A founder I worked for kept saying, “I want a viral video.” I pitched walking around and knocking on doors, asking people to rate our product from 1 to 10.

He said, “Everyone already knows who we are.”

I said, “Okay, well, let’s prove it.”

We went out with a camera. A lot of people living a mile from our store had never heard of us. That format is what started the growth.

A lot of small brands overcomplicate what content actually is and the purpose for that content. People just want to know that you’re real, that they’re buying from something or someone that has a mission or a vision greater than themselves. The only way for an audience to know that is if you share that with them.

It isn’t luck

When a video does poorly, it’s tempting to call it bad luck, but it almost never is. Content works like a program: it’s predictable, and the results tell you what happened.

That’s good news, because that means, if it’s a science, you can learn it. You can test it and get a little closer every time you post.

But you have to become a student of the skill.

The one rule that doesn’t change

Platforms change their features every few months, but one thing stays the same: they reward videos that keep people watching. The longer someone stays on your video, the longer they stay on the app, and that’s the whole business model.

So every tip you’ll ever hear comes back to retention. If a tactic hurts retention, throw it out, no matter who told you to do it.

To get more views, keep more people watching. That’s it.

Stop blaming the algorithm

The algorithm is what millions of people do with their thumbs, added up. When someone says “the algorithm doesn’t like my videos,” what they mean is “people aren’t watching my videos.”

Swap the word “algorithm” for “audience” and most problems become obvious.

You’re probably not shadowbanned, either. The platforms tell you when an account or a video isn’t in good standing. If yours doesn’t say so, it’s the content.

Likes and comments don’t cause views

A lot of people try to fix low views by chasing more likes or comments. That’s backwards. Likes and comments go up because more people watched. They measure how strongly people reacted, which is useful, but they don’t drive reach on their own.

The numbers worth watching

Average watch time, compared to the video’s length. On its own, average watch time doesn’t tell you much. Compare it to the runtime. Say an 8-second video averages 7 seconds watched: people watched 88% of it. A 44-second video with the same 7-second average kept people for 16%. Same number, completely different result.

8-second video88%

44-second video16%

Skip rate in the first three seconds. This tells you whether the hook worked. If watch time is low, look here first.

Reach makeup. How many viewers already followed you, and how many were new. A video made for your existing audience can lean on followers. A video meant to grow the brand needs new people. Know which one you’re making before you judge it.

When a video flops, check it in this order

1. The hook. The first three seconds. Did it create intrigue or anticipation? If not, nothing after it matters.
2. The text hook. The words on screen at the start. They shouldn’t repeat what you’re saying. They should add a reason to stay. If you open with “I made a mistake that almost sank the business,” the text can say “Don’t do what I did.”
3. The pacing. People scroll looking for the next payoff, and even a short pause can lose them. Cut to the parts that matter. Sometimes the clip you love most has to go.
4. The re-engagement. For anything over about 40 seconds, give people a second hook around the halfway point.
5. The story. Set up a problem, then pay it off. And don’t over-explain. Leave room for people to feel something.
6. The premise. Sometimes you do everything right and the idea just isn’t interesting enough. That happens. Move on to the next one.

Make more videos

The fastest way to get better is to post more. You learn more from ten finished videos than one perfect one.

Shareable first, branded second

Shareable means people reacted. They felt something. The opposite of shareable is indifference.

If you say you don’t have time, that’s when you hire someone like me. I hope this breakdown helps you take content seriously.

The biggest program we ran had zero ads live at the end of month 1. That was sourcing and first samples, plus a few weeks where the brand couldn’t ship product.

By month 5 it had 89.

That’s almost 6x month 3, with no extra sourcing effort. The pipeline built in the first 90 days just kept going. It followed the shape I see every time: slow to start, faster every month after.

How the program runs

Source creators from a roster that keeps growing. Brief for different angles instead of recutting one idea ten ways. Revise every submission until it’s ready to run. Get whitelisting access so it runs from the brand’s own account. Put spend behind it the same week. Then go find more of whatever’s winning.

Who gets product

A creator once messaged one of our client brands asking for free product. He pitched his bachelor party as the content. I asked for his Instagram handle. The account was private, with about 300 followers.

He was making a request as if he understood the game.

The programs

Throughput only. Sales and ROAS depend on each brand’s product and margin, so they’re not shown.

Why so many videos

Meta’s ad system reads the creative itself to decide who sees it. A brand running the same three videos for three months is giving it less to work with every day.

Industry context, not our results: brands testing 20+ new creatives a month see 65% higher ROAS than brands testing fewer than 10, and the recommended refresh cycle is every 2-3 weeks. Sources: Segwise, Meta Andromeda Update 2026; AdLibrary, Facebook Ad Creative Refresh Frequency 2026.

Someone goes to the doctor and says they’re sick. The doctor asks how they know. “I’ve been coughing all day.” The doctor says, “Well, cough less, and then you’ll be all better.”

That’s how a lot of people try to fix low views. They chase more likes or more comments, thinking that’s what brings the views. It runs the other way. Likes and comments go up because more people watched.

More people watch→More likes and commentsHow it runs

More likes and comments→More people watchHow people try to fix it

What the numbers on the screen are

Likes, comments, shares, reposts. Whatever the platform lets the viewer see. I call them outward metrics. They measure how strongly people reacted. They don’t drive the reach.

You can turn comments and reposts off on almost any platform. Videos with those features off still go viral. That was proof enough for me.

Where shares came from

Early on, video sites were just hosting. Sharing a video wasn’t easy, and videos spread through shares, a lot of them in email chains. Smosh and Rhett and Link hosted videos on their own websites and only started uploading to YouTube after people reuploaded their videos there and they took off.

Back then the platform barely mattered. Shares did. Shares can still help a video now, but if you live and die by them, your content gets inconsistent and exhausting.

The one small thing comments do

While someone types a comment, the video keeps looping in the background. That’s retention. The comment count itself isn’t doing the work.

A video with a lot of views collects more likes and comments, and people watching a video with a lot of engagement are more likely to engage. It feeds itself. Views come first.

Why I still look at them

Outward metrics aren’t useless. If people had a strong reaction, it shows up there, loosely. A stronger reaction makes a more valuable view. A strong reaction from a few people is still a few people. You can’t count to infinity by ones.

Most videos I make are for one of two groups: people who already follow the brand, or people who’ve never heard of it.

Behind-the-scenes and the characters people already know are mostly for followers. They deepen a relationship that’s already there. A video meant to grow the brand needs strangers to stay, and for a video to really travel, reaching followers isn’t enough.

How I check

After a video has been up, I look at reach makeup: how much of the audience already followed and how much was new. Then I look at the skip rate for each group. If the video was for followers, their skip rate matters more. If it was meant to travel, I look at new people and the total.

I decide which one I’m making before I judge it. A behind-the-scenes video that only reached followers did its job. A video I wanted to travel that only reached followers didn’t.

FollowersNew people

Made for followers10,000 views70%30%

Made to travel50,000 views25%75%

Followers reached: 7,000 vs. 12,500.

Usually it’s both

Videos that reach more new people usually reach more of your followers too. I’ve seen a video with a smaller share of followers in its audience still reach more followers in total, because it reached more people.

Even content made for followers should have a shot at people outside them. If a story only works on people who are already invested, it needs to be a better story.

Telling the whole story

When I film something for followers, I figure out what the story is before I start putting it together. That’s when I know what else I need. Usually it’s a scripted voiceover or an interview that gives people the context they’d be missing.

Writers have a phrase for cutting the characters and side stories they love that don’t serve the story. Kill your darlings.

Pacing is the hard part

Pacing is the hardest skill for new creators to get a grip on. In short-form, people are conditioned to hunt for the next payoff. Even a quarter of a second between beats can be too long.

When one of my videos dragged, it was usually because I showed and told too much. I’d added things the person watching wasn’t interested in.

Stories are all about emotional investment. The more invested someone is, the less likely they are to swipe away. Even hate-watching counts, because it’s still watch time.

What I cut

I cut down to the parts that matter. Some clips I really want to keep don’t fit the pacing, and they go. Some clips and scenes I love are sitting on the cutting room floor. They didn’t do enough for the person watching, and they didn’t serve the story.

The second hook

If a video runs over about 40 seconds, I add a re-engagement around the halfway point. It’s a second hook: a smaller conflict that gets tied up later, or a reaction that pays off at the end. If the first hook got people through the first half, the re-engagement gets them through the second.

Don’t over-tell it

Part of telling a story is knowing which part is landing and giving it room to breathe. Sometimes the right move is to leave something unresolved.

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It’s one of the most famous pieces of flash fiction there is. It gets worse if you add that the baby is fine and the shoes just didn’t fit.

Look at 100 accounts in a niche that are working. Say one of them does it the way you do. That one account is the easiest thing in the world to point at.

The one doing it your wayThe other 99

I’ve watched people use it as permission to keep doing what wasn’t working. When something works that feels like it shouldn’t, I want to know why it worked.

Questioning everything

It’s good to question everything when you’re looking for the truth. It’s bad when you’re looking for permission. That’s why I hate whataboutisms. They let people do what they were going to do anyway.

If what you’re doing isn’t working, something has to change. Staying the same fails eventually.

Why it worked

When a creator does something that feels like it shouldn’t work, my instinct is to figure out why it did. Treating the exception as the rule is the fastest way I know to confirm what you already believe, and that’s the fastest way to ruin yourself creatively.

What works for someone else won’t necessarily work for you either. Copying the one account that looks like you doesn’t change that. If it isn’t working for you, figure out why and make the change.

The landscape moves

Some of this swings back and forth. Polished, produced content and personal, vlog-style content have traded places for about a decade. Neither one has won for good. People leave a video when it isn’t what they expected, and part of what they expect comes from whatever’s working on the platform that month.

There won’t always be an objective right answer. Sometimes I go with my gut and make the wrong call. As long as I learn from it, it isn’t a loss.

So I don’t treat any of it like law. Retention is the only thing I’ve never seen change.

In-house, my full-time job took 60 to 80 percent of my creative energy. It was the anchor. The other 20 to 40 percent went to side work on nights and weekends.

That split worked because the anchor was there. Most of my creative energy had one home, and everything else fit around it.

I stayed in that job for years. I was paid less than I was worth, and I knew it. I also knew I was getting a real-world MBA in how to market and build a business.

The anchor jobSide workOne client

In-house60 to 80% to the job60–80%20–40%

Nowthe same 100%, split

Now

Now I take the same 100 percent and split it across every client. Sometimes a client isn’t getting 100 percent of me, because I can’t give it. I’m going to be damn sure that it’s the best 10% or 20% that I got.

The first thing I ask every client is what their goals are. Marketing is not one-size-fits-all, and the needs for one are not the same as the needs for the other. That’s where the percentage goes.

Every brand is a character

What makes the split possible is that every brand has its own DNA. Writing for a brand is easy for me because I get to hide inside the mascot costume. I switch from one to the next. Writing as myself is the hard part. When it’s just Cameron, it’s just me with no mask on.

Ten percent

It’s easy to feel like 10% is shortchanging someone. Going above and beyond is the thing clients notice, and it’s also where my nights and weekends go.

If the client is happy with the results, then why should I be hard on myself for only giving them 10%?

When I’m editing, I watch the cut before export and I’m happy with it. The second it’s live, I see everything I should have done differently.

EditExportLiveA week later

My taste decidesThe audience decides

Until export

While I’m making it, my taste is the standard. If it isn’t working, I’ll scrap it and start over before I patch it.

When it’s something personal, there’s one more step. I send it to my wife. If she says it’s good, I wonder whether she’s just being supportive. Sometimes I wait a few days and ask again. If she says, “No, seriously, I think it’s good,” I ship it.

After export

Once it ships, it isn’t my call. The audience decides. Ten views means it failed.

So I look at what it did: watch time against the length of the video, and how many people skipped in the first three seconds.

Not all bangers

I’ve posted a few thousand pieces of content in my life. They’re not all bangers. There’d be a lot fewer bangers if I’d decided the misses were out of my control.

For a long stretch the goal was one video ready to post every day. That many reps is how I learned to see what didn’t land.

Your next video

One of the first notes a founder I worked for gave me was “Done is better than perfect.” It stung a little. He was right.

I can’t tell you how many times I spent days on a video for 5,000 views.