Hi everyone! Curious if any businesses are interested to get marketing / social media help in exchange of x-deals? And for those who have done it in the past, how did it work for you?
TL;DR: sister quit her marketing job about 13 months ago, struggled hard for the first few months, found a pretty good format, grew steady from there, and about 4 months ago she hired me part time to help her keep up. still feels surreal
So my sister was in corporate marketing for like 6 years, hated it, always talked about quitting to do content full time. Everyone in the family thought it was a phase honestly, myself included lol
She quit anyway. First 3 months were rough, she'll admit it. Posting home organization stuff, copying whatever the big influencers were doing, same aesthetic, same trends, same everything. Her views didn't even reach thousands
So she did something different and started looking at smaller creators, like under a thousand followers. but they would have like 1-2 viral videos based on what she found at viralvideofinder.com. Turns out a bunch of those tiny accounts just posting something nobody else had done yet.
She tried one with her own content and that one did like 40x her normal views. She kept repeating that same approach and it just kept working for some reason. It's probably an unpopular route but hey it worked
Fast forward to now, she's full time on it, consistent income, and about 4 months ago she asked me to come on part time to help with editing and research since she couldn't keep up with the volume anymore. So now I get paid to help my sister post videos, which is not a sentence I ever thought I'd say!
Biggest lessons from watching this up close:
Copying big creators gets you nowhere, they're not doing anything special anymore, just riding size
Small accounts that randomly overperform are the actual signal worth studying
Consistency only works once you know what to be consistent with
Growth isn't linear, it's flat for months then one video changes the trajectory completely
Still weird getting instructions from my sister but not complaining, beats my old job too
Context: I've been posting for months and no video has had made over 1000 views. My niche is fashion / beauty and I've tried copying popular content creators.
I've done the same fits, styles, background, music, production level. The only difference is my videos sucked for some reason. So I realized maybe people just don't like me.
I was already desperate and trying out different tools and websites to help me. Then I stumbled upon a weird shorts video of a person doing fit checks while jumping in the air. I saw it from a website called viralvideofinder.com. It wasn't aesthetic but it was hella funny. So I tried it out for one last ditch effort, but it didn't get that much views. I was literally browsing for jobs that night lmao
The next day though, I was so surprised the video just went over 15,000 views. It's not maybe that "viral" but at least finally something's working for me. I repeated that style (if you recognize this, yes that's me) and eventually got me to consistently getting 100K views. I also have more content formats now that are more serious, and people are finding the advice helpful. It's been like 4 months since it happened btw.
So if you're probably thinking of quitting or maybe you're losing hope, all it takes is 1 format that works! Just try to find the best idea that works for you and everything else will follow
I got curious about something. Everyone assumes going viral means jumping on whatever trend is blowing up right now. So I went and pulled a bunch of videos specifically from small creators, accounts under 1,000 followers, that still managed to blow past everything else they'd ever posted.
Here's the thing that stood out. Big creators mostly go viral by setting a trend first, then everyone else copies the format for weeks after. Small creators almost never go viral that way. Nearly every outlier video I found from a small account was doing something that did not look like a trend at all, it looked like they just made something new and it happened to hit.
A few examples. One small cooking account, under 1,000 followers, wasn't doing the usual recipe format everyone else in that niche was copying that month. Instead they posted a blunt, kind of ranty video reviewing cheap kitchen gadgets they regretted buying. It was just an honest opinion video, and it did about 40 times their normal views.
Another one, a small fitness creator with maybe 300 followers, skipped the workout routine format completely and just posted a raw video about a dumb mistake they made trying to hit a lift too heavy. That one alone did more views than their last 20 videos combined.
Same pattern with a small home organization account, barely 500 followers. While everyone else was doing the same "clean with me" trend, they posted a weirdly specific video about one drawer they'd been avoiding for a year.
None of these were jumping on a sound, a challenge, or a format that was already circulating. They just made something that did not exist yet.
Honestly the thing I like about TikTok is that followers still matter for consistency, but they clearly don't gate virality. Every one of these accounts had barely anyone watching before, and the app pushed the video out anyway because the video itself earned it. That doesn't really happen the same way on other platforms.
So if you're trying to go viral, I think copying the big creators is actually the wrong move. You're just entering a trend late after the algorithm has already moved on. You'd probably have better luck studying what small creators are doing when they're not following a trend, since that is apparently where the real breakout videos are coming from.
Btw, I used another online tool to pull these up instead of digging through accounts manually, it lets you filter viral videos by creator size, which made it a lot easier to isolate the small-creator outliers instead of getting flooded with big-account results.
Anyone else noticed this, that the small creators who blow up are usually not following a trend at all? Do you agree?
I’m a data-minded strategist, so I ran a 30-day experiment to settle whether hooks really make or break short-form video, or if we’re all just riding the algorithm’s mood.
I manually tracked 30 distinct hook styles across TikTok, Reels, and YT Shorts. Around 180 videos later, the results were clear (but the tracking process was pretty intense).
The Numbers
Average views across all hooks: 4,700 (median 3,100). Two hook styles didn’t just win, they 2x to 3x'd the average:
Generic questions (like “Are you struggling with X?”) averaged only 2.4k views and fell to 18% retention at the 15-second mark. The hook really is your entire first impression.
My spreadsheet had columns for date, platform, hook ID, views, and retention at 3s/15s/30s. Every day I’d post, log the hook, wait a week, then open each platform’s analytics and squint at graph slopes to estimate exact percentages.
No bulk export for short-form retention exists. I was spending 60 to 110 minutes daily just on manual data entry, a second job that almost made me quit.
If anyone has figured out how to automate tracking retention graphs across TikTok, Reels, and Shorts without manual data entry, please tell me. Otherwise, test these two hooks and brace yourself for the spreadsheet grind.
I’m a data-minded strategist, so I ran a brutal 30-day experiment to settle whether hooks really make or break short-form video, or if we’re all just riding the algorithm’s mood.
I manually tracked 30 distinct hook styles across TikTok, Reels, and YT Shorts. Around 180 videos later, the results were brutally clear (but the tracking process nearly broke me).
The Numbers
Average views across all hooks: 4,700 (median 3,100). Two hook styles didn’t just win, they 2x to 3x'd the average:
Generic questions (like “Are you struggling with X?”) averaged only 2.4k views and fell to 18% retention at the 15-second mark. The hook really is your entire first impression.
My spreadsheet had columns for date, platform, hook ID, views, and retention at 3s/15s/30s. Every day I’d post, log the hook, wait a week, then open each platform’s analytics and squint at graph slopes to estimate exact percentages.
No bulk export for short-form retention exists. I was spending 60 to 110 minutes daily just on manual data entry, a second job that almost made me quit.
If anyone has figured out how to automate tracking retention graphs across TikTok, Reels, and Shorts without manual data entry, please tell me. Otherwise, test these two hooks and brace yourself for the spreadsheet grind.
Okay, I need to know if I'm the only one. I sit down to brainstorm a new video, and next thing I know I've watched 50 TikToks, saved 15, and still have zero actual ideas of my own. The FYP is addictive, but it's a total time sink for actually planning content.
I try to reverse-engineer stuff I like, but it feels like I'm just guessing what works and what doesn't. By the time I've found a tren" that seems doable, it's already dead.
How do you guys pull the trigger and actually decide what to film? Do you have a system, or are you just better at resisting the scroll?
tbt this is starting to drive me crazy. I'll come up with what I think is a killer hook, film a whole video, edit it, upload it… and crickets. Then I go back and change the first 3 seconds, and it suddenly does okay.
But I can't just reshoot every video twice. I've tried looking at what other creators do in their first 3 seconds, but it's hard to tell if it was that hook or just their audience being loyal.
Is there a smarter way to test hooks without doing the full production first? Or do you just brute-force it and hope for the best?
So I just stumbled upon this page called Kasama Connect, and they apparently are trying to be a better OLJ platform. But tbh the posts are getting cringier by the day, and now they're attacking individuals who are pointing out their flaws
The CEO has an MBA but imo, has no manners and control of his emotions. All he does is rant either about OLJ, or post pictures of the people who are criticizing their flaws.
Has anyone had experiences with Kasama Connect? Any tea about why this page is like this?