Living The Red Life - Hacks To Blow Up Your Social Media

Episode Date: September 21, 2023

How do you grow your social media following? And what are the smartest hacks to do that? Rudy is flying solo today in Miami, sharing his insights into the future of social media and what you need to do to take control of your online destiny.Own your platforms, own your digital space, and shape your online ecosystem so that you put the best version of yourself and your brand front and center. Start by deciding which platform is best for your business needs, and then work on a content rollout plan that will see you consistently delivering quality content over a sustained period of time.Going viral, making those online connections, and getting internet traction so that you too can become a billionaire YouTube celebrity who gets invited onto super yachts takes innovative thinking, hard work, and a Red Life imagination to envisage a bigger and better life for yourself.Thanks to Rudy solidifying the thinking around how to practically go about applying some of the smarter hacks out there to grow your online audience, your imagination can be sparked by downloading this episode and joining us on this side of Wonderland. This way to the super yacht!"If you own a business or you want to make money online, you have to be into social media. It is the future." ~ Rudy MawerIn This Episode:What is the best social media platform to be on?How we build out a content plan for our chosen platformWhy your content will determine if you go viralCreating "splinters" of content ideas that pertain to one "root" themeUnpacking the power of affiliations and partnerships How the algorithm will reward your production consistencyAssessing the start of your content in order to go viralWhat is your video's Call To Action?Thumbnails and the first 5 seconds: making or breaking your video!Where are you on the spectrum of controversiality and extremism?Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook - www.facebook.com/rudymawerlifeTwitter - www.twitter.com/rudymawer

If you have 5 million followers on YouTube, you're a big deal, right? You're getting on yachts for free, you're getting to hang out with celebrities, you're getting invited to the biggest events, you're getting million dollar sponsorships. That is the way the world has gone. You can choose to accept it

or you can say, I'm not into the social media. The point is, if you own a business or you wanna make money online, you have to be into social media. It is the future. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change

your life. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we are going to talk about social media, growing a social media, social media engagement, hacks to blow up your social media, and how you can be starting to build that platform. Because I really do believe that social media is the future. Owning those platforms as in owning your pages and having a big ecosystem and tribe there is so important to owning digital space, right? I often teach, I taught a branding course the other day. And it was a big, big, you know, conference here in Miami, big corporate enterprise, some of the biggest companies in the world. And I thought the future is that digital space. And if you go years ago,

you know, back in time, real estate, owning prime real estate in New York or by the beaches was the most expensive. It was like, hey, you're a big deal if you owned all that real estate. Nowadays, that is social media, right? If you have 5 million followers on YouTube, you're a big deal, right? You're getting on yachts for free. You're getting to hang out with celebrities. You're getting invited to the biggest events. You're getting million-dollar sponsorships. That is the way the world has gone. You can choose to accept it or you can say, I'm not into the social media. The point is, if you own a business or you want to make money online, you have to be into social media. It is the future.

Mr. Beast, the biggest YouTuber in the world, he's valued over a billion dollars. He's in his mid-20s because he owns a YouTube channel. If you told your parents or grandparents that 25 years ago, they'd laugh at you. Someone's going to become a billionaire in their 20s because they post videos on the internet, right? It's laughable. It's crazy, but it's true. And what you have to understand is MrBeast and all these YouTubers really believe this, that they think the future is YouTube. And I actually believe that too, if you compare it to say TV, because I have two half sisters in their you know, in their teenage years. And all they've grown up on is YouTube. Like every time I go back in England, every time I go visit, they're on the iPads or the phone watching YouTube.

They're not watching TV like we grew up, right? I grew up with five channels. And then you're watching TV. They grow up on YouTube and then social media. So how do you build a social media platform? What platform is the best? I'm going to talk about all that today, how to go viral, how to grow it fast, how to make money from it. We want to make money too, right? The name of the game is also monetization of social media. So we'll talk about that. So the first thing everyone asks me, what platform's best?

I'm going to give you a kind of flippy answer, I'm afraid, because it's truthful, but you're going to get some takeaways. It depends. Like most things in life. I use an analogy back in my fitness days, I used to be in fitness, and people would say, what's the best diet? And I'd say, well, it depends, right? A bodybuilder's diet is going to look way different to someone that's trying to lose a bit of weight that has a bunch of inflammation that had a bunch of intolerances, right? Same thing is true with social media. What is true with social media. What is the best social media platform? Well, it depends.

If you're a business-to-business executive, you've got to create connections. Well, then LinkedIn might be great for that. If you're targeting people 25, 30, 35, 40, maybe they consume a lot of content, makes a photo, video. They want to follow your lives. They want to buy into the lifestyle. Well, there's a lot of content, makes a photo video. They want to follow your lives. They want to buy into the lifestyle.

Well, there's a lot of Instagram millionaires. Maybe you want to create a community, a tribe. I had a Facebook group, 60,000 women in for my old fitness programs. I would make tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars just posting and running that group because it was a tribe in a community. So, and then obviously if you want to go viral and you're into comedy or mock comedy or voiceovers or trending dances, then you've got TikTok, right? So you have all these little different platforms that you can play in.

And what's really important, and I gave some specific examples, is what? Understanding the avatar, who you're trying to build as a following base, who you're trying to sell to, what your product matches. So these things are all super important when it comes to deciding what is the best platform for me. If I had to pick two, if you held a gun to my head and really pick, I think Instagram is already good all around. I think YouTube is a great long-term play. I think Instagram is already good all around. I think YouTube is a

great long-term play. I think Facebook's the greatest for ads. I think LinkedIn is the best for B2B. So hopefully that helps give you a bit of a format. I think most of you should have an Instagram. I mean, if you're into B2B, you should definitely be pushing LinkedIn. And I mean, all of you should be running ads on Facebook and Instagram. So there's some great platforms there for you to start on, right? Twitter or X as it's now called. I think that can be cool for like politics and stuff like that and being controversial. If you want to go down that route, I think it's awesome for that, especially if you're in topics and areas that might get banned on other platforms, obviously Elon bought it and now it's a little more free speech.

That's the whole point. So now we've talked about which platform's best, which platform you should use. Hopefully you've got a bit of an idea in your head based on who you are, what you do, what content you're going to put out, who your avatar is and what you're selling. Okay. How do we build that content plan? The biggest thing I've learned after, you know, I've grown, I've got about one and a half million followers across all my platforms. content plan. The biggest thing I've learned after I've grown, I've got about one and a half

million followers across all my platforms. I have employees that have built big social accounts past a million. And then I have a lot of friends that have built millions and millions. And I've hired a lot of consultants. So I wouldn't say I'm the top expert in the world by any means on social media growth, but I'd say I'm pretty good. And I'm more experienced than most people. I've studied it a lot, right? So the thing I've learned about going viral, growing an audience is there's a few specific steps. The first thing that it always comes down to, and Mr. Beast and all these other top YouTubers will tell you this, what's really important to understand is your content will ultimately dictate if you go viral. Because what happens with the algorithm

is the algorithm is continuously looking at all the indicators that the audience likes it. So if the audience likes it and they share it and they watch more of it, they consume more of it, they save it and they comment, that is some of the most important parts of going viral. How do you get people to do that? Well, of course, there's little tips and tricks. Oh, you make them watch the end and tell them there's some surprise coming, kind of tease them. But those things aren't going to make a difference if the content sucks. So the number one goal is to make amazing content. Because if you make amazing content, you'll tick all the boxes for the algorithm, which will help it go viral. And I get it. You're like, yes, Rudy, that's obvious. But

it isn't that obvious because even myself and many people really ignore spending time on the content. I've become a lot more focused in recent years, especially recent months. So now we spend more time than ever on the pre-production, the boring stuff. Hey, what is the headline? What's the title? What's the the thumbnail what are we going to talk about what are the takeaways from the video what's the script whereas in the past i'd be like okay let's just film all right what should i film about okay let me talk about these things right so now and that's fine to get you started and i did pretty well with that because i'm good on camera and i you know i have some buzz around me with my brand i'm well known i've got all the red and i'm

you know i tell it how it is. I'm a pretty good speaker. But that only gets you so far. If you want to go into that expert level, and I recommend you start with the end in mind, really plan your content. So do some research. And we actually use ChatGPT and AI a lot to do this now to speed things up.

What is my audience? What are trending topics? What do they like? Who is in my industry already doing this on different platforms? What are some of their top videos that are taking off that I don't copy that I can use for ideas? I can go, wow, I looked at five people and every single one of them, when they talked about how to lose 20 pounds, they all had videos and posts that took off. And then every

single one of them too talked about the diet that's stupid. And they all did really well with that video. So you're getting ideas, right? You go, okay, so I'm going to talk about, everyone wants to know how to lose 20 pounds. I'm going to do some videos about that. And you got to be creative and create what I call splinters, or I call like branches of a tree. So the tree trunk. Right. This is how I do my ads and content. The tree trunk is now what? What is it? It's 20 pounds. OK, so now what are the branches that come off that tree trunk? Well, one branch is how to lose 20 pounds quickly. One is the best diet to lose 20 pounds.

Another one is I lost 20 pounds. Here's how. Another one is the number one mistake people make when trying to lose 20 pounds or more. So you get where I'm going with this, right? I'm making it up as I go along. And then the other tree trunk, right? Or the core pillar or whatever you want to call it. I gave an example is the stupidest diet, right? The stupidest diet was the other example I made up. So then I go, okay, now I'm going to create branches. Like this one diet is stupid. Why this is the stupidest diet on the planet. I tried this. I quit this diet after 24 hours in brackets. It's so stupid. And then you go, I just found out about the stupidest diet ever, or you see where

I'm going, right? So you've got your, and you can then go, I'm going to do photos, social post photos about this. I'm going to do videos and I'm going to do interviews, right? So I'm going to interview other people. Maybe I'm going to go out in the street and I'm going to ask people in the street, what do you think the stupidest diet is, right? I asked strangers what the stupidest diet is, and now it's you holding a microphone. So, and that's why I win with ads. And I just made those examples, though I didn't plan any of this. This is why I'm good at what I do, because I'm able to take a great idea, and then I'm

able to create 5 or 10x on top of it. And this is what I encourage you guys to get better at. You might not be as natural as me, because I've done it for so long. But what you can do is sit down and plan and do research. And all of this, I just gave you that whole idea around the content planning and the content ideas. It's easy to do because I just literally made it up from scratch, right? And you just go do your research on other top people in your industry

on multiple channels. You then see what's working and then you create a bunch of variations. Then when you've created a bunch of variations, you just go out there and you start filming. And you have to understand that again, all the top people say this, your first post, your fifth post, your 10 posts, none of those are going to go viral. None of those are going to crush it. You have to go through like a hundred videos or a hundred posts, just knowing that that's just like your filler content to get you going. And then you can repost those a year later. So it's not wasted. But that's just going to get you going. It's going to take time and momentum. If you look at most of the biggest YouTubers,

Instagram, everything like that, we will have over 1000 posts, or videos generally, especially YouTube is not maybe 1000., but the first hundred are going to get you going. And then you're going to get more momentum Instagram because it's easier to post. You're probably going to have a few hundred or a thousand before you get crazy momentum. TikTok was a newer platform. You'll probably grow faster. Okay. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge.

I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return. What I would love is for you to subscribe and leave a review. The reviews and the subscription grows the podcast. It allows me to bring you even better guests. It allows me to invest even more time and money

into this podcast to bring you the latest and greatest, the best entrepreneurs from around the world that are crushing life, crushing their business, and giving you all the tools, the mindset hacks, the knowledge, and the environment you need to be successful. So do me a favor, if you've got any amount of value from today's episode so far, or any previous episode, or any of the content I've done, it would mean the world to me if you hit a five-star review, give us your feedback on the show, the episodes, and subscribe and download. Plus, if you do that and send me a screenshot on Instagram at RudyMoreLife, I will send you a bunch of my free training, marketing courses, sales courses

worth $499. Yes, $500 worth of courses for a simple 30-second review. It would mean the world to me. Send me that screenshot. I would love for you to leave that review and I would appreciate it very, very much so we can keep growing this show and make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. So we've talked about content creation, how to go viral in terms of the content ideas. The other ways to go viral and grow fast is affiliations and partnerships. So one of the hacks or the best ways is can you piggyback off someone that's already viral? So say I was going on to YouTube and people do this all the time. They might do a video on why Mr. Beast is a genius

or Mr. Beast is a fraud or how much does Mr. Beast make or Mr. Beast teaches how to go viral. And it's just a bunch of clips of him teaching content, right? It's not even you interviewing him. It's just a montage and analyzing what he does. And I've watched those videos. Those videos do very well because they're piggybacking off someone super successful and super viral.

So you can do that in every industry. Say you're in weight loss. I'll use that as a reference. You can go from, okay, I'm in weight loss. I'm going to look at some of the big celebrities, right? Or The Rock. I'm going to do a, you know, how The Rock stays in shape, right? If you are in politics, I won't name names, but you can do, you know, just scams and dissect

different politicians and parties right if you're in uh say you're in money making you can talk about elon musk you can talk about the top person in your industry um and then eventually when you've used those topics to live as leverage it's leveraged then you go a step further and go how do i actually integrate these people into my my clips or my posts or um my series so you actually want to try and reach out and create partnerships and affiliations and co-promotions and obviously you might have to pay but the you might get lucky right say one of them has a big book launch then they might be going on a podcast tour and they got a podcast tour and you go on a podcast tour. And you can,

if you have a big Instagram, you say, I'd love to promote your book. Can I do some reels with you in a live? Boom. Now you just integrated them for free and that could, it goes live on their page. You do a collab post and now you're pulling in all of that plus all of that street cred, that credibility. So we talked about content so far, we talked about integration with some of the biggest people on the platform. The next thing is consistency. So the thing that's really important is patience and consistency. It's much like weight loss. It sucks. It's not what you want to hear. There's no fast track. But what we found is, and a lot of other people teach this too that are experts, is the algorithm pays off

when you start to stay consistent and so does the audience. So dropping the podcast at the same time every week, dropping the YouTube videos at three days at 9am, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Instagram, posting every day at 8am. So the algorithm actually starts to compound a little when you stay consistent. And what's really important is not only staying consistent, but understanding the best times to post and then building a schedule around that. So you go, I know Tuesday and Thursday is great for my channel at 9 a.m. So try and post Tuesday and Thursday at 9 a.m. Don't just post on a Saturday and a Wednesday at 8 p.m.

Because it's really important. And another big part of going viral is the first 30 and 60 minutes. So it's really important to understand the algorithm. Most of the time, what they're doing, especially Instagram and TikTok, is they're looking at what happens in the first 30 minutes. So if you get a ton of engagement from your following and it's more than usual and they share it,

they like it, they comment, they save it, what happens is it now, it's kind of got this filter process. It goes, okay, it, they comment, they save it. What happens is it now it's kind of got this filter process. It goes, okay, wow, this is doing really well. We're going to reach a little more people in the hashtags. Then we're going to put it on the explore page. And then it's on the explore page. And now some of the meme theme pages and influencers and other people are resharing it. And then it's now being reshared. So you see how it starts to compound. And what I just described there, that is what is, that is classes going viral. They are the steps to going viral. So it starts with great content, right? Because if the content is great, then

people are going to be pulled in and they're going to want to comment, share it and engage. Next it's, you know, now it's starting to get traction. So look at the first 30 minutes, look at how you can grab attention Look at how you can grab attention. Look how it can do well. Another thing that's really important, like I said, is the engagement from the audience. So if people are sharing it, people often ask, what's most important, likes, comments? So there's kind of a hierarchy or a strength, a weighted ratio. Likes are probably the least these days.

Comments, shares, and saves are way more important so if you can get more people commenting sharing and saving you're going to do better and yes there are some tips tricks and hacks to help do that so a lot of time people that will do really well and go viral a lot is they're integrating call to actions throughout their videos on youtube mr beast says a couple of times he'll make a joke joke, please comment and subscribe. And if you do that, you'll help me save some children in my next episode. So try and have a bit of fun with it, a bit of comedy, but be strategic in the call to action you post. So say you're doing an Instagram, you go, if you like this video on how to become a millionaire, make sure you like and subscribe. So i got two more coming out tomorrow on two ways to become a millionaire in a year right so you're

hooking people in um and then or you might say uh the end scene might say help you know pay it pay it forward share with free friends now to how increase your chances of becoming a millionaire right like using the whole like oh you'll be more lucky, right? See what you can do in terms of, and this is, again, this isn't going to take bad content and make it go viral now. But if you've got the good foundations in place, I mean, I just described,

this is going to compound it a little more. It's going to help it a little more. It's going to boost the engagement and the chances of it doing better and better and better and better, okay? So think about those things. The next thing is the thumbnail and the first five it doing better and better and better and better. Okay. So think about those things. The next thing is the thumbnail in the first five seconds. Okay.

This is the final point for today. The thumbnail in the first five seconds are going to make or break your video so much so that a lot of the pros spend hours on it. And they even do a few posts where they test it and then they take down the ones that suck and they just keep the real one. So what I mean by that is the thumbnail is obviously the design, super important on YouTube, super important on Instagram, important on TikTok. And then the first five seconds is where people are deciding whether

to watch it or not. And a lot of the times all the platforms vary, but based on auto scroll or search, the first five seconds will often play with no sound. So one thing people don't realize is the first five seconds on Instagram, YouTube, and places should be so captivating without sound that people want to watch it. So should the thumbnail. The thumbnail should be so captivating, it should have a strong promise, hook, or offer,

or make people wonder about something that it's really important that uh you split test it you plan it and here's the thing say you spend an hour filming content don't then spend no time on the thumbnail in the first five seconds because that's going to make or break it some of my youtube videos take us 10 hours as a company to produce and i'm spending a lot of time on the thumbnail and the first five ten seconds because I realized that could double the views. So if you get 10,000 views, just having a better thumbnail and intro

could get you 20,000 views. So it's kind of crazy how much that initial part can compound the success of the entire video. So do a lot of research, look at what's working, use ChatGPT to come up with viral headlines if you're not very good at copy, and then split test, start testing and find a good river. Okay, and the last, I'm almost out of time. The last bonus point I want to give you, which is a little different, is you got to be

somewhat on a spectrum of like controversial, funny, entertaining, hyper educational. What I found with social media, and this is a hard pill for most of you to swallow, is if you're normal and average, it's just not going to go viral. It's just not. If you look at everything that goes viral, it's extreme politics, it's extreme controversy, it's extreme fights or people car chases or Mr. Beast giving Lamborghinis. So, or it's an extreme belief system, right? So to go viral and to really blow up quickly, you've got to have some sort of controversy to you or not always controversy or some sort of extremism.

So if you look at most of the biggest influencers in the world, they have something unique. They have something going on. They're doing a certain type of content. They have a certain belief system. And I think I have some of that, which is why I do well on social media, right? I'm pretty polarizing with my views. I'm pretty extreme with all the bread and the marketing and the lifestyle.

I'm from England and I'm kind of the opposite. And most people, when they find out I'm British, they go, you're like the opposite of a British person I could ever imagine. So, and I'm not overly controversial by any means. But yeah, having how you can be more extreme and really empower yourself, because if you don't empower yourself and make a decision to be more controversial and extreme, you're never going to do it in your content, it won't feel authentic, you'll be scared and realize here's a good one to finish this episode on. If you're not pissing a bunch

of people off and upsetting a bunch of people, generally your content's not extreme enough. Okay. That's like a cool rule of thumb to live by that I try and live by. So don't be upset by, don't be upset if you're upsetting people. That's actually a good thing. Okay. Cause you're also going to have lots of people love you. So there it is. There's like social media 101, how to go viral, how to build up your social platforms, all the things it takes. I really hope that helps give you some context and ideas. I've talked about it in the past, different, you know, the best social platform, how to start, how to client content. I wanted to do it again because people are asking me more and more now.

I wanted to go by platform and talk about my tree trunk method. So I hope that was useful. And I hope you really indoctrinate this and kind of go all in method. So I hope that was useful. And I hope you really indoctrinate this and kind of go all in on this because I really think it's so important for the next few years. And I think a lot of you have so much great content you could be sharing. So go at it, give it a try. Don't give up, stay consistent and go all in. I'll see you very soon. Keep living the red life, guys. Take care. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life.