Head of Instagram for Business Unlocks Secret to Growing in 2025 - 847

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media

Episode: Head of Instagram for Business Unlocks Secret to Growing in 2025 (#847)
Date: August 21, 2025
Host: Brock Johnson
Guest: Thomas Finetto, Head of Instagram for Business

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Episode Overview

This episode features an insightful, candid interview with Thomas Finetto, the Head of Instagram for Business. Brock dives into Thomas’s experience, discussing how brands—big and small—can crack the code to Instagram growth heading into 2025. The conversation centers on actionable strategies, leadership mindsets, innovative content tactics, and how to embrace the ever-changing realities of social media marketing to drive real business success.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Trust and Agility in Social Content Creation

• Empowering Creators:
  Thomas emphasizes that the most successful brands in social media foster trust and speed by empowering their social teams. Leadership must recognize what they don't know, and allow creators to move fast to leverage trends and cultural moments effectively.

  • “If you have a leader who recognizes enough that they don't know what the hell is going on, or a leader that says, like, okay, I see that you guys just need to move fast on this one so that you don't miss, like, an opportunity, a trend, a cultural event, then that is the biggest differentiator.” (02:20, Thomas Finetto)

• Learning from Big Brands:
  Thomas cites Duolingo, Away, and Ryanair as organizations excelling in this area due to leadership buy-in and fast, unfiltered content creation—even at the risk of controversy.

  • “You cannot please everyone...Pick one [audience cohort]. Just start with one, knock one domino over and the rest follow.” (04:35, Thomas Finetto)

2. Posting Volume, Frequency, and Reposting

• Dispelling the ‘Let it Breathe’ Myth:
  Thomas directly challenges the common advice to post sparingly. He recommends pushing content out frequently to accelerate learning and reach.
  • “You're much better off posting five times a day. Every day. You learn so much faster...And then the other thing I always say is repost some of that content. If it's evergreen, you only ever hit on a good day, like 5% of your audience. So post it again.” (05:50, Thomas Finetto)

3. Entertainment Is Essential

• Brands = Entertainers:
  Entertain first, sell second. Whether through comedy, storytelling, or relatability, engaging audiences with entertaining posts is non-negotiable.

  • “If you don’t have entertainment baked into your strategy, I just, I think you're not starting from a very good place.” (08:19, Thomas Finetto)

• Memorability Through Stories:
  Brock and Thomas agree: stories drastically outperform facts for recall and resonance.

  • “A story is 22 times more memorable than a fact.” (08:47, Brock Johnson)
  • “The death of a thousand men is a statistic. The death of one man is a tragedy.” (09:19, Thomas Finetto)

4. Creative and Unique Brand Tactics on Instagram

• Using Platform Features Creatively:
  Thomas shares the example of Away using Instagram's “Close Friends” feature to promote exclusive product launches to niche creators, highlighting the algorithmic benefits and novelty of using underutilized tools.
  • “Because it pops up in your stor on your feed with the little green thing, it's like it stands out. It's different. It's almost like a free ad.” (11:23, Thomas Finetto)

5. Building and Monetizing Local Audiences

• Going Viral isn’t Always Local:
  Viral content may attract a global audience, but for local businesses, targeted ads and new ad tools like Advantage Plus and Omnichannel Ads are crucial.

  • “You can actually like take that amazing creative and then just localize it...” (14:37, Thomas Finetto)

• Collaboration for Local Reach:
  Brock stresses the power of collaborating with local creators and businesses to magnetize local followers organically.

6. Hot Takes: Employee-Generated Content

• Employees as Creators:
  Thomas is a big proponent of letting employees make content, citing higher authenticity and product knowledge; results often outperform highly produced ads.

  • “Their best ever ad was just having one of their employees act like a user...It cost them nothing...We're in this place where so many businesses just still feel like they have to be...this polished brand...that they never experiment.” (16:38, Thomas Finetto)

• Internal Creative Hackathons:
  Meta runs sessions where employees mass-create content with no meetings or distractions, leading to exceptional ROI in engagement and reach.

  • “Pens down, no meetings, cancel everything. We're just going to spend five hours making as many reels as we can and having fun...the return on like views that we get for the investment is like night and day.” (18:34, Thomas Finetto)

• Upskilling In-House vs. Agencies:
  Thomas contends agencies can’t compete with the pace and authenticity of in-house teams. He advocates hiring creative talent (e.g., comedy writers) over traditional marketers for social roles.

7. Iteration Over Perfection — And the Rise of Memes

• Aim for ‘Small Virality’:
  Pursue regular, shareable content instead of obsessing over a single viral post.

  • “Don't aim to go viral, aim to go a little bit viral. Every day, very slowly.” (21:29, Thomas Finetto)

• Memes as a Serious Tool:
  Memes now deserve dedicated staff; even high-end brands achieve engagement with well-produced memes.

  • “Brands are hiring entire positions who are just going to make memes.” (22:16, Brock Johnson)

8. What Brands Overthink

• Stop Obsessing Over Algorithms and Competitors:
  Marketers often stress over how many hashtags to use or copy competitors, instead of focusing on what’s genuinely interesting and new.
  • “Everyone is so...focused on how many hashtags to use and not focused enough on like, what would I like to see?” (24:00, Thomas Finetto)
  • “Doing competitor analysis on your competitors on social is the worst...Do a platform analysis. Like look at other verticals. What is working well?” (24:11, Thomas Finetto)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trust and Leadership:
  “The most common thing that I see from brands who really understand social...is trust from leadership.”
  (02:20, Thomas Finetto)

• On Posting Frequency:
  “You're much better off posting five times a day. Every day. You learn so much faster.”
  (05:50, Thomas Finetto)

• On Entertainment:
  “Brands need to think of themselves as entertainers first.”
  (25:35, Brock Johnson quoting Thomas Finetto)

• On Local Reach:
  “If our ad products aren't working for businesses, we don't have a business. We can't build the metaverse, we can't make AI work.”
  (14:13, Thomas Finetto)

• On Employee Content:
  “When you post that content it feels different, it feels native. Especially if you have young employees that live and breathe social in ways that like we probably don't know.”
  (17:45, Thomas Finetto)

• On Reposting:
  “You only ever hit on a good day, like 5% of your audience. So post it again.”
  (05:50, Thomas Finetto)

• On Overthinking and Competitors:
  “Doing competitor analysis on your competitors on social is the worst...Do a platform analysis...then everyone will be doing a competitor analysis on you.”
  (24:12 – 25:05, Thomas Finetto)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Leadership & Trust Discussion: 02:10–04:35
• Posting Frequency & Reposting: 05:33–06:49
• Entertainment as Core Strategy: 08:17–09:48
• Stories vs. Statistics: 09:19–10:07
• Unique Instagram Tactics (Close Friends): 10:51–12:16
• Local Audience & Ads: 13:03–15:32
• Employee-Generated Content & Hackathons: 16:38–19:02
• Agency vs. In-House & Small Virality: 19:32–22:16
• Memes in Marketing: 22:16–23:05
• Overthinking & Platform Analysis: 23:32–25:35

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Tone & Closing Thoughts

The tone throughout is conversational, fast-paced, and focused on demystifying Instagram strategy. Both Brock and Thomas align on authenticity, agility, and creativity trumping over-calculated or traditional approaches.

Brock concludes by reframing entertainment for brands: it’s not about being a circus act, but ensuring every post is engaging and, most importantly, share-worthy. He reminds listeners not to obsess over small details and analytics, but to focus on producing content that’s genuinely interesting for their brand’s unique audience.

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Practical Takeaways:

• Trust and empower your social team to experiment and react quickly.
• Post often, iterate rapidly, and don’t hesitate to repost evergreen hits.
• Design every piece of content to entertain or engage—storytelling works.
• Harness new Instagram tools and features creatively (e.g., Close Friends).
• Prioritize employee-produced content for authenticity and internal skill growth.
• Steal creative tactics from other verticals, not just direct competitors.

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This summary captures the episode’s best insights, direct advice from Instagram’s front lines, and actionable steps for thriving in 2025’s social media landscape.

Transcript

[Thomas Finetto]

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[Podcast Host]

To have a Conversation with the Head of Instagram for Business Thomas Finetto. Instagram for Business is the official account by Instagram specifically dedicated for business owners and brands who want to grow and make money selling their products or services on Instagram. That account, which Thomas Finetto helps lead, has over 20 million followers and they share tips, resources and some memes about building a business on Instagram. But unlike any other account that is giving you tips, advice and memes, including my own, this account is actually on Instagram's payroll. They are an official account of Instagram and so that means the people who help run this account, including Thomas, are privy to some insider information. They might not know every single detail about the algorithm, but you can bet that they know a little bit more than most. In this conversation, you're going to hear some really helpful tips and ideas and even some hot takes from Thomas. And I do want to put out a disclaimer that these are not official statements from Instagram or Meta. These are simply Thomas's opinions and suggestions. This was kind of an impromptu conversation and so I wasn't able to have a the full production value and production budget that I had for my conversation with Adam Mozzeri, the head of Instagram. In reality, this entire interview was basically shot on iPhone and the audio quality comes from an iPhone microphone as well. Without further ado, here is my interview of Thomas Finetto, Head of Instagram for Business. So we were talking before we got started here and you said something that I thought was so true and something that I think everyone listening to my podcast should hear because I'm followed by so many small business owners with one person on their team, maybe two, three people on their team, and you were talking about leadership, having trust in the content creators. Can you talk more about why that matters and why you think that's so important for brands who are using Instagram?

[Thomas Finetto]

I've been working at Meta for 10 years. I've worked on the B2B marketing side and recently the B2B social side of things. I can't tell you how many hundreds of social marketers of marketers I've interviewed and the most common thing that I see from brands who really understand social and this is both for organic and paid is trust from leadership. If you have a leader who recognizes enough that they don't know what the hell is going on, or a leader that says, like, okay, I see that you guys just need to move fast on this one so that you don't miss, like, an opportunity, a trend, a cultural event, then that is the biggest differentiator. I've seen it time and time again, and I can give you examples if you want.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

Some of the best channels. I mean, straight off the bat. Duolingo, of course. Incredible. We actually, we interviewed the head of social at away yesterday.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Thomas Finetto]

And they've been doing some incredible stuff. They do lots of great, like, brand, like, brand collabs with, like, really big, like, really, really big ip. And Ryanair in the EU has been one of those brands on, like, they were killing it on Twitter two years ago. Like, they just out of nowhere and it's because leadership were like, okay, blank check. You guys can move as fast as you need to and give them a safe space. And all of these brands, by the way, they get it wrong. But the beauty of social is that it just moves on so fast. It's all upside and very little downside.

[Podcast Host]

I agree.

[Thomas Finetto]

Unless you're like. And there are some really interesting stories, like the head of social at Ryanair, which is. It's an Irish airline, but they kind of cater to all of Europe. They're the budget airline, I guess the Spirit Airways equivalent. They posted a meme about a member of the Royal Family. You can go and find it for yourselves. I won't say it was very rude, but they knew how to position it. They didn't name names. They kind of made it clear enough that you knew what was being talked about. And the Royal Family got involved, which in the UK is like a huge scandal. Yeah, it's massive. But they, you know, they. They knew what they were doing. And that just goes to show, like, they might have lost a couple of, you know, couple of people on that one, but the people that they gained.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

This is the. The other thing is, like, you. You cannot please everyone. So if you're a marketer out there and you. You've got a couple of different cohorts of ages, demographics that you're trying to reach. Pick one. Just start with one, knock one domino over and the rest follow.

[Podcast Host]

I love that. I love the. Just the thinking and the reminder of there's so much upside. And the downside is it's social. It moves quickly. Like, we're on to the next. We See thousands of posts a day, we're on to the next. And I think that's so great to hear. I love the examples that we're reminded of. These are giant companies who have a lot to lose, billion dollar giant IPs. And they're giving their social media team, their content team, free reign to kind of, you know, be loose cannons a little bit. And so even the small business owner who's listening to this, who might have a two person team, like, it's important for them to embrace that as well. Even if they're a one person team, they're a solo entrepreneur, then I would say trust yourself to just create content, create fast and not edit your own self so much.

[Thomas Finetto]

This is the other thing that, like, one of my biggest pet peeves about social media marketers is, oh, we can only post once every two days because we have to give the post space.

[Podcast Host]

Someone this morning commented on one of my posts, we're doing a 30 day reels challenge. And they said, well, what if one of my posts is doing well and.

[Thomas Finetto]

I want to let it breathe, let it breathe. And whenever someone says that to me, I'm like, oh, you must be killing it. Like every one of your posts must be going viral. And they go, no. I'm like, well, how do you know? But like, you're much better off posting five times a day. Every day. You learn so much faster. And then at the end of that 30 days, 90 days, stop, look at what works well, learn like, then recreate your strategy based on what you know works with your audience for your brand. And then the other thing I always say is repost some of that content. If it's evergreen, you only ever hit on a good day, like 5% of your audience. So post it again. It's like proven content that you already have in the hopper 100% and you've.

[Podcast Host]

Already done the work and no one's going to remember. And if they do that very minute, small 1% of people who remember, they remember because it was that good and they wouldn't mind seeing it again. It's like your favorite movie. It was that good. You remember it. You wouldn't mind seeing it again.

[Thomas Finetto]

I always tell people, what's your favorite TV show? And they'll go, I don't know, the Office. And I'm like, if your favorite episode of the Office came up on tv, what would you do? Exactly, I would watch it again.

[Podcast Host]

You're speaking to someone who's seen every episode 40 times, so I know exactly what you're saying. Let's talk about some of the, the biggest mistakes that you see brands making on social. You don't have to name names, call anyone out, but you know, any overarching things that you're like, oh, you know, I, maybe that's outdated, maybe it never was effective in the first place, but just mistakes people are making.

[Thomas Finetto]

I mean all the usual things, overly polished, trying to take what, you know, their TV ad or their print ad and then just post slapping it on social because we spent the money, might as well put it on social. And that really annoys me because there's so many fun ways that you can do BTS content from a shoot. You just, just get your social media manager out there in the first place, don't give it to them after it's all said and done. And then yeah, I mean going back to the leadership thing, speed, trust, if you don't have those things, you're not starting off in a very good place. And then entertainment, I think it's, if you'd asked me three years ago, I'd be like, yeah, brands really need to start thinking of themselves as entertainers. And now it's impossible to ignore like the brands that aren't thinking like, how are we entertaining people? Entertaining can mean a lot of things to a lot of people.

[Podcast Host]

Glad you said that.

[Thomas Finetto]

I think comedy relatability is the easiest one to start with if that works for your brand. But you can also entertain people through storytelling, through having people tell their really passionate stories about themselves or your users, customers. That can be entertaining as well. But if you don't have entertainment baked into your strategy, I just, I think you're not starting from a very good place.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree and I love that you gave those illustrations because I can hear the voices in the people's heads as they're listening, which is like, well, but my brain. I don't want to entertain, I don't want to dance, I don't want to. You don't have to dance, you don't have to be a clown. But storytelling, I mean that's tens of thousands of year old. It's not a new idea but it's captivating. Right. One of my favorite facts is that a story is 22 times more memorable than a fact. Tell a story and people are going to remember it. It's going to stick with them so much more.

[Thomas Finetto]

One of my favorite quotes of all time, and I say it a lot, is it was someone during the second World War or the First World War said there's some Journalist, but it was. The death of a thousand men is a statistic. The death of one man is a tragedy. And that just illustrates perfectly what you just said. The story, if you know the story of one person dying in a war and knowing who that person is and what they lost is way more powerful than all of these, like massive numbers.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

And it's. If you fast forward, you know, 80 years and think about like what Apple did with the ipod, a thousand songs in your pocket. It could have been a thousand songs in your media player. Wouldn't have worked. It could have been 1 gigabyte of memory in your media player. Wouldn't have worked.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

A thousand songs in your pocket, that's all you need to know.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. I love your examples. Can you share any other brands or accounts you can think of that are using Instagram in maybe creative or unique ways? I thought, you know, when I had my conversation with Adam, it was interesting. He brought up, there was this one account that he followed that every month they would unfollow everyone they followed and they would follow a new group of people that all related to a certain subject. So maybe during mental health awareness month, they'd follow a bunch of mental health creators or associations. It was just a cool way. Like no one really thinks of who they follow as an opportunity for content and connection. But any other creative, unique Instagram use cases that you remember, I just because.

[Thomas Finetto]

I fresh in my mind and we spoke to away recently, they recently launched a new line of like luggage and they use close friends. And I have, I haven't seen any brands using close friends. And in a world now where like you don't need to pay a million dollars for the big influencer who probably has another 10 brand deals posting that day, it's all about getting these niche creators at scale. So using close friends is such an unlock.

[Podcast Host]

How did they use it? What was the.

[Thomas Finetto]

Do you remember the strategy? They added, I think a bunch of niche creators to their close friends and they just started posting exclusive content about this new line that no one else knew about. And because it pops up in your stor on your feed with the little green thing, it's like it stands out. It's different. It's almost like a free ad. You know, people usually pay a lot of money to get the little pop up with, you know, click here or like tap here or buy now. But Instagram wants you to use all of their features. So if you're a big brand with a big following and you start using close friends in a new way the out. I can't confirm or deny this, but obviously like we want everyone to use Instagram's features. So that's like a little bit of an unlock that can give you that edge. And it's just a new way of using a product that not, not many brands use.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah, I know. I've. There's a few creators who I follow who have done something similar. Adding people to close friends. Maybe they have a VIP list they're adding to close friends just creative ways. But I haven't seen you brands use it and that's super creative. Something that I hear from a lot of people is that they are people with a local following or they need a local following because they're the local bake, the nail salon, they do photography in New Jersey. So they need that local following. Do you have any tips, strategies or any unique use cases where people have been able to build a local following? Because I, I totally agree with people that, you know, usually your posts are just going to go out to the masses. Like my posts are going to reach people worldwide. And I don't say that to brag or boast. I say that because, hey, my followers aren't just in Utah where I live. So what are your thoughts?

[Thomas Finetto]

There's a great donuts chain in the UK called Dough Hut. They have like three or four. So not really a chain. They're starting to like grow. And part of the reason that they became so successful is that they figured out the entertaining thing. They know how to make great entertaining reels. They basically just like gave their employees their Instagram account, which happens a lot. And I don't know why other brands aren't catching on. You just let your employees have fun. We should talk about employee generated content next because I have hot takes.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, let's hear.

[Thomas Finetto]

But they did that and they were like, oh my God, we're getting millions of views on like all of these reels. This is amazing. But they were all like Argentina.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, yeah, that's what I was going to say.

[Thomas Finetto]

America, India. And then it doesn't really help us in our like donut shop in Leeds, uk. And that's where targeting comes in. That's where ads can like. Because the whole Instagram meta want businesses to make money. If our ad products aren't working for businesses, we don't have a business. We can't build the metaverse, we can't make AI work. So it is imperative that ads work for you, which is we always say roas return on ad spend is like the golden metric. So that when you know creative works and you have these incredible ad tools, targeting tools like you have on Ads Manager and now it's easier than ever. I'm going to plug Advantage plus Shopping Campaigns or Advantage plus Campaigns. It just does everything for you. You can actually like take that amazing creative and then just localize it. And then you'll see you might have been spending, I don't know, $5 for a conversion and now you're spending like 5 cents for a conversion because you've got the right, yeah, the right creative in the area. People will come into your shop and they'll buy in your brick and mortar if that's what you want to do. You also have like there's a new product at the moment called Omnichannel Ads which basically like meta figures out which customers are more likely to buy online versus which customers are more likely to buy offline and come into your store. That used to be a really time consuming thing to do. You would have multiple ad sets running at the same time. You need to hire like a team or an agency. You'd be spending like thousands before you even get to the point that people see the ads. But now with, with Omnichannel ads, basically it just, it does it for you and it figures it out in the background.

[Podcast Host]

Wow, super cool. I would also say to speak to Donut Hut and that virality, it's social proof. So like yes, the content is proven to work. But now if I'm in Leeds and I see that there's this donut shop that's going viral and they have all these followers, I'm more likely to go there. I'm hearing about them more. So while yes, the organic growth might not be exactly who you want, reaching the masses has value. And I love the idea of than retargeting with ads. I went to a Pokemon card shop here in New York and I'm not from New York. I just found out about them because they had collaborated with other people in their community. And so I'm a big fan of when local businesses collaborate with their community, whether it's creators or other businesses even in their community, because that's how I found them. I follow one of the creators who they collabed with and found them. But anyways, let's talk about what you have some hot takes about employee generated content. I think a lot of people are familiar with user generated content, which is where your customer creates content for your brand or business, oftentimes paid. Sometimes it's testimonials, whatnot. But what's employee generated content? What are your hot takes?

[Thomas Finetto]

So employee generated content is pretty self explanatory. It's essentially having your employees act like creators or users. We had a great example. OG Cosmetics was in this morning and we spoke to their CMO and they said their best ever ad was just having one of their employees act like a, like a user, you know, someone who bought some of their, their makeup and just talked very casually about like what she liked about it and they ran that and it was like it was better than anything they'd ever made. It cost them nothing to, to make the, the creative. And I just think we're, we're in this place where so many businesses just still feel like they have to be. They're so scared of like letting go of this polished brand of this like premium feel, especially when it comes to social, that they never experiment. So you have these moments where you allow an employee who by the way know your products super well. So they know the value prop, they know the marketing. They're less likely to go like off script and say something dangerous.

[Podcast Host]

Yes.

[Thomas Finetto]

Which is that sometimes the risk with a creator or taking someone working with someone external and they'll, they'll create something that they're genuinely. You make them more excited, like they'll have fun, they'll come to work. You'll probably improve your employee retention which is another like side symptom of all of this, which is just a net positive for the business. But when you post that content it feels different, it feels native. Especially if you have young employees that live and breathe social in ways that like we probably don't know even me like being like a little bit older than a lot of the amazing people that work here at Meta.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

Like I'm. My experience on Instagram and all of these platforms is probably a little bit different from theirs. And they're like jumping and seeing trend, jumping on trends much faster than I am.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

So we started doing this thing internally. We call them creative hackathons where it's like pens down, no meetings, cancel everything. We're just going to spend five hours making as many reels as we can and having fun. And I can't give you exact numbers but you can probably imagine like the roas the, the investment vers is it's not really R us but like the return on like views that we get for the investment is like night and day.

[Podcast Host]

Oh, I can't even imagine. And that'd be such a good tip for anyone listening is block out two hours on your Calendar and treat social like work. Don't treat it, you know, like as something, as an afterthought that'll get done. When you have time, put it on your calendar, block out that time. But then during that time, no meetings, no pens, just create, create, create, create, create. And it kind of allows you to become like an artist. And the best artists are the ones who didn't make 10 paintings in their life. They painted 50,000 paintings and we know 10 of them.

[Thomas Finetto]

Yeah, and that's a really good point that I also love to talk about is when you farm out your social. No shade against like social media agencies or people out there who are really helping brands understand social. But if you're a brand and you're in a position to allow employees to do this for you, those employees are learning those skills now you own those skills. You don't have to keep out. It's like teaching someone to fish versus giving them a fish. So if they do it for long enough, they're learning all of these new skills. You're paying those employees anyway. So it's overhead that you can either put to good use or you don't. And just another one of my hot takes is I just in previous, like in a previous life I worked for a big advertising agency and I just don't think that these big ad agencies or creative agencies can keep up with the trends and the demand and the scale that is required of social. I haven't seen any yet and I think they probably do exist but they're few and far between. So most times you have these brands that are paying like, like five to ten grand per post. And then if you think of like what you can do in one morning, you can probably pump out 10 reels and each one of those will get like infinitely more views reach be way more effective than anything that like a scripted reel can like can generate. So I'm just like the, the amount of money that goes to waste sometimes. And I would rather every business takes a little bit more time. And it does, it takes a while. It's something that doesn't come naturally to a lot of people. But hire the right talent, don't hire traditional marketing talents if you can. Like there are some great copywriters out there. But maybe consider hiring a comedy writer, someone you never would have hired for like full time staff.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

But now actually their skills fit perfectly into social. And if you can tap into that virality even a little bit, I always say don't aim to go viral, aim to go a little bit viral. Every day, very slowly. Because if you add up that virality over the course of, like, months, it probably outdoes one massive viral post. So don't stress about one big thing. Just like, what works for you. Figure it out and then just do that and like twist it, like, tweak it. Make sure that it's like always a little bit fresh. You're still keeping your users, your viewers and your followers entertained. Repost as much as possible. I would also, I would say like once or twice a week for some brands, just repost existing content.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, yeah, love that. Stan, who is the producer of this podcast, they put out a help wanted ad on, on their story recently. And I don't know if they hired this person, but they were looking for a meme marketer, someone who's just going to create memes for them. And like, that's something that 10 years ago, memes were like this niche thing on the corner of the Internet that, you know, maybe 20 years ago, but people, no one knew what a meme was. It was just like a troll face or a kid's yearbook photo. And now brands are hiring entire positions who are just going to make memes. Yep. So I love that we've done that. It's so smart.

[Thomas Finetto]

And if you're scared, if there's a brand out there that's like, oh, we would never do something as like lo fi as memes. Check out Sense. They're a fashion brand here in New York. They make really high quality memes. Like, high, like very hi fi memes. Check them out. They're so, so good.

[Podcast Host]

One of my favorite is the Utah Department of Transportation. We actually had her on the podcast. They're a government agency and they're creating memes, but it does its job right. It's effectively communicating these ideas, just using memes to do it. So I love that. Last question is, can you share with me some things that you think people are overthinking or stressing out too much over from your perspective? You know, I have my own takes of things that I think people worry too much about.

[Thomas Finetto]

But what do you think people like? I think when it comes to social media, brands especially are overthinking everything. Just take, just honestly take a beat. Just relax a second. Like, spend some time online, I think so. There are so many social marketers who are working on, like, producing content for platforms that they don't themselves use authentically.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Thomas Finetto]

And then you're like, where's this information coming from? Like, everyone is so. Is way too focused on how Many hashtags to use and not focused enough on like, what would I like to see?

[Podcast Host]

Love it.

[Thomas Finetto]

That's the short answer. And then this is another hot take for you. I think doing competitor analysis on your competitors on social is the worst. It's like a guaranteed way if everything goes perfectly for you to get just behind your competitors.

[Podcast Host]

That's. I love that.

[Thomas Finetto]

Why would you waste all of that time on being second best? Don't do a competitor analysis. Do a platform analysis. Like look at other verticals. What is working well? And this is a great example of this is Realtors. Ever since that Realtor, I don't know where he's from, but he did the Gen Z edit, stumbled across it and he was probably, he probably had an editor who was looking at like, I really love memes on Instagram. I really love this entertaining style of content. I'm just going to try it. I'm going to take this thing that works from a very different vertical. What works on like macro wise on the platform and I'm going to bring it to this very specific industry. And then boom, he was dominating the industry. It's like when they zig, you zag. That's exactly. That's basically what it is. So don't do competitor now. Don't waste time with competitor analysis. Do a platform analysis. Steal stuff from other verticals. Be the 1 brand in your vertical which is doing something that no one else can do and then everyone will be doing a competitor analysis on you.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. Thomas, this is so good. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. One of the biggest quotes that stood out for me from that entire conversation is when Thomas said that brands need to think of themselves as entertainers first. And I could not agree more. Now, I understand that that statement might be a little bit scary because the initial interpretation might be that as a brand or business owner on social media, you need to be like a circus clown, you need to learn to dance, you need to start jug and start being extravagant and over the top in your reels. And I just don't think that's true. And I know that that's not what Thomas meant when he said that. What he simply meant is that every single post you make needs to be viewed from the standpoint of is this entertaining? Is this post as a whole entertaining? Is this scene or this cut or this clip in the post entertaining? Is this individual sentence entertaining? Is this word yes, getting that nitpicky. Is this individual word helpful, useful or entertaining in order to keep someone watching or is this clip sentence or word just not necessary and a little bit boring. Focusing on entertainment first is how you're going to get more views. And in this oversaturated, hyper competitive landscape, this social media world that we're in nowadays, where it's harder than ever before to get seen even by the people who follow you, when you focus on entertainment first, you're able to reach more people and you're able to reach the right people. I think that the easiest way to create entertaining content is actually to create share worthy content. Shareworthy content is a term we use all the time here at Build you'd Tribe. That basically means the content, the posts that are worthy of being shared or sent from one person to another. I did an entire episode about share worthy content and the five different kinds of share worthy content a few weeks ago. So if you haven't already checked that out, I'll link that up and it'll be down in the show notes as well. Because basically if your content is more shareworthy, it will be more entertaining and thus it will get more views. And the final thing I'll say before I quit my yapping is just thank you to everyone who has taken a quick moment to make sure that they are subscribed and really truly from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you. I'll see you next week. And as always, happy networking.