Ideally, the product you're selling helps them get towards that outcome. And third, every time you make a piece of content, ask yourself, will this, if they watch it, help them get one step closer toward achieving the outcome they want?
09:06If yes, make it. And if no, don't make it. This should be the filtering you use to help decide what you talk about and who you talk about it for.
09:15Ironically, I think the more competitive things get, the more of these micro niches will open up because the algorithm targeting is getting so good that these new pockets of reaching a 100,000 or 500,000 people become apparent that weren't before. So all you have to do is really hone in on what outcome you're trying to drive with your product, and then stay super disciplined in making content that will add value for the buyer to get that outcome.
09:39And that will work even in the era of AI. Alright. Social trend number three is what I call the explosivity factor.
09:45If you spent time on social media in the last few weeks, you've probably seen this account, the Kumar method. Long story short, Kumar is an elderly retired Indian accountant who went from zero to a million followers in just five days off five videos, mostly because of the juxtaposition of what you thought he'd be like based on how he looks and how the videos actually are.
10:04It is an absolute masterclass for whoever his son or daughter that put this together behind the scenes. I'm assuming maybe it was him. So kudos to you if that was you, but whoever you have running the content, masterful job.
10:14Now if you wanna read my thoughts breaking down exactly why he was able to grow so fast and the principles that you could apply in any niche. I actually wrote a post about it in content department. I'll link it down below.
10:24But the big takeaway for me here and kind of like the new rule that this proves we're in for social media is that we've entered this era of explosive growth or the era of explosivity, where essentially the right content strategy, if engineered correctly, can literally reach hundreds of millions of people in just a week. There is no limit for how fast you can grow and how much attention you can get if you're able to engineer one of these moments.
10:47But I will say the takeaway from this example is a very sharp double edged sword because so many people see this and they get jealous, they get bummed out, they start comparing their slower growth or even fast relatively to nothing close to the five day rocket ship that was Kumar. In this era, the outlier anomalies like Kumar are by definition very atypical, and you watching this are almost certainly not going to be able to unlock these types of results.
11:13And that is completely okay, but you have to accept it. The entire content game is just about compounding reps and increasing your durability over time. And truly, the only thing that makes you lose is when you stop posting.
11:24So if you see someone like the Kumar method and you get inspired, awesome. But if it makes you jealous or sad or bummed, then you stop posting, then that is a huge loss that is causing you to fail. I like to think of personal brands through the lens of this thing called the Linde effect, and this is a concept from business and science.
11:40It states that the life expectancy in the future of nonperishable things like ideas or books or businesses is proportional to their current age. More or less, if something has been alive for a long time, there's a higher probability that it will be alive or survive for a much longer time.
11:56So for example, McDonald's, the food chain, has been around for eighty six years. That has a higher probability of being around for the next eighty six years than something like Dave's Hot Chicken, which is only nine years old. Now please, if you're a Dave's Hot Chicken fan, don't come for me in the comments.
12:09All legendary brands started somewhere, and so, of course, Dave's has the chance to go the distance. But this is just to say, in principle, longevity and durability are a great predictor of future success. It's the same thing with content.
12:21You don't really wanna burn so bright, so hot, so fast. Because chances are if this same thing happened to you, like what happened to Kumar, you wouldn't have the ego discipline to be able to handle when things started reverting back to the average, and that would make you freak out, and then you would end up quitting. You also likely wouldn't have the offer stack or systems to even do anything with that traffic in the first place.
12:41So as cool as it looks, it's actually not as great as it seems. But just realize that these explosive moments in this era of infinite AI will keep happening at an increasing rate, but don't let those detract you from being motivated to keep going if you don't have the same results. These are the exception, not the rule, and so don't anchor your expectations to them.
13:01But, of course, if you wanna understand the exact ingredients that Kumar used and apply some of those for yourself, I've linked that newsletter below. Alright. Social media trend number four in the AI era is called the stealing economy.
13:11And this isn't so much a rule, more so an observation and what to do about it. We have clearly entered the stealing economy when it comes to social media. I don't know what happened, but all of a sudden, all these little twerks will just rip your content word for word, the thumbnail, the title, the script.
13:26Sometimes they even download the exact video with your face, reupload it, credit you in the comments, and then just try to engagement farm on that. It's happened to me more times than I can honestly count. I actually keep a list personally of all the people that have ripped my stuff word for word.
13:40Special shout out and his team for being the greatest repurposes of my content. Appreciate you for your service. All jokes aside, the stealing economy is something that cannot be reversed and will only just keep happening.
13:51The truth is it is very frustrating for people to spend all their time coming up with original ideas to just have their stuff stolen, 90% of that ripped from them with zero attribution. It happens.
14:01I get it. It's gonna keep happening. So what do we do about it?
14:04Here's my take. First off, this is just a creativity tax that you have to pay in order to play the game. To have the right to reach millions this freely and this easily, there are some costs, and this is one of those taxes.
14:15So you kinda just have to accept that it's gonna happen and move on. I will say though, and I'm speaking directly, if you're someone that just straight copies people's content, a, you're a scumbag, and b, what do you really think is gonna happen? Taking their content, getting millions of views, and then driving people to a service that you don't have the expertise to execute on, it's just gonna be a Ponzi scheme to nowhere.
14:34So if you're stealing people's content and you think that's the best way to grow, stop doing that. It won't be the best way to grow. To the people that are actually making the original ideas.
14:41Here's the thing. Over time, as people steal more and more, you're gonna have to find a way to make stuff that is harder and harder to steal. And that means these three things.
14:50Number one, more in real life content or sets that are just harder to replicate. Number two, more longer form videos that even if someone wanted to steal and they wanted to replicate the full thing, regenerate with AI, it would just cost so many credits and so much time and compute that they'd be prohibited from doing that.
15:06Number three is more outside the box ideas based on your personal experience. You wanna try to come up with these n of one concepts that people just can't rip and steal because it doesn't make sense for their background and their environment. I will say there is a massive difference between studying what's working for people, extracting the principles and formats, and then fully remix and applying them for yourself.
15:27That is the gold standard for how to research and figure out what's working. That is very different from straight up stealing word for word the entire video, the entire script. I'll just say this.
15:37The dumbest thing to do in an era where anyone can copy and steal is for you to copy and steal. You'll just be a derivative of a derivative of a derivative. You don't wanna do that.
15:46Maybe eventually, there'll be some sort of cryptographic fingerprinting, some digital mark where we can automatically tie back ideas to the original creator. For now, it's the Wild West, and the best way to win is always gonna be originality.
15:58Alright. Social media trend number five is how you actually differentiate your personal brand in this AI era. Lot A of people ask, how can I continue to differentiate as more and more supply comes online?
16:08And I actually made a video breaking this down. It's called the new era of personal branding. I'll link it below if you wanna check it out.
16:13There are essentially three ways you can angle your personal brand to cut through in any category. Number one is with visual differentiation. Number two is with more originality, and number three is by being more tactically implementable or, of course, a combination of all three.
16:27As we progress, there's just gonna be more and more derivative clones as I just talked about, and so you wanna try to bias towards one of those three areas to try to be one of the best in your category. That's how you could differentiate. Now the smartest thing you can start doing right now to try to improve tactically across those three categories is what I call transpositioning.
16:46There are lots of people that spend time studying the competitors in their own niche. But like I said, that's just gonna create this gnarly culture where it's a race to the bottom. Everyone's saying the same thing about the same topic.
16:56The alpha and the better way is to remix inspiration from outside your niche and bring it back over. For example, if you're in the cooking niche, what are all the formats in the fitness niche that people are using that you could bring over and adapt to cooking?
17:09Or if you're in the beauty niche, how are all the top people in productivity explaining their concepts in a way that's resonating? Could you take some of those storytelling structures and apply it to beauty? Then we actually launched this pretty cool feature in Sandcastles called collections where we're hand curating all the best examples of formats, visual hooks, signature series, and editing styles or visual layouts across every niche.
17:30So these are like little handpicked visual libraries that give you a bunch of exposure to different creators across other niches that you might not have seen. There are over a 100 different collections on Sandcastles now, and we're constantly updating and adding new stuff every week. If you're a Sandcastles user, you get access to all those collections included with your membership.
17:46And even if you're not a Sandcastles user, I've linked one of the collections below that you can check out for free. Also, have another feature for this is really good called global search. If you go to the videos tab, in the filters pane, you can click that little globe icon, which lets you search across millions of the top videos that we have in the database.
18:02And what I like to do is search by keyword. So you could take a format like ranking and literally search the word ranking, and then set the time date for last three months, sort by views, and that'll give you the best examples across all different niches of ranking videos from the last three months. You could also do this by topic.
18:18So you could search for a specific word like backpacking, and then see how are all the people executing across different formats for backpacking. How can I apply that to my niche?
18:26So this is just another way to get exposure to formats from other niches that you can transposition over without having to scroll. But the point is remixing formats from outside your niche is the highest ROI. That's where all the alpha is.
18:38If everybody's looking inside, you should start looking outside and bring it back in. Alright. The last shift and new rule for social media is what I call formats and services.
18:46It is super clear there's a bigger divergence happening, a split across social media platforms. Instagram is now very different from TikTok, which is very different from LinkedIn, is very different from YouTube. They're all diverging.
18:57The highest value you want to build on by far is Instagram, and that's both because of the maturity of the algorithm, but also the robust many chat common to click ecosystem where you can actually get people from content to leads and sales pages.
19:11If you're gonna build on only one platform, your home platform should be Instagram for most people. The second highest would be LinkedIn just based on the average value of the average user, but the video product is much newer and the link ecosystem does not work the same way as Instagram. I see almost no value in TikTok unless you're building a consumer commodity product or you're just yapping to accrue personal brand depth in whatever niche you're talking about.
19:32And YouTube is obviously amazing, but long form is very different from short form. I would say Facebook is up there with Instagram, but it of course depends on your demo. Not everybody is playing on Facebook.
19:41So when it comes to platforms, that's kind of how I see the social media world. Right now, Instagram is king. Now on the content type side, the actual types of content you can make, this is how I see it playing out.
19:50AI is gonna come like a wave across the lowest, easiest to replicate formats across from left to right across the screen. So starting from the left, short form text is most at risk, then image, then short form entertainment videos, then short form education videos, then long form text, then medium form YouTube videos like this, then long form YouTube videos like podcasts, and then finally live streams.
20:13To be clear, you can still win with all of these right now. AI content's actually not as mature or far ahead as many people in the AI bubble would like you to believe. But it's pretty clear that the supply is gonna continue to rise from left to right on the screen.
20:25And it's not that you're gonna lose because you're out competed on quality, it's that you're gonna lose because of dilution. The supply just drowns you out. So the goal if you want staying power is to try to be as far on the right of this spectrum as possible.
20:37YouTube with mid form and long form is by far the easiest to protect. I will say YouTube is incredibly hard to start from scratch. We had a pilot academy, and it's clear that the people who have already spent a couple years on YouTube can really grow with the right information.
20:50But if you've never ever started on YouTube, it is a big bear to be your first content platform. So what I recommend for people is this, if you're starting with content, start with short form video and sprint for three to six months to build your content fundamentals. Then after six months, you can decide to add on YouTube or swap from shorts to longs, but now you have that content baseline, so it's a lot easier to tackle.
21:11This is the guidance I tell pretty much everyone in the content world. Shorts are by far easier, but YouTube is king by far for lead gen and sales. If you're interested in learning how I run my YouTube system, like how I run this whole channel, I actually put together a deep dive of the most non obvious YouTube principles that nobody talks about.
21:26It's basically like a forty five minute bible for the most important things to focus on on YouTube. I'll link it below if you're interested. Alright, guys.
21:32That is all I've got for this video. As always, I'm trying my absolute best to give you the non obvious, most interesting stuff to help you grow your personal brand and eventually monetize, turn the views into leads and sales. If you're trying to do that, whether you're a business owner, marketer, or creator, you can probably tell this is gonna be one of the most valuable channels you could possibly watch.
21:49So please make sure to like, subscribe, and check out all the free stuff I have in the description. I'm just giving a lot of stuff away because I really wanna help as many people grow as possible. Alright.
21:57We will see you guys on the next one. Peace.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A million-follower marketing creator opens with a blunt claim: the rules of social media are being rewritten by AI, and most of what worked before is about to stop working. What follows is six named shifts, each with a mechanism and a tactic attached.
Named ideas worth stealing.
02:00model
Flashbang Brain - Two Buckets of Memory
- Super short-term micro-memory (last ~30 seconds)
- Super long-term facial recognition (a mosaic built over many videos)
Everything in between the two buckets is assumed to be forgotten; content strategy should assume zero recall from one video to the next.
Steal forAny single-video landing page or lead magnet CTA design
05:50list
Be the Gold Standard - Four Components
- Extremely interesting/valuable topics for your core audience
- Novel, non-obvious perspectives
- Super clear, understandable language
- Maximum visual/format polish
Defines what best content in your category actually means in practice.
Steal forA content quality checklist before publishing
09:10model
Micro-Niche Filter
- What product/offer am I selling?
- What outcome does my buyer want most?
- Will this content move them one step closer to that outcome?
A three-question filter for deciding what content to make.
Steal forContent calendar planning for any offer-driven creator
15:00concept
The Lindy Effect
Future life expectancy of non-perishable things (ideas, brands, content) is proportional to how long they have already existed - durability predicts survival.
Steal forJustifying a long-game content strategy over chasing viral spikes
18:00list
Stealing Economy Defense - Three Moves
- More in-real-life content/sets that are harder to replicate
- More long-form video (expensive to regenerate with AI)
- More outside-the-box n-of-1 ideas from personal experience
Practical responses to unavoidable content theft.
Steal forDeciding format mix to protect original ideas
20:00list
Three Personal-Brand Differentiators
- Visual differentiation
- Originality
- Tactical implementability
The three angles a creator can lean into to stand out in a crowded category.
Steal forBrand positioning audits
21:15list
Content Type Risk Ranking
- Short-form text (most at risk)
- Image
- Short-form entertainment video
- Short-form education video
- Long-form text
- Medium-form YouTube video
- Long-form YouTube/podcast
- Livestreams (least at risk)
Ranks content formats by how exposed they are to AI-driven supply dilution.
Steal forDeciding which format to invest long-term durability into
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
22:00link
“check out all the free stuff I have in the description”
Soft, distributed CTA pattern repeated after each rule (links to newsletter posts, deep dives, and the Sandcastles product) rather than one hard pitch at the end; final sign-off reiterates the description links generically.
FROM THE DESCRIPTION
PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.
OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.
- Use Sandcastles to grow 10x faster on social media (try risk-free) ↗
- How Kumar won social media ↗
- The New Era of Personal Branding ↗
- Check out this Breakdowns Collection in Sandcastles (sign up to access free) ↗
- YouTube Fundamentals Masterclass ↗
- lu.ma ↗
- Hire my short-form video editors ↗
- kallaway.co ↗
- Hire My YouTube Strategist (Ideas, Titles, Thumbnails) ↗
- Hire My Thumbnail Designer ↗
- Instagram ↗
- TikTok ↗
- YouTube ↗
- LinkedIn ↗
- X ↗
- Threads ↗
- Instagram ↗
- YouTube ↗
- TikTok ↗
Visual structure at a glance.
