The Death of Organic Reach: What Works Right Now  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Platforms Are Now Interest-Based** - Meta platforms are now “interest media” where AI-powered algorithms recommend content to non-followers based on interaction data. - Creators must focus on being recommendable to reach new audiences outside their follower base. Transcript: Mari Smith Okay, first of all, it's sheer volume as an aspect of that. There is more content in these feeds than ever before and there's only so much attention. So that's one thing. There's just so many eyeballs, only so many hours in the day. And social media has really changed, right? So it's no longer the actual social media, it's interest media. It's the AI powered algorithms that are deciding on your behalf what you're interested in, and shoving all that in your feed. So yeah, like you just said, in your intro, it's all very well to say, well, just post better content. The thing is that it's actually about finding an audience of non-followers. That's one thing that I would recommend people pay attention to on Facebook and Instagram. You can go right into every post and it's going to show you how many followers and how many non-followers. So yes, you want to be recommendable as it's called. And by the way, you mentioned impressions. Facebook has changed that metric to views and views is the same as reels plays. It's one millisecond. It's just the moment of time that your content is on the screen. And the same with views, the same was actually, it's a unified metric for all post types, whether it's carousels, photos, stories, reels, you name it. ([Time 0:02:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8d3ccac2-ab29-4ae7-b577-b3c3553da41c)) - **Views Down, Opportunity Still There** - YouTube views are down broadly, driven by divided attention and the rise of Shorts and AI content. - The opportunity remains if creators innovate, pivot, and improve content quality and packaging. Transcript: Sean Cannell Yeah, you know, there's some interesting trends happening right now. I have some takeaways, let's talk about three quick case studies. You know, one is a well known social media expert that's been in the game for years named Gary Vaynerchuk actually recently launched a new channel. It's a dedicated vlog channel. And if you look at his channel, his most viewed video only has 8000 views. Now, that's great numbers, actually. I think a lot of us would love to get 8,000 views per YouTube video, but this is Gary V with a team of 10, 20, 30 people working on his personal brand. And I think it just reveals that this idea of coming on YouTube and getting millions of views, even if you're at the top of your game, is kind of a thing of the past. Second case study is Linus Tech Tips, one of the biggest tech creators, recently posted a video that talked about views being down as much as 70%. And their typical videos actually got 1.5 to 2 million views. Insane. But they said they dropped down to as little as a million or even 300,000. Now, again, if we could get 300,000 views per upload, every marketer listening would be like, please, you know, that's good. But when you think about a 70 plus percent views drop, you just see this trend across the platform. And then recently, third case study, I was in Las Vegas at a creator meetup around the SEMA event. So there was a lot of car creators covering different car content and sales and Dodge chargers and all this different stuff. Tons of creators and a few personal finance entrepreneurs, marketers and creators as well. And across the board, they said our views are down. Now, they also were saying, you know, we're still doing OK. Like we're still doing some brand deals. We're still doing business. If we have products and services, we're still innovating and adapting, but it was just awareness that across the board views are down. But I think the takeaways are views are down, but the opportunity is not. It's just being aware that attention is more divided than ever before. And I don't think it's just an algorithm thing. I think it's over the last few years, there's been the introduction of YouTube shorts, which now get over 200 billion views per day. So there's a lot of attention going there. You've also got AI content. And there's probably a lot of people that don't love watching AI only content, but a lot of people do. So there's a whole new set of content there. And then you're competing with the whole internet. There's more streaming platforms to watch. There's more different creators to watch. So I think it's just sort of realizing it's more of a maturity. YouTube isn't shrinking. Attention is being divided. ([Time 0:05:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6211e529-8899-40dc-bf03-a989316316ce)) - **Split Test Thumbnails And Titles** - Split test thumbnails and titles to optimize click-through and video performance using micro budgets or YouTube's built-in tests. - Revisit older videos and run new thumbnail/title tests to improve long-term channel results. Transcript: Sean Cannell And what the workflow was like was they would take their guest and they would have three different facial expressions from their guests, perhaps more. And then they would have about 30 different quotes from the episode, very synthesized text on screen. You know, it says stress is killing you or it might be some other angle. And they would then try something else and narrow that down to find a winning thumbnail. So it speaks to the level of attention to detail. And this is a massive shift that YouTube just updated is now creators and entrepreneurs and marketers have the opportunity to split test three thumbnails. That's existed for a while. Now you can split test three titles and any combination of all the above. So if you love one of your thumbnails, you could just upload the three thumbnails that are exact same, but split test three different titles or three entirely different packaging, Meaning a title thumbnail combo, maybe a different positioning. So that's, that's radical. And it's kind of overwhelming. But if you start to shift your mindset, you start saying, okay, this attention to detail matters because a video can really either succeed or fail based on a different title. It could succeed or fail based on a different thumbnail. And how far do you want to take that? You could go back to old content. Maybe that's already performing and run a fresh thumbnail split test or title split test on it to get it to improve even more. ([Time 0:11:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5d1e4c87-bfad-4a0e-befa-464ab8272ba7)) - **Dog Trainer’s Meta Reinvention** - Mari shared a VIP client, Lispeth, a Norwegian dog trainer who moved from in-person to online and used varied Meta formats to grow. - She mixed lives, short-form clips, stories, groups and ads while continually experimenting with formats. Transcript: Mari Smith I actually have numerous examples. Example I would like to share is one of my VIP clients, Lispeth. She is a dog trainer. She's at Nordic Dog Trainer. She's out of Norway. And up until five years ago, she'd do all her dog training in person. And then she cracked the code to do all online. And she really does well with the meta properties. So Facebook predominantly and a little bit of Instagram. And she used to do consistent Facebook lives, like sometimes daily. You know, now that Facebook lives, I don't know if they're performing as well. And of course, Facebook brought out that thing where they're going to, they take it down after 28 days, storage, I guess they need the storage. But now, you know, all videos on Facebook are real, just like Instagram. And so Elizabeth, she has these strong hooks, you know like jump cuts and then mixing it up even though Meta would like us to be nothing but reels on Facebook is where you can really mix Up and do images you can do those large font with the background color you can ask questions you can do polls carousels sometimes cross posted from Instagram, they don't always do so Well, but she's always experimenting. And she uses what I call all the things. So stories, always an active story, you know, groups, she has very active groups. And then she does do ads. I know our episode today is dedicated to organic, but I'm a big fan of also bringing in some paid content. And just plus what you were talking about a minute ago with Sean there about the testing, stories are a brilliant way to test. You can post many stories in any one day as you want on Facebook and or Instagram and see how your audience responds to that. And then on Instagram, they have those trial reels where it goes out and it finds you an audience of nothing but non-followers. ([Time 0:13:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3e286724-d438-4c3e-9ab0-67a942ac2293)) - **Make Every Second Count** - Architect every detail of a video: packaging, hook, scripting, and retention editing to make each second count. - Trim fluff and deliver one audience, one problem, one clear promise to boost ROI and breakout performance. Transcript: Sean Cannell Yeah, I have a great case study. And here's the big takeaway and illustration. Those that are winning on YouTube right now understand this one thing. Every second counts in the viewer journey. And so I think there's been an over-indexing in the past of if you get your title right, your thumbnail right, and your hook right, then once you get into the content, people are there And they're going to stick around. But I think in today's landscape, people are just busy. And if there's starting to get boring in the video, if you feel like you're kind of repeating, you're going down a rabbit trail, you get off topic, people can bounce and watch something Else. They could switch platforms, click on a different video. So it's a lot of rigor, but it's every second counts. So I think it's three things. And this case study is Dr. Jake Berman. His niche is helping senior golfers become pain-free, enjoy the game, start getting better results, add yards to their drives. And so he was working with one of our Think Media coaches. And I think the power there is when somebody gets into YouTube, it feels like an overwhelming landscape, let alone just creating videos and then thumbnails and all these details, but Even mastering the video itself, the structure, the script. And so working with one of our coaches, they really focused on three things and they architected every detail, mastering packaging, retention, scripting, and retention editing. It's like concept to completion. Like what's the big idea? What's the title and the thumbnail? And then what is said in the first few seconds of the video, how's the video structured, trimming the fluff. And I want to put a caveat and a disclaimer. YouTube still is giving marketers the opportunity to film a video in their car, one take, no editing, packaged well, and get crazy results. It's happening all the time. But at the highest level of the game, it's those attention to detail that's really breaking out. And so a recent video that our coach worked on with Dr. Jake got 20,000 views. His channel has 8,000 subscribers, so it outperforms subscribers. It's still getting around 109 views per hour. It was a 38X outlier on the channel. And the title was Seniors, Stop Starting the Down Swing with Your Arms. One audience, one problem, one clear promise, great packaging. And the ROI of a video like that into Dr. Jake's business is off the charts. But Nathan, our coach that was working with him, helped him on every single detail. This was not an accidental outlier video. It was crafted. ([Time 0:16:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e67698aa-9431-4c0b-867e-12caf895b48a)) - **Optimize For Retention** - Optimize for retention and watch time across platforms; higher retention drives algorithmic reach. - Monitor retention graphs and rework content when viewership drops steeply in the first seconds. Transcript: Mari Smith Absolutely. I love that Sean brought this up. It's about retention. It's about watch time. And because I think that many marketing experts out there have beaten this drum about the thumbnail, the title, the first three seconds. And so we were like really honing that. OK, we hooked them. We got them. OK, now, okay, really talk for however many minutes you want. But if you watch that retention graph, if it just plummets within the first five, ten seconds, then it's like, whoa, you got to work on your retention. You got to work. I love what you said there, Sean, a minute ago. About every second counts. It takes a little bit more work, but it's really, really worth it. Because the algorithms are looking at that too. If you're consistently getting really long watch times, people watching to the end, two minutes, three minutes, however long these things are, then yeah, you're going to get a lot More reach and views. ([Time 0:19:47](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f4bd1c6e-35c1-48bc-bb4a-0ffa1dd3386f)) - **Go Platform-Native** - Create platform-native content rather than blindly repurposing to get exponentially better results on each app. - Study what’s being recommended on each platform and reverse-engineer successful native formats. Transcript: Sean Cannell Yeah. I think that platform native is very important and I'm very personally active on multiple platforms as well. So on the one hand, I think there's the repurpose strategy, still very powerful, especially if you do something like a video podcast and then translating that content into vertical Videos. But I found on Instagram and Meta, Facebook, that when I sit down and make platform native content and speak directly to my phone and think about retention, my results aren't like 10 Times better. They're like a hundred times better if I'm just native on platform and really thinking about the audience there, the behavior there. And I think one of the, I know that all marketers listening to this probably are consuming a lot of social media, but I think one of the mindsets is to go into a season of study and consume Content and really ask yourself, what's being recommended to you? What are you seeing? And so that's a lot of what I reverse engineer is success leaves clues and the content you see performing well is absolutely crafted for the individual platform. ([Time 0:21:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/01916829-e745-4cd0-b80f-5c1c814dcf86)) - **Three Paths For Creators** - Creators must choose: accept diminished returns, burn out, or reinvent with new skills and mindset. - A few breakout hits can still deliver disproportionate awareness and business impact. Transcript: Sean Cannell To be honest, I think if you're still operating off of like yesterday's best practices, you still might be doing OK. Like you might be serving your core audience and you're willing to accept diminishing returns. I had a conversation recently where somebody was just frustrated. They weren't getting the same views they were getting in 2021 or 2022. And I was like, of course you aren't. You know, everybody was locked down at the time. There was people only had time to be on social media during that era. And now attention's more divided. And I know that results vary between everybody listening, but this creator was used to getting like a hundred thousand views and now they're getting 10,000. And I think a reframe could be, well, you're still getting 10,000. Like, what are you doing with those views? And so I think that you need to reinvent yourself if you want to rise, but perhaps you'll be okay. That's the first thing. Are you okay with the numbers and you just readjust right now? I think the second thing is a lot of people are going to burn out and that's already starting to happen. Not necessarily a bad thing. Every marketer and business owner is just always measuring ROI. And you have to then make the decision, am I going to accept these results, accept these numbers? Am I going to pivot and improve? Or am I going to maybe just change my approach entirely? And so some people are abandoning social media to a degree. But I think the third option is to decide to reinvent yourself. Because as Mari mentioned earlier, this interest media gives brand new accounts a chance to break out. And you can experiment a lot. And so you are one video away from having extraordinary results. And if you just commit to kind of this new era, it in a way only takes one. Of course, you want multiple hits, but you'll look at a lot of the biggest accounts and you can look at TikTok or look at Instagram and go study their reels views and see that they're getting A hundred views, a thousand views, and they might get those for 30 reels in a row. But then there's one that has 155,000 and then one that has 866,000. And if your bio is optimized, you understand what your kind of buyer journey, viewer journey is, customer journey, then that's reorienting that it's not every post entitled to reach All your followers, but how many winners do you need? And a couple of those winners can bring so much awareness, you know, new people checking you out, clicking your links, you know, following you conversations in the DMS. So I think the third group is going to understand that it's changed a little bit, retool their mindset, and then also retool their skillset. ([Time 0:24:02](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d3f6ea3b-7c15-4d95-9a64-452d281c87fe)) - **Use DM Triggers To Start Conversations** - Use comment-triggered DM automations (e.g., ManyChat) to move viewers into Messenger/DMs and start conversations. - Step in from automation to personal DMs to convert with real human interaction and calendar links. Transcript: Mari Smith So Meta has really created, I mentioned ecosystem earlier. So you've got Facebook, Instagram, and threads predominantly. Like if you're scrolling through your Instagram, all of a sudden you'll catch, oh, so-and just posted on threads. They want you to hop over there and now you're on Facebook. Oh, so-and posted. It's like this whole ecosystem. And what Facebook or meta wants us to do is this four-step process. You got your content, you got the eyeballs on it, people watching it, then DMs, not clicking on external links, get people into the conversations in the DMs, whether that's Messenger, Instagram, you know, WhatsApp, Threads now has the DMs. Then the fourth part is the conversion. So, and you know, I think probably Zuckerberg has an agenda with this because they've got the business AIs coming out and, you know, platforms like ManyChat have been around for a long Time. I know that Meta works closely with them. You've got other chatbots like that. So they really are a powerful conversion tool, and initially a conversation tool. So getting people into the one-on DMs is exceedingly powerful way to just build those relationships. And yeah, you can do that automated with the AI, the chatbots, but once you get into real people, Sean was mentioned that earlier. I know I spend a lot of time in the trenches with my community, real me talking, and I don't use AI for my comments or, you know, to engage with people or in the DMs. So it's really about building those relationships. And that's what Meta is wanting with this ecosystem is get people into the DMs. Do you have any tips on how to do that yeah well for starters you could deploy a system like many chat where in your post you'll say comment with the word you know free gift or whatever the Trigger word is off they go into the dms and it's all automated but at any point you can step in there and begin the the real and you can literally say hey you know there's real marie here You know you were just talking to my bot here's my calendar link you know what you want to book a call with me or here's a link to a free download. And that way, because especially on Instagram is you don't really have the links, but on Facebook, your links can go in the first comment. ([Time 0:31:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d720caad-3999-4e5b-bd19-5222dcaff2b5)) - **Boost Value Per Minute** - Improve value-per-minute: pack efficient value and frequent moments of learning or delight to retain viewers. - Experiment with collabs and the YouTube community tab to re-promote content and reach non-subscribers. Transcript: Sean Cannell I think we touched on one, which would be improving your videos and every second counts. And here's a metric for individuals, value per minute. Ask yourself, what is the value per minute? Now, this could be subjective, but it's how efficient, how many, in a way, dopamine hits are people getting? Like, ooh, I learned something. Oh, that was funny. Oh, good story. But not too long, right? How much value can you pack in per minute on long-form content? And it's really value per second, especially on short-form content. I think also on platform, there's a new collab feature where two channels can agree to collab on a video and share audiences. Been experimenting with that. And what's cool is you can then see the analytics of it. Yeah. What's your take on that? Do you feel like it matters? I feel like it's not revolutionary. Like I was recently, I collabed my podcast channel, which has 350,000 subscribers or something with a newer channel. And it's not like it made the video skyrocket, but it is something to certainly experiment with. And it's one of those, it's those small things that you could start embracing. Another one is the community tab. I think that most marketers are not using the community tab well, meaning that you can do creative posts to even re-promote and re-educate your newer subscribers about your old content. I think that when you look at the community tab on YouTube right now, you could do up to 10 square images like a carousel. And if you're doing well-built out carousels on Instagram, that content could be repurposed to YouTube to educate, to add value. These community tab posts can also get reach on their own merits. They can reach non-subscribers. ([Time 0:34:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0f0ff69c-cc9c-40f1-b411-319de25c7dd7)) - **Make A Smarter Business, Not Just More Content** - Lower views don't require lower income; focus on funnel optimization, email, and back-end conversion to raise revenue. - Improve landing pages, deliverability, and lifetime value to make attention more profitable. Transcript: Sean Cannell Because even if views are down, your income can be up. So this has forced me personally to ask myself, am I thinking about all of the things? Because I know that sometimes marketers can get a little lazy or content creators, especially like I just want to create content, get all this reach and all these views and hope it fixes A hundred other problems. But when views go down, I started asking myself, okay, how many people are making it to my email list? How effective am I even being with email marketing? How's my deliverability over there? How are my subject lines? How's my content? How am I doing reaching my existing audience and tapping into these different aspects of business where conversion rates on a landing page, as we know, you know, it could be 20%. You make some changes, it could be 40%. You make some more changes, it could be 60%. How I wish. I mean, you're talking about a free offer though, right? Yeah. Yeah. Free offer. Yeah. How many people are getting over to that? But those are those small tweaks where we maybe invest all of our energy on the content side and then what they're sent into the funnel, if you will. There's so many optimization opportunities there. And so I think asking what's your LTV, what's your lifetime value and what are you doing with the attention you do have? How can you run a smarter business? I understand this is an organic conversation, but I think about this. We spend a lot of money on paid advertising. And we again, we might focus on the front end side of that, as opposed to what about the back end, like how many people are effectively being reached. ([Time 0:36:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2161c1de-53dd-45b7-ae22-aff7529af3d4)) - **Measure Conversations, Not Just Views** - Views are a vanity metric; track conversation metrics like DMs, group engagement, leads and conversion rates instead. - Respond quickly to comments using names to build relationships and move people into your funnel. Transcript: Michael Stelzner Mari, you mentioned that across the meta properties, the new metric is views, right? Is that the only metric we should be looking at? Oh, God, no, no, no. Mari Smith It's a vanity metric still. Okay. You know, views don't pay the bills. I totally agree with what sean said is so you got to look at your whole business like how are you doing with your leads and then the back end and then the email marketing and conversion rates All of this is so important views are nice but they're not the be-all end-all and definitely with meta like wanting marketers and creators to be more you know in the dms and. You don't have to be in the DMs. You might run a really active Facebook group or with the comments, any comments that you have, either yourself or your team, the getting in there and answering as many comments, usually As quickly as possible. I mean, speed can really make all the difference and making somebody's day and making them feel seen and heard and using their first name, you know? So I would be more like focusing on a conversation metrics versus consumption. That can really kind of open up the funnel and get you more folks into your business. By the way, I wanted to speak to something else real quick when you were just talking about like getting the viral reels with the wrong audience. Have you seen the incredible translations that Matt has brought out for both Facebook and Instagram? You can now translate into Spanish, Portuguese, and Hindi and English. If you're in those languages, you can translate back to English. It is insanely good. The lip syncing and the voice matching. I always say, me is my Scottish, Canadian, American accent speaking fluent Portuguese, rolling my R's. ([Time 0:39:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dfcc94fd-8970-4bea-b365-f6c508526dbd)) - **Community Is The Competitive Moat** - As AI content grows, community and authentic human presence become the main moat for creators. - Doubling down on live, groups and real interactions preserves trust and differentiation versus AI content. Transcript: Mari Smith Well, you know, Meta, Zuckerberg are exceedingly competitive. So, you know, they got their vibes. If you go to meta.ai, you now got this feed of nothing but AI created videos, competitor to open AI Sora. And I don't know, but do people really want 100% AI feed? Regardless, it's coming, right? And I've been citing for the last several months a statistic or a quote from Tom Bilyeu, an entrepreneur that I really admire and respect. And he predicts that 90% of all content will be fake AI content by 2027. And he says that your only moat is community. So really leaning into doing more like live streams and connecting with your audience, running a group. If it's not a Facebook group, it might be other different third party, you got, you know, school and Kajabi and circle and Slack and you guys use heartbeat and so on and so forth. So really doubling down on those DMS and the Facebook groups and just showing real human clients that you're a real human person. And yeah, AI is just going to get louder and stronger, but I just really think that your authentic self is a competitive edge. 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