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After 12 years of running Social Media Marketing World, I can spot the difference between two types of marketers pretty instantly. You've got the reactive marketers who come looking for quick fixes. They need to solve Instagram's latest algorithm change or figure out why their Facebook ads are not working. They walk away with answers, but months later they're back in the same cycle. Then you've got the visionary marketers who come looking for the complete picture. They they want to understand how AI enhances their marketing, how paid and organic strategies complement each other, and how to build a marketing system that adapts to any change. They walk away transformed and they stay ahead for years to come. Listen to what Fadan Aladdon said after attending this conference changed my life in many ways. It changed my vision, it changed the way I was approaching my strategies in marketing and I made wonderful connections. Social Media Marketing World 2026 gives you complete AI mastery platform specific strategies for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok plus integration frameworks that connect everything together. Grab your tickets today by visiting social mediamarketingworld.info and transform your marketing approach before change forces your hand.
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B
Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast.
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A
Helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now here is your host, Micha Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads and more sales. Are you on TikTok, but it's not really working? Or do you feel like you should be on TikTok, but it's too late? Too many other people on there. Well, today's episode is for you. My guest is a recovering attorney who has figured out an incredibly simple methodology to allow any of us to be really, really successful on TikTok. His name is Mike Yonda and I think you're absolutely going to love today's episode. By the way, if you're new to this show, be sure to follow us on whatever platform you're listening on so you don't miss any of the stuff we've coming up. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with Mike Yanda, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Mike Yanda. If you don't know who Mike is, he's a TikTok strategist who specializes in helping online coaches grow their audience and attract their ideal clients. His YouTube channel is ike Yonda spelled Y A N D A and he publishes weekly TikTok tutorials. Mike, welcome to the show. How you doing today?
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B
I'm good, thank you for having me. This is pretty great to be here because as I told you, I was reading your blog all the time when I was starting out back in like 10 plus years ago, and I was trying to figure out this whole social media thing that's super cool.
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A
Well, today Mike and I are going to explore how to embrace the TikTok algorithm so you can get a lot more views. Share a little bit of that story. How did you get into TikTok?
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B
So I started a coaching business back when I was in law school. And over the course of my career, I feel like I've gone through these long phases of just feeling like I was too busy for content, whether I was in law school or when I was an oil and gas attorney. And then even eventually when I went full time in business, I was a stay at home dad. And so I never felt like I had the time for it. And like a lot of people, I was just very reliant on referrals. I had a good business, it allowed me to leave my career and like have this better lifestyle and everything, but you're constantly chasing that. You don't know where your next leads and things are going to come from. And I actually had, a few years back, I had this client, I've been working with him for years, and this guy was paying me about six figures a year, and he calls me up one day and he says, mike, love you to death, man, but I'm making a career change. And so we're not going to be working together anymore. And when you lose that much income that quickly, you panic a little bit, right? And so I had to hustle my face off for a few months really, to kind of rebuild revenue. And he wasn't my only client, but he was a big one. The whole time as I'm hustling and trying to get leads and trying to build everything back, I just kept thinking to myself, if I'd had a personal brand, if I had actually been creating content and I had an audience to sell to, how much easier would this have been? And I started to think of content as like my life insurance for my business and I wanted it. And around that time, I had some clients that we'd been doing paid traffic for and they wanted to build an organic presence. And I remember a lot of them having interest in TikTok, but they're like, I. I don't want to dance around and act like a fool. I want to get business from it. I want to get clients. And it turned into this bet, and I was like, oh, I. I think we can do it. I'm going to show you that you can grow on TikTok without doing the dances. Little less than six weeks later, I'd gone from knowing nothing about the platform to 10,000 followers, was bringing in thousands in sales from TikTok. I mean, that really then became like a platform for me to get into YouTube and some of the other things that I wanted to do and had been scared to do because TikTok just felt so much more approachable. Like, I didn't have to worry about my peers seeing me or any anything. So, yeah, kind of a wild story.
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A
What are you doing on YouTube?
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B
So my YouTube channel is. Is really what happened. I just started sharing the content that I wish I had when I was trying to figure out TikTok. Because if you've ever been on TikTok, there's all these gurus on there and, you know, they're telling you this is what you got to do, and all these things, and most of it's bs and there's a lot of people hiding the ball. And I like detail, and I want it to be actionable. And that is one of the things I always loved about YouTube, is I could go there and I could learn. And so I knew I had wanted to start a YouTube channel. I've been thinking about it for years, and so I just started posting the stuff that, like, I wish somebody had told me. And it very quickly started to take off. And now, you know, it's two years in, I've just been posting these weekly TikTok tutorials, just helping people to understand how the algorithm works, how to get views, how to get followers, how to get sales, all of that kind of stuff, and really make it feel simple and, like, feel like I want you to come out of those videos and come out of today, too, and just be like, I can do this. Like, I know what I need to do and, like, have a little bit of an aha moment and the confidence to, like, go and not feel like I'm just confused by all the conflicting information. Like, I'm just going to do these simple things.
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A
So I'm curious, like, what did your family think about you, like, literally going through law school and then all of a sudden switching to TikTok? You must have had a little resistance, huh?
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B
Well, yeah, I mean, that was not fun. I remember having conversations with my dad and he's an engineer and you know, he knew he was going to be an engineer. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. And so he was, he used to, when I first went full time, because I don't really talk about money with people. And he'd be like, are you getting like some part time legal work or something? And I'm like, that, that's not a thing, dad. Like, that's not. And I don't need to. And yeah, there was a lot of resistance. I remember basically my dad, my father in law, not super happy about it, but you know, eventually I'm. I'm sitting here in my home office and you can't see out here, but surrounded by ranches here in, you know, the Texas hill country and have a beautiful view. And when I remember my dad come into the house the first time after we built it and he's never up early and it's like the sun's not even, it's just coming up and he's drinking coffees on the patio and I sat down next to him and he was just like, okay, I get it now. Like, I understand. I didn't see your vision and what you were doing, but like now I get it.
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A
Well, what's fascinating is I think your law degree and all the things that come in with that, like research and all that kind of stuff have kind of set you up to be successful here. Because we were talking when we were prepping for this thing, like there is something to what attorneys, recovering attorneys have, is they really understand research. They understand gathering information. Information, yeah. Analyzing things, which is really, really a critical part of the craft of law. So I feel like that sets you up for my next question here, which is the tick tock algorithm. Why is understanding that algorithm so important? Because you've really researched it.
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B
Yeah, it's funny you say that because really law school people think you're going and you're learning all of these laws and sure you're getting tested on them, but that's not what it's about. They are teaching you how to research things you don't know about very quickly so you can become an expert and then you can argue effectively. So you have to be able to consume information fast, understand it, and then translate it very clearly to other people. And so that has really helped me to kind of understand social media, to read the obscure documentation that TikTok puts out and, you know, kind of like make sense of it. But I think understanding the TikTok algorithm is super important because TikTok has completely changed the landscape of social media. I think there's kind of this trend right now of people saying that like social media is not social anymore and that's because of TikTok. Even if you go on Instagram or you go on some other platform, it's not about your friends following you to get life updates. It's about people being served content around the things that they are interested in and that interest based algorithm that all came from TikTok. And so if you can understand how the TikTok algorithm works and you can win there, where it's the Most competitive and 98% of your views are coming from people that don't know you, then those skills translate to YouTube, they translate to Instagram, they translate everywhere because even though some of those still have follower components, their algorithm, they have shifted to keep up and to keep audiences to be more interest based. And that's why your feed now, when you scroll on Instagram, it's not as much the people you follow like your stories are, but your feed is just random stuff based on your consumption. So I think if you can understand what we talk about today, it's going to help you be better everywhere.
- [10:17]
A
Before we get into the details of what we're going to talk about today, what if anything, do we need to understand or consider specifically when it comes to TikTok? Because I'm going to venture to guess that a fair amount of our audience is not active on TikTok as creators. They might be consumers of content on TikTok, but they're not looking at through the lens of someone who's actually creating content. What is it that we need to understand?
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B
I think the first thing is that if you want to get into creating content and you want to grow a personal brand and grow a person, you know, an audience, TikTok is like a very approachable, easy place to start. And there's a couple of reasons for that. The first one is that your stuff is going out to people that don't know you. So like, what appealed to me about TikTok versus say Instagram was that my peers and my friends and family weren't ever going to see my content. I was able to go there and learn and make a fool of myself and not have to worry about judgment. And people didn't even know about it until after it started to blow up. And really it was more the YouTube that started to bring attention to people that I was doing it. So I think it's very approachable in that way. But it's also easy to start because you don't need all the editing and it doesn't need to be fancy and all of that kind of stuff. The culture on TikTok is very casual. Talking to your friend on FaceTime and so you can literally just pull your phone out and just share your thoughts and do well. And so if you have something to say, you can just put it out there. Now there's some technical stuff we'll get into that you can do to help your content perform better, but it's very easy. And I think the other thing that I would say is like, you need to understand how the algorithm works. Because if you go onto TikTok and you've had success other places, or if you have in your mind like, oh, people go on TikTok and they blow up overnight, that can 100% happen. But what happens most of the time is people are stuck in this 200 view jail and they get frustrated and then they don't stick with it long enough for the blow up to happen.
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A
Explain the 200 view jail. I've heard of this before, but I don't even know what it means.
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B
Yeah, so the 200 view jail is not even like a real thing. Like people think it's, oh, TikTok hates me, they have me in jail, I can only get 200 views. But what it really is is that TikTok is showing your video to a small sample audience to figure out if your video is good. Because the way that they determine what goes viral and what doesn't is they basically put your content head to head with other ones. And the ones that get the most views, the most watch time, most engagement, those kind of things are the ones that are going to get pushed. So when you have 200 views that just me. And you're not getting beyond that, it just means that like, your content's not good enough yet. It's a skill you have to learn. Maybe you're not, you know, making the best ideas that you possibly could, or maybe you're making great content, but you haven't packaged it in a way to get people to stop scrolling in the feed. Or maybe you're making great content, but you're confusing the algorithm a little bit so it's not showing your content to the right people. So there's some simple things that we can do that we're going to get into today to like make your content have a higher likelihood of success. But I would Just if you're in that 200 view place, don't get discouraged. It's part of it. And don't worry about if you feel like your content isn't good, because if you're stuck in 200 views, it usually means that those 200 people aren't watching it anyway. Like, you got to learn how to get them to stop scrolling and develop better ideas. So it's okay to, like, make the bad content that you'll look back on later and go, oh, I can't believe I made that, because I still do that all the time, but you're going to get better. And that to me, the 200 view jail is more like. It's like a 200 view safety zone for you to learn and experiment and test ideas in a safe place that nobody knows about until you get figured out. And then everybody can see the good stuff.
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A
So what else do we need to understand then about how videos work? We Talked about the 200 View jail, but I know there's a few extra things you want to say there, right?
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B
Yeah. The one other big thing is that I think there's this belief that the audience on TikTok is just too young or that they're not as good for, like, lead quality and some of those kind of things. And that's not true. There's a much older demographic on that platform. Now, of course, all, all these social media apps start young, but they age up very quickly. And the example that I would, I would give is I had, I had this client, Jared, and He started on TikTok and he was a fitness coach working with, like, older women, like post menopause, helping them with hormones and weight loss and stuff like that. And he went on there and blew up to where his first month on TikTok, he brought in $75,000 in sales. And so you might think, okay, yeah, there's not any of these old women on there that are dealing with this that are going to pay high ticket. And it's like in less than 30 days, he started bringing in a crazy amount of income, and that's not normal. He had some great systems and he had a great business already, but he just went in and started immediately talking to his, like, ideal client. All of the messages were perfectly tailored to them. And so he started going viral and he started blowing up very, very quickly, and it completely changed his business.
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A
Couple other quick questions. What's the shelf life of a video on TikTok? And if I create some bad ones, does that mean the future ones are not going to get any views?
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B
Really? Good question. So the videos are, for the most part, completely independent of each other. So if you create a bad video, it doesn't mean that you can't make good ones in the future. You're not going to be punished for that. But it also means that if you get a million views on this video, that does not guarantee that your next one is going to get more than 500. Right. So you really have to pay attention to the videos that do well and learn from them. That way you can do them more often. When you see the people that are constantly getting big views, it's because they've mastered the skill of creating that content, not because they have a big following. The following can help, but it's different than, like the old days of YouTube where it was like you posted a video and if you had a huge audience, like, everybody saw that, you know, like, that's not what TikTok is. So the shelf shelf life thing, like this is important too, because it is a shorter shelf life. It's not like a YouTube video that lasts forever, but it's lasting longer. And so when you have a video, you're probably going to get most of your views in the first few days, the first week, but sometimes you have videos that will get picked up 30 days later and they will take off. And what happens is when you're posting as much as you are on TikTok, there's kind of this snowball effect. You start to end up with a huge consistent amount of traffic because you have multiple videos going at one time. And then when a video is doing well and people watch it and you have other videos doing well, like they're going to be served those videos. It's almost like retargeting ads. And so even with that shorter shelf life, like, that's why you can't stop. It's harder to take a break, you know, say, than like on YouTube. But you can, but you're not expecting one video to go viral and then, like, fuel your business for the rest of the year.
- [17:15]
A
Love it. Okay, so you mentioned earlier that you've been reading obscure documents that engineers at TikTok release. So you kind of have a sense of like, what TikTok is looking for. What is TikTok telling us? What are the signals they're giving us that might be useful for everyone listening?
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B
So I think the first thing is that if you're willing to read, TikTok does put out a lot of announcements and a lot of documentation about how their creator rewards program works and how these different features and when they do that, they kind of tell you what they want, which is really useful. And so you have to be careful because there might be something like I always hear people talk about SEO on TikTok and put keywords on the screen and slide them off. But TikTok has actually come out and said anything that's not on the screen or in your description is not being used. So if you slide that off, it's not going to work. So there's a lot of misinformation out there. But then they'll give you things like when you talk about monetization and views, they talk a lot about play duration. And they actually, under the Creator rewards program, define play duration as watch time plus finish rate. So one of the big things they're looking for is they want people to watch a large percentage of your video, but they want people finishing it. So it's not one of those things that you can game and just say, I'm going to make a four or five minute video. Because any people watch a whole minute of it. No, they would rather you make a 60 second video and a high percentage of people finish that video or maybe.
- [18:41]
A
Even watch it again. Right. Then you get even better or even watch it again.
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B
Yeah. And so things like creating savable content is really, really helpful for increasing your play duration. Because sometimes we're just scrolling on our feed in the grocery store, but we see a video and go, oh, I love that, I want to do that. And you save it. And then maybe later that evening or a week later, you actually watch it and you watch it the whole way, maybe you go back and watch another part. Now you're getting big play duration, right. You're getting that watch time, you're getting that finish rate. And those are some of the things they're looking for. The other big one is engagement. I can always tell when somebody's about to blow up. When I'm like talking to my clients because they start getting a lot of the same people repeatedly commenting on their content. And so what that means is somebody discovered them because all your content goes to the for you page. It's like, consider every video is going to people that don't know you, but then after that percentage of them are going to follow and then they're going to watch your other content. And so when those people start commenting, that means they're watching every video you put out and you kind of reach this critical mass where enough of them are watching a new piece of content that you Hit the, whatever the magic metric is for play duration and it takes off. And so if you can create more engagement conversation and you can start to build those fans, it's going to be huge. And with the engagement, your video is playing when people are engaging. So if somebody is commenting to ask you a question or they're commenting to disagree with you, the video is looping. And so you're getting that watch time with the comments. So when somebody responds to your video and you're in the early days, respond back, ask them questions, get them to come back to the video. Because now they're in the eyes of TikTok, watching it a second or third time because you ask them a question and they're excited that this creator they follow is talking to them and then they're commenting back. And that's going to help the performance of all your content.
- [20:37]
A
Love it. What about this concept of demand? Because I know when we were prepping for this, you had this like concept you wanted to explain about this topical demand thing, which I think is really important for people to understand.
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B
Yeah. So TikTok wants to keep people on the platform and because of that short shelf life that we talked about, you have a video go viral and TikTok is immediately looking for another video like that in order to satisfy the demand. Because if somebody watches a piece of content about how to escape 200 view jail or how to go viral on TikTok, then they're going to be interested in more content about that until they actually have the success and solve that problem for themselves. And so you can have a lot of success by filling that demand. If you're paying attention to what is working for other people and you're seeing the videos that they're having a lot of success with, you should be making your versions of those ideas, because when you do, you're giving TikTok what they want. You're giving them the content that is going to fill the demand for those people in that topic, and that's going to increase your chances of getting the big views. And so that's a big thing. They want people on the platform, but in order to do that, it's not like YouTube where things go up, the SEO rankings and search rankings and they can feed the same video for a year. They every single day, every single hour, they need new videos on the same topics 365 days a year. So if you can fill that, if you can help them with that mission, you're going to get rewarded.
- [22:11]
A
Do you have an example of maybe a client or yourself. Because I think it'd be really useful to hear how this might work.
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B
Yeah, so I had recently a client. This is kind of crazy. Even from when we talked last. I got this guy Kieran. He's just like helping people just live a happier life and like build the life they want and those kind of things. And really didn't know what exactly he wanted to talk about. And so he tried a lot of different stuff. And I was like, hey man, you just got to get a little bit more focused, like find the people that you like and pay attention to what they're doing and draw inspiration from that. And it was funny because I remember him posting when he got his first three followers totally pumped. And then maybe a month ago he posted about, hey, I got 500 followers. Because he had started to do that and he's like, I've had these videos and I'm just starting to like use these ideas more. And I'm dialing in on what I want to do and still paying attention to what those other people did. But he was seeing what was working for him. And about a week after he told me he hit 500, he was at 10,000. And that was about a week ago. I looked at his account before we came on. Today he's at 28,000 followers. And really what he did was he knew who he was and what he wanted to talk about, what he was passionate about. And he started looking for inspiration from other people and then seeing what was working for him and he just focused on those ideas and just absolutely blew up. So that's how it can work if you actually pay attention to those things.
- [23:41]
A
This is an interesting story. Since 2013, social media marketing world called San Diego home. It was beautiful. The weather, the sun, the energy. But last year something became very clear. We had outgrown our space. We needed room to properly host two world class conferences, Social Media Marketing World and AI Business World, simultaneously under one roof. San Diego couldn't give us that, so we're moving to Anaheim, California. Here's what you gain. Two conferences in one modern location where you seamlessly can move between social marketing and AI sessions. Plus you get perfect weather with Southern California sunshine. And here's the bonus, it's literally walking distance to Disneyland. That means you can bring the entire family and make memories beyond the conference, maybe even with some of the friends that you meet at the event. Kristin Christian said, quote, I love social media marketing world. That re energizes me and my passion for the field. I've chosen to work in Surrounding myself with others who, quote, get it. And having the opportunity to learn, plus get sunshine is so valuable. Anaheim lets you be the marketer who invests in your career and creates magical family memories all in a single trip. We didn't just move locations, we upgraded the entire experience. Better facilities, easier access, more opportunities to connect, and yes, the magic of Disney literally right next door. Join us April 28th to 30th, 2026 in Anaheim. Visit social media marketingworld.in fox and get your tickets today. First of all, this is really exciting on so many fronts, folks, if we think about what Mike is saying. First of all, you don't have to like create these super crazy videos. You can just talk directly to your phone, you know what I mean? And create a very simple video. And what you've told us is what TikTok cares about is keeping people activated on the platform, right? And they care about people watching your video and finishing your video. And they also care about engagement. So if you who are listening know that this is your domain and there are other people who are already successful creating content like this and you believe what Mike said is true, which is that they're always looking for new content to fill the demand. Because there's an insatiable demand of people that are looking for new content on this thing. In this case, happiness. You could just create videos on this kind of all day long, for lack of better words, and you could be really, really successful, which is encouraging and exciting. I kind of think about what I do. Like I'm in the business of putting on conferences, right? Social media marketing world, AI Business world, which is a sub conference of social media marketing world. And what I'm looking for is incredible trainers to come and to teach, and it's hard to find them, but when you find them and they've got great content and they do a great job, I want to ask them to come back, right? So that. Because there's demand for it. Like, I've got so many stages and so many things, and it's the same thing with podcast interviews. I have 52 guests a year. What I'm looking for is to fill those slots with really high quality people. And the social platforms are the same. So I think conceptually it makes sense that they want to fill demand. And there's almost probably millions of different topical categories on TikTok, right? And that's where it gets really interesting. So like, for those of us that aren't really active on TikTok, I guess the real question is like, where do we actually start maybe, like, we're excited now based on what you've told us, Mike, but we actually want to get to the point where we want to start doing something. Where do we start?
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B
Well, before I get into that, because I had two things come up when you were talking about that. The first thing I would say is if you're excited about this and by the potential, do not feel like it's oversaturated, because what people miss the mark on is there is room for you to share your personality and your perspective on a topic that might already have a lot of creators talking about it. Like, I'm talking about how to grow on TikTok. There's a lot of people that talk about how to grow on TikTok. You just have to embrace what makes you different. And for me, it's. I'm not trying to be the most entertaining guy or anything like that. I'm just trying to be like, teach and be like, very detailed and, you know, provide a ton of actionable value and eliminate confusion for people. And that helps me stand out. And I just realized that about myself, I'm like, I'm not going to try and be who I'm not. So if you go on there and you're thinking, oh, my goodness, there's a thousand fitness coaches, well, yeah, there are, but you are different. And there's a big corner of the Internet of people that are into the same things as you and your style and the way you talk and the way you teach and the views you have. And if you just start sharing them, you're going to attract your people, and that's really what it's about.
- [28:22]
A
And by the way, just to double down on that, there are people that are just waiting for someone like you to come and. And communicate with them, because maybe they need someone who is a former attorney who can clearly communicate how this stuff works instead of in a razzmatazz, really kind of crazy, like songs and music and dance and all that stuff. Or maybe you're someone in your 50s or 60s, right, and they're looking for someone that's like them, right, who communicates. Like, maybe you're a mom with, you know, empty nester, right? And maybe you're going to attract that audience that's not really interested in and hearing from the people that. That remind them of their kids that are in college. You know what I mean? So, like, there's so much, like, there's people waiting to hear from you. And that's always been true about podcasting, about YouTube, about TikTok about writing. If the market's big enough, there's always going to be opportunity. And that, that is an important message I wanted to double down on.
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B
I would take it a step further. Yeah, I'm 37 and I'm experiencing this, but if you are 40 plus, you have a huge opportunity. This has actually happened on YouTube in the last year. We're seeing these creators that are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, that are blowing up. And now I'm starting to see that on TikTok because there's a lot of these 20 something life coaches and business coaches and people that haven't experienced a lot of life yet that are sharing all of this stuff. And hey, I was in my 20s when I got started. But there's a hunger for people that have real life experience and have solved problems and have lived different things. Not the people that are like, I have no kids and I can just hustle. But maybe the people that are like, I'm juggling children and sports and taking them everywhere and cooking meals and figuring out how to do this. People are hungry for that. So go take advantage of it. But yeah, I just, I think that's one of the biggest opportunities on TikTok or really any platform right now.
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A
Awesome. All right, so where do we begin? Now that we're encouraged, I think the.
- [30:23]
B
Big thing is if you're already posting and you're not views, it means that you're not filling that demand. And so you need to pay more attention to what other creators are doing. And if you're just starting, you need to do the same thing. You need to learn the platform, you need to learn what people are just interested in. If you're going to go about this and think, I know who I'm speaking to and I'm going to post the stuff that I feel like posting, you're going to flop and you're going to be stuck in that 200v jail. You need to learn the skills and you need to learn what people actually want. And TikTok makes it super easy to figure this out because the views are so scattered, where it's 200 views, 500 views, thousand. And then people with millions of views or hundreds of thousands of views. And so you can see that. And so all you got to do is pay attention to these other creators in your space and say, like, what are their average views? And look for outliers. If there's a creator that gets 1 to 2000 views every post and then they have a video that gets 100,000 views, pay attention to that. If there's somebody that gets 10 to 50,000 views every post and they get a million views, pay attention to that.
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A
What are we looking for?
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B
You're looking for those outliers.
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A
What I meant is, when we watch those videos, what are we looking for those outliers?
- [31:39]
B
Well, the first thing I would do is I would just save them. They have things on TikTok called collections where you can save the video and so make one that's just ideas or research or name it something and just put them in there. And that way you can go back and you can start watching them and you can look for things that, that are similar because you'll start to notice patterns. And really that's like success on TikTok, it's such a trending platform. It's about pattern recognition. But I would argue, like all the social platforms are like that. So I would just start by saving them. But then once you do start looking at what is the text they have on their screen, I call it the headline, but it's kind of like the equivalent of a YouTube thumbnail, right? It's the thing that gets people to stop scrolling versus getting them to click on a video. And then what do people say in the first two to three seconds? That's your hook. If you can't get them to watch beyond that, if they swipe past it, they're missing out on all the really valuable stuff that you have to say. So pay attention to that. You know, you're really looking for these kind of formats that people are using. But early on, you just want to model what's working. So do that research. Find those ideas like that are. You're like, oh, I can post about that and then make your version of it. And the example I always tell people is there's this book, Steal like an Artist by Austin Kleon. And if you're a content creator, you need to read this book. It's very short, it's mostly pictures. You can read it in an evening. And the whole concept is that artists learn by mimicking other artists. They learn techniques by going and painting in a certain style or doing charcoal or watercolors in a certain style, whatever it may be. It's the same with your. Your content creation. You will learn from studying and trying to replicate the people that have done well. And so the way that looks on TikTok and really the foundation of growing is find proven ideas because you don't know what works. And then take that idea and make your version of it.
- [33:32]
A
It.
- [33:33]
B
If they have text on the screen. Use that exact same text, whatever that topic is. Like, Maybe they have three tips to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year or something like that. We'll make your video about your three tips to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year. Don't say the same words, don't plagiarize it, don't copy it word for word, but use the text on the screen that's helping get people to stop scrolling. Use the hook, the first line that they say to grab people's attention. And then do your three things. That's where your personality and your perspective comes out. That's you sharing what you believe is the key and your way of describing it, because that's what's going to attract your people, not their people, and is going to help you stand out. But now you have a much higher chance of filling that demand and actually getting the big views and breaking through when you're either stuck in 200 view jail or you're just starting out.
- [34:25]
A
Do you have any tips on how to, like, curate our feed to see only the best stuff? So we have some cool stuff to model.
- [34:30]
B
Yeah, you kind of gave it away. That's exactly what you do. TikTok, that algorithm, if you have ever noticed, like you can watch one video and then you'll start seeing 15 videos on that topic. So you can actually curate your feed. You can basically coach it to show you the most viral content in your niche. And so I would recommend, if you're getting on TikTok, like have two accounts, have one that is just for fun and mindless scrolling, and have one that's for your business. And on that one that's for your business, search keywords and terms in your space and watch content that has big views, engage with it, find followers that you like and can draw inspiration from and follow them, or save their content. And then when you're in your feed, every time you're scrolling, if you see a video that you would not create, click on it and say you're not interested. And if it's a video that like you on the topic you'd be interested in, just let it play for a little bit because you can do this for 10 to 15 minutes. And then every single time you log on to TikTok, the very first video you're going to see is probably a video that has a ton of views, that's very recent and you're just going to be able to. I mean, content research becomes so easy because you just, every time you Open your app, you save two or three videos, and then you go pay for your groceries.
- [35:42]
A
Love it. Okay, so modeling videos is important. And I love the idea of curating feeds on the topics where you want to create and then looking at the creators that you know it lifts up to you because it's going to show you what it thinks are the best and then saving those ideas and then modeling those ideas. It sounds like what I'm hearing you say is stay in your niche. Right? So, like, if you're not a fitness, but you're into fitness, but you're like, let's say you're actually more like a financial advisor, you don't want to model the fitness stuff, you want to model the financial stuff. Is that what I'm hearing you say?
- [36:17]
B
Yeah. You need to focus on what it is that you want to talk about. If you're trying to grow a fitness business to help moms lose weight, don't be sharing your shopping haul. Don't be sharing your home decor stuff or the other things that you're interested in. If you want to share those, save it for your stories. Don't put it on your feed, because the content that you're posting on your feed is going to teach the algorithm, like, what they should show you, too. And so this is something I, maybe we should have mentioned earlier, but, like, TikTok's gonna try and categorize you. And so one of the big reasons you might not be getting views is because they're not showing your content to the right people. And the main reason that happens is because you're not being consistent with the topic that you're talking about. And so if you're that online fitness coach and you post a fitness video and it does well, but then the next video you talk about more general, like, being a mom stuff and like your favorite brand of diapers or whatever, well, that content is going to land, but it's going to be shown to the people interested in the fitness stuff and they're going to swipe past it. And now the next time you post a video, TikTok's back at square one. And it's like, I don't even know who to show your content to. And so you want to be posting consistently on your topic in the feed. And even when you're not getting views, don't delete your videos. The videos can take off later. But every video you post gives data to the algorithm about who you are, who you talk to, and who they should show your content to. And so what happens Is, let's say you post 10 videos and none of them are getting good views, but you're consistent. Well, they're learning a little bit. And maybe there's people that are watching in that 200. And so they start trying to find more and more people like that, and then eventually they hit a pocket. And maybe out of that 200 people, you have 50% of them stop and watch the video. And 50% of those people watch a significant amount and next thing you know, you've got 10,000 views on your hand. Like that's how it works. So they're trying to categorize you. Because what they want is when any person comes on the platform, they want that person to see the content they're interested in. And they can't use your content to fill that demand if they don't know what your content is about. So that's a really important one for sure.
- [38:32]
A
Do you have any examples of how you or your clients have modeled a video? And actually, can you walk us through kind of what they did and kind of how it worked? Because I think it'd be interesting for people to just wrap their brain around this.
- [38:45]
B
Yeah. So I was working with this mindset coach and he made this awesome content, but he was just sharing kind of whatever he wanted. And I remember being on a zoom call with him and he was really frustrated and I was like, let me just show you, like, let me walk you through the process of like how I would research and create content. And so we started searching, you know, and finding creators. And I was like, hey, look at this creator here. She does not have a big audience. It was like 3,000, something like that. She had this one really big video. And so I was like, let's take this video because it's perfect for you and I just want you to make your version of it. It's the same thing that I said with that modeling. Like, use that headline. Use like the same kind of description. Like that first line is the one they see in the video. Like use that and then the rest of your description, put it in your own words and then use her hook and just share. She had this many points. Like share your points. If you agree with them, you can put them. If not, just like, it's not word for word, but you're, you're making your version of it. And, and this was the craziest thing. Like he took that research video and he made it the next day and in a 48 hour period, he got millions of views on that video. And like 12,000 followers.
- [39:57]
A
That's crazy.
- [39:58]
B
It is. And I, you know, I've done this so many times where I've like helped people research stuff and you don't always have that. Right. Like, but it was just when you have a big outlier like that. And he was kind of in a space where maybe, you know, there's not as many people looking at it and it just, it took off, but to me, make it even wilder. He just started making that video all the time. He would make it remake it a few times a month and every time he would go viral to different levels. Sometimes it'd be a hundred thousand, sometimes it'd be 10, sometimes it would be millions.
- [40:33]
A
The exact same video. Or he would rerecord it.
- [40:35]
B
You mean he would re record it. You used to be able to just take your video and you'd plug it into this thing called Snaptick app and it would download it and you could repost it. You can't do that anymore. They won't get the views. Like I used to do that. You'd have a million views on a video and you download it and you'd repost the same one.
- [40:49]
A
This is perfect. This is right into my next question, which is how do we scale? So like, I know you're getting ahead of yourself, but keep going.
- [40:56]
B
Yeah, the way you scale is you play your greatest hits, you remake the good content. There's so often that I work with somebody and I look at their page and they, you know, they're getting no views and then they have this one video that got 10,000 views and they never talked about that topic again ever, you know, or somebody that, you know, has like a million view video and then did nothing with it. And it just doesn't make sense to me. Like when you have that, that's a signal. And so I always, I've mentioned outliers a few times, but I feel like there's two categories of outliers. There's early on when you don't know what works for you, and so you're looking to other people to see what works for them and you're modeling it in order to figure out what works for you and develop your voice. And that whole time when you're modeling, it's like that steal like an artist thing. You're learning what makes a good idea, what makes a good hook, what kind of formats of content happen over and over. You're kind of just absorbing those skills just through the act of doing it. But then eventually you have a video hit and go viral. And now you can take that and you can remake it again. And then as you have more videos go viral, you might have three, four, five, six videos that always do numbers for you and that you can just remake every month. And it's that Pareto principle, right? Like the 20% that does the 80% of the work. That's the secret to success on any social media platform, at least for me. Like, that's what I found on TikTok. That's what I found on YouTube.
- [42:21]
A
When you remake it, are you literally saying it word for word? Same script, different setting? I mean, is that effectively what we're talking about?
- [42:29]
B
Oh, I'll make it as close as I can. If I can sit in the same chair and I'll just wear a different shirt and I'll say it all word for word. I'll do that. But then I'll riff on it. You know, I'll take that same hook in that same headline, but maybe I'll talk about it in a different way, you know, and see how that works. I'll start to experiment with it. I might take that same hook, but I'll apply it to another topic. Like, if there's four or five topics that you talk about, like, so in TikTok, it might be how the algorithm works. View, how to get followers, how to get sales. I might say, okay, well, this one about how to get views worked really well. What if I did the same structure, the same headline and the same hook, but instead of about how to get more views, it was about how to get more followers? Well, that usually works, right? And so then you start to just develop these templates for yourself that you can use that make content creation really easy. And so you have your own outliers, and you just keep doing them over and over. And since they're driving the bulk of your growth and you, your lead flow, then you can just start to play and you can start to experiment. And that's when things really start to scale and to get fun, because in all of this time of you studying other creators and modeling the content and finding out what works for you, you kind of learn to read the matrix. You kind of start to see it, right? You start to see what works and understand it just kind of intuitively. And so you might just get inspired while you're on a walk or in the shower listening to a podcast and have this idea and you just p, pull your phone out and you record it. But you're recording it from the view of, okay, this is what the kind of hook I'm going to use and this is what I'm going to write in my description and for my headline to get them to stop scrolling. And then you talk. And now you've created this whole new thing that goes viral that nobody's ever done before, Right? And so that's where you really start to scale. But you don't. You can't do that. Early on, that's where I talked about, like that posting and praying. People think they can do that, but, like, you just don't. It's like anything. Like you can't just pick up a guitar and suddenly be a great guitar player. It takes practice. And I think people have this idea that, oh, TikTok, you can blow up overnight. Yeah, of course you can, if you get lucky. But you can increase your luck by looking at what works and studying it and learning it and actually developing the skill to be a really good creator, just like any other habit.
- [44:48]
A
Mike Yonda. This has been a fascinating exploration into TikTok. I know people are going to want to connect with you on the socials. So where can they find you on TikTok? Where can they find you on YouTube if they want to work with you? Where do you want to send them?
- [45:03]
B
The easiest thing, go search my name, Mike Yonda. Y A N D A on YouTube and then from there you can join my daily newsletter. I literally just tell stories and teach you stuff. It's a lot of fun. You can follow me on TikTok there. Those are the main three places that I post content. So if you just go to YouTube, you'll be able to access all of it.
- [45:22]
A
Thanks so much for sharing your insights with us today.
- [45:24]
B
Yeah, thank you for having me.
- [45:25]
A
Hey, just a quick update. Mike will be joining us at Social media Marketing World 2026. So if you really love the episode and you want to get a chance to learn more from Mike, you definitely want to get your tickets. And also we took all the notes, so you just simply have to visit socialmediaexaminer.com 693 and if you're new to the show, follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, let your friends know about the show. Do check out our other shows. The AI Explored podcast and the Social Media Marketing talk show. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media examiner this episode is brought to you by Social Media Marketing World happening April 28th to 30th, 2026 in Anaheim, California. For the first time ever get two world class conferences under one roof. Social Media Marketing World and AI Business World. Master social marketing strategies. Deep dive into AI. Connect with thousands of fellow marketers all in one incredible experience. Plus your walking distance to Disneyland. Turn your professional development into a family vacation. Ready to level up your marketing? Grab your tickets now@social mediamarketingworld.in fox.