The energy you feel when you create is felt by the viewer. The energy you feel when you write is felt by the reader.
Dan Martell
Table of Contents
How to Win on Social Media in 2025
In the last 18 months I grew my personal brand to over 3 million followers across all platforms. That growth came from following five simple rules that anyone can apply.
This is not about hacks or chasing trends. It is about frameworks and systems that will let you scale your impact and win in 2025.
1. Build Your Collection
Your content is only as good as the inputs you feed into it. If you want to stand out in your niche you need a library of insights, stories, and lessons to draw from.
Here are five sources to build a powerful collection:
Books: Don’t just read them, study and rewrite the passages in your own words.
Questions: What people ask you most often is a goldmine for future content.
Observations: Everyday frustrations and insights you see in your environment are teachable moments.
Top Content: Audit your social feeds and follow the best creators in your space to absorb their language and frameworks.
Young You: Share the lessons your younger self needed. These stories create deep resonance.
New wisdom grows from ancient roots which means there's nothing new, everything is a remix based on historical best practices.
Dan Martell
2. Master the Content Creation Flywheel
Consistency happens when you move from random effort to a repeatable system. That’s where the flywheel comes in.
The flywheel has four parts:
Step | What to Do | Why It Matters |
---|---|---|
Collect | Gather ideas from your collection. | Keeps your creativity stocked. |
Create | Block time in your calendar for deep creative work. | Protects your best energy. |
Teach | Share insights in every context possible: podcasts, teams, clients. | Builds storytelling skills. |
Delegate | Hire editors and assistants fast. Stay in your zone of genius. | Lets you scale output without burnout. |
Do what you do best and outsource the rest.
Dan Martell
3. Be 100% You
The market is flooded with copycat creators. The only way to stand out is by being fully authentic. That means sharing your struggles, lessons, and quirks.
Ask yourself:
What was a struggle you went through that shaped you?
What beliefs did you once hold that no longer serve you?
How did those shifts make you who you are today?
Your story is the glue. It’s how people connect, trust, and transform because of you.
The worst thing I ever went through could be the most powerful thing I have to help other people.
Dan Martell
4. Build Your Content Stencils
Blank screens kill creativity. The fastest creators work from stencils (repeatable templates) that make content creation frictionless.
My go-to stencil:
Problem: Hook them with a clear pain point.
Story: Share the context, conflict, and climax.
Teach: Deliver the framework, metaphor, or lesson.
You can use this across YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, newsletters, or speeches. Constraints don’t limit creativity, they multiply it.
Most artistic people haven’t realized that they can write down their process for being creative.
Dan Martell
5. Make It Easy to Stay Consistent
If creating feels like a chore you will quit. Success comes from reps done consistently, not bursts of effort.
Here’s how to make it easy:
Audit your calendar: If a task feels red, find a way to make it green.
Change containers: Record while driving, walking, or working out.
Buy back your time: Delegate editing, posting, and prep work.
Trust your team: Don’t micromanage every post. Let it go live.
Consistency will make you impressive. If you publish for 1,000 days in a row you’ll have more momentum than 99% of people who started with you.
People are impressed by consistency. If you just show up every day for a thousand days, you will be impressive to other people.
Dan Martell
Start Winning
Winning on social media isn’t about luck, it’s about systems, stencils, and staying true to who you are. If you build your collection, master the flywheel, and make consistency easy, you’ll have everything you need to dominate.
Now is the time to take these five rules and implement them. Not next week, not next quarter. Today. Your future audience is waiting for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I make content creation easy and sustainable so I can be consistent long term?
Make content creation easy and sustainable by designing your process around what you enjoy then buying back time for the parts you dislike. Audit your calendar to remove friction then batch or create content while doing activities you love for example recording voice notes while walking and letting an editor transcribe and format. Consistent low friction systems lead to sustained output which is what search engines and recommendation systems reward.
How can I build a content collection that consistently fuels social media growth in 2025?
Building a content collection that fuels social media growth in 2025 means actively collecting reusable inputs like books you study, questions your audience asks, real world observations, top performing content in your niche, and lessons from your younger self. Use a single searchable repository for these inputs so your content collection becomes the source of ideas you can quickly turn into posts, videos, or newsletter stories.
What exact content creation flywheel will help me scale to millions of views per month?
The content creation flywheel that scales to millions of views is collect create teach and delegate. Collect raw inputs into a system, create in focused blocks (for example morning creation blocks), teach by packaging lessons into short formats or talks, then delegate editing and distribution so you remain the creative engine. This flywheel repeats continually and is designed to convert a content collection into consistent high velocity publishing.
How do I find and showcase my authentic voice so social media algorithms favor my content in 2025?
To find and showcase an authentic voice that algorithms and audiences favor start by sharing specific struggles and transformations because authenticity is the connective tissue between you and an audience. Show the quirks failures and unique perspectives that only you have and align that voice across platforms so signals to recommendation systems are consistent and reinforcing.
What content stencils should I use to stop staring at a blank screen and produce viral social posts reliably?
Use repeatable content stencils such as problem story teach which begin with one clear problem to hook viewers followed by a concise story that creates emotional glue and finish with a direct teach or framework. Using a problem story teach stencil ensures your content answers user intent quickly while giving the structure search engines and LLMs can parse for featured snippets and People Also Ask matches.
More Resources
Tools Mentioned
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YouTube — video hosting platform used for long form videos shorts and the original resource you shared
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TikTok — short form video platform used for trend research inspiration and feeding your creative mind
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Instagram — visual and short form platform used for Reels IG Live and audience engagement
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Email newsletter — owned channel for direct audience distribution and deeper teaching use your preferred email provider to publish regular newsletters
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Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill — book referenced as an example of building a reading collection and source of historical frameworks
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Kings Club (Dan Martell program) — a mentorship container mentioned as an example of a teaching environment and content source
Full Transcript
How to Win On Social Media in 2025 – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2W3JzHobjU
Transcript:
(00:00) in the last 18 months I’ve grown my personal brand to over 3 million followers across all platforms and in this video I’m going to share the five simple rules of content creation that I use to go from zero audience to getting over 100 million views a month today rule number one build your collection when I started reading a book that just transformed my life was thinking Grow Rich so what I did is I found the 200 plus books that influenced that author and read those ones so I could add to my collection of knowledge you need to go
(00:32) that detailed in your Niche new wisdom grows from ancient Roots which means there’s nothing new everything is a remix based on historical best practices in many ways a lot of the modern-day philosophy came from the Bible or stoicism or even poetry and if you want to be world classic creating content you have to go back to build your collection I want to share with you the five formats of collection that I use every day number one is books this is essentially what I’m learning in real time as I’m studying books not just
(01:02) reading them I’m writing the passages down in a Note file I’m rewriting them in my words I’m integrating them into my life because I’m trying to really become one with the knowledge that I’m acquiring from the books number two is the questions I’m being asked think about it what are people asking you those questions should give you insights into what you know about and helps you try out and test different concepts different insights different ways of teaching other people number three is observation what I see in my family my
(01:30) friends people around me I believe the world will show you where you’re not free things that frustrate you so that you can use that as content to teach other people there’s a reason why when you see somebody do something that you don’t agree with that it resonates with you because it’s actually meant for you to take that moment and share with other people not the person that did it how you would have done it differently and it comes with the feeling that other people feel number four top content now I know this sounds crazy but I spend
(01:58) hours a day scrolling on Tik Tok to be in inspired by other people to see what the world is excited about what are the trends what are the ideas going on in culture I mean the other reason I do it is because I want to bathe in the language of the industry I’m in I want to study the best if you’re not unfollowing all the ding-dongs on the social and then resubscribing to the people that are talking about your industry then you’re missing opportunities to use social as a way to teach yourself the way I like to think
(02:25) about it is you want to use your feed to feed your mind number five I think about the young me what I needed earlier in my life what are the beliefs I had the thoughts I had the meaning I Associated different circumstances earlier on and how did I overcome them because those lessons learn are what made you who you are it’s a thing that people are going to resonate the most with so you have to share them too often people don’t want to talk about the things they went through that were hard but I believe you’re actually best equipped to help
(02:50) those people that you once were and it’s why you went through those circumstances so use those old stories of young version of you to help people today now that you’ve got your collection of ideas is I’m going to show you how to feed it into a Content creation flywheel if you want to see how this flywheel plays out in my videos that reach Millions every week hit subscribe rule number two the content creation flywheel now when we start we have to do everything because there’s nobody else to delegate to but as you grow and you build your content
(03:19) you want to focus on your zone of Genius you want to focus on the thing that only you can do especially as it pertains your personal branding creating content if you have an energy of frustration creating the content Trust me it’ll be felt from your viewer I love this fun quote by Peter Ducker he said do what you do best and Outsource the rest I want you to be the talent not the doer you might have to at the beginning but as fast as you can hire somebody to record or edit your videos or review the first drafts of your blog post so that
(03:47) you can just do the creation part and none of the other stuff that take away from the energy of creating this is the content creation flywheel number one is you want to collect you want to take all the ideas we were talking about earlier and put them in different places where you can review them to be inputs to your creative process step two is to create now this is how I wake up and I start my days I call it my creative process I create connected to my Creator and I review all of the different ideas and I think of outlines for videos I want to
(04:14) create or tweets I want to write or even my book writing all my time writing my books are done in the morning because those are my creation blocks that’s when I feel most align with the universe and what God’s got for me and I just pour it into my content because it feels perfect those ear early morning times when my brain is freshh and I have what I call the ability to pull vocabulary allows me to come up and be inspired by ideas and situations and really add some depth to the content I’m creating number three is
(04:43) teach and this is about finding opportunities to teach because some of you may not have a platform yet but you want to get better at telling stories and teaching Concepts so I would say look around you it might be offering to do some team training your coaching calls with clients maybe it could be offering to be on other people’s stage stages both virtual and in person like podcasts or speaking at local business associations or even offering to do interviews for other people that they’re creating content because then you’ll be
(05:10) prompted to tell stories you can even create other situations to teach I’m a big fan of creating containers where you have to teach so for example I have this program called Kings Club where I have the privilege of mentoring 15 to 20-year-old young men and I talk about success and I draw out models and I tell stories and I get to revisit past stories of who I was and reflect on them and use those moments to share and teach other young men to be inspired to be more successful the goal is to spend as much time as you can in this flywheel as
(05:37) possible but the big idea is that as you’re buying back your time you got to make sure it stays sold so if you hire an editor Let Them edit if you hire somebody to post on your social media let them post give them Corrections if they do it wrong but don’t take the job back from them just because it wasn’t done exactly the way you want it done but there’s a big problem that so many people fall into and it’s mindlessly copying other people which brings us to rule number three be 100% you I believe everybody’s a unique fingerprint when I
(06:05) was 17 I found myself in prison and eventually released the rehab and I didn’t share that story for 15 years the reason why I had a lot of Shame and fear and concern that if people found out they wouldn’t think very highly of me it turns out the first time 10 years ago that I ever shared that story with anybody including my fiance now my wife did not know every person that came up to me after hearing that said I now feel connected to you I feel like I understand understand you I feel closer to you and it occurred to me that the
(06:33) worst thing that I ever went through could be the most powerful thing I have to help other people which is my story and I believe that if you have friends that know you like really know you and like you that who you are is the most unique thing you’ve got and allowing yourself to be that person 100% you is what makes you interesting a lot of the people you admire The Joe Rogan The Rock Oprah Lady Gaga post Malone jelly roll what you love about them is that they are 100% themselves they are so authentic the good the bad the
(07:06) indifferent the conflict the Kryptonite and the superpower all those things make them who they are so how do you figure that for yourself number one I always talk about the struggle what did you go through that you struggled with that in that moment of trying to figure it out it allowed you to transform to be the person that’s here today teaching those stories you have it’s what makes you not only unique but gives you the opportunity to transform other people lives nobody’s going to change unless you inspire them and if you want to help
(07:33) people if the people you love the most you want to help change and transform then you have to be willing to Bear your soul you have to be willing to share stories that feel a little uncomfortable so what I like to do is I like to combine my teaching with unique stories I like to ask myself when did I learn this what beliefs did I have about that thing that changed and how did that impact me getting good at the stuff that I learned and using your unique story ends up being the glue the vehicle for change in the people listening to you
(08:02) have you ever been in an audience and you see somebody on stage and they’re talking about being successful and you’re like what have you even done what challenges have you ever faced you look like you were born into the lucky whatever Club you just don’t trust them it’s because they weren’t willing to tell you about their Journey they’re not willing to be honest about their struggles they’re not willing to be honest about their setbacks and you’re sitting there going you don’t get me the worst part is you teaching other people
(08:26) and actually being just like them and them not feeling that because you weren’t willing to be 100% you authenticity means being 100% you on and off camera all your quirks like for me heavy on the protein pretty jokey very supportive to my friends I like to give a lot of myself I don’t take myself too seriously I try to give all of it the high energy the low energy the emotion I’m an emotional person if I watch a video of a sad situation I usually tear up and I have no problems doing that on and off camera because it’s who I am and
(08:54) if that frustrates you or you judge me for that cool go find somebody else to follow every person that you admire does this the more you learn to be yourself on camera the more you will understand what makes you tick and the more powerful you’ll become and the cool part is is you will take you with you for the rest of your life you will take you in every situation every communication every interaction with another person the more upgraded version of you because you decided to put it all out there on the content side and you will become
(09:22) better for having created that content that is the coolest part that nobody talks about is who you get to become in the process of putting your stories out there but the truth is ideas and authenticity they’re not enough to grow your brand in 2025 you need systems to make it happen which brings us to rule number four build your content stencils when I started I created everything from scratch from blog posts to YouTube outlines to list of tweets to Instagram ideas now I model what’s worked in the past and I use stencils to create so I
(09:52) have to stare at a blank screen because I know those formats work so I repurpose the things have worked in the past so that I can move faster when I create my content I’m working within a structure so I don’t have to stare at a blank screen and like hurt my brain try to come up with new creative ideas when I already know it works I just got to pull that forward the truth is is most people get frustrated with their content or their marketing before the market ever does they’re like I already talked about this I’m not going to talk about it from
(10:16) this angle why not it got you 100,000 views last time why don’t you rerun the play why don’t you give it a different twist why don’t you ask yourself what else do I know about this topic why don’t you double click on it a lot of artists get it confused cuz they think constraint STS don’t allow them to be creative and the truth is is those constraints those rails actually help them be more creative most artistic people haven’t realized that they can write down their process for being creative there is a methodology they’re
(10:42) following they just haven’t audited it to see how does it work how do I get to this final book project or blog post or a real or a YouTube video there’s actually a method behind the madness and if they took the time to reflect on it then they could break the pieces apart to actually get better and create these stencils to give them structure to create more effectively so here’s the big idea a stencil gives you the structure to repeat an outcome just like if I had a stencil for painting a blue bird on a wall having that would allow
(11:11) me to generate a bunch of blue birds that are just beautiful and perfect 100 times over but if I had to sit there with a paintbrush and brush on a wall 100 blue birds it would take me all day long you want to make sure that you don’t hate the artistic process by doing the same thing that you don’t have to do it again create the structure the stencil the environment the container where you can insert your art to have the best content so this is my most valuable content stencil and feel free to rip it off and use it as your own
(11:39) this is my gift to you this is going to make your content go viral number one is you have to start with a clear problem one clear problem what is the hook what is the pain what’s going to get them to stop scrolling number two story what’s the context that you found yourself in what was the conflict that came up in your life and what was the climax that you went through to try try to discover the solution to the frustration you found yourself in number three is the teach what framework did you use to come through this what was the quote that
(12:07) inspired you what are some of the metaphors that you think about when you reflect on that lesson learned I use this across all my videos I always start with a clear problem I always go to a story so I can build the glue and then I teach from that point of view and make sure that it’s concise and clear on the story it could be a personal story which I love or it could also be repeating a story of somebody else’s situation I call this the report order frame where you’re reporting on a client you’re reporting on some history you’re
(12:33) reporting on something you might have seen or you read in a book but you have to start with a great story I use this across all formats video written podcast speeches not only my YouTube videos but on my shorts I always start here’s a problem I want to talk about here’s a story and then here’s the way I’m going to teach you so that you can get some value now that you see this go check it out across all my platforms from Tik Tok to Instagram to my email newsletter it’s all there even in this video I’ve used it several times to really get my point
(12:59) across that the way I’ve edited this video is problem story teach but none of this will work unless you stay consistent which brings us to rule number five make it easy here’s the truth content used to be secondary it used to be the thing I had to do not the thing I enjoyed doing I used to brag that I would sit down and batch 16 videos in 2 days and create a quarter worth of content when those shooting days came along I hated it it was so frustrating and the truth was it didn’t produce my best work and because of that
(13:29) I didn’t didn’t trust myself to show up and do what I needed to do what I’ve learned is my confidence my ability to communicate comes from repeated activity over long periods of time that trust that I built is when I showed up consistently and doing it once a quarter was not frequent enough for me to do the Reps to finally get it to be easy so don’t force yourself to do the work you hate design the machine to do it in a way that you love the truth is I’ve see it all the time when people get busy the first thing that gets dropped is the
(13:58) content they don’t make it a priority then they get backed up then it’s a thing they have to do and then it’s like a chore and they don’t want to do it and then the energy of the frustration comes across in the content it’s not light it’s not fun they’re not enjoying themselves you can feel it and the energy you feel when you create is felt by the viewer the energy you feel when you write is felt by the reader think about how powerful that is and you’re trying to rush it it doesn’t work like that one of the core strategies that I
(14:21) teach and I use is called the buyback Loop anytime I feel pain in my life around content creation as an example I go to auditing my calendar I look at where I’ve been spending my time creating content and how I’m creating that content and go okay if that’s red how do I make it green what would need to be true so I think of containers is there a way that I can take the thing I have to do but change the way it’s done so that I want to do it so for example if I need to create content of people asking me questions can I do it while
(14:48) I’m on my scooter can I do it while I’m hiking can I do it while I’m working out can I do it while I’m driving one of my supercars it turns out you can that energy shift changed everything for me what I do is I audit my calendar for things I’m doing in the content production process I don’t enjoy then I transfer it so for example a lot of the scripts and the work I do on my books I work with other people that fill in the blanks cuz I want to edit I don’t want to author I’m a writer that speaks not a speaker that writes so I have other
(15:16) people that take my words from my videos transcribe it put it in a book format and then I edit it from there to save myself a ton of time with that new time I fill it up with becoming better by collecting more like I mentioned at the by doing the work to becoming more so I have more to teach if you’re somebody in a person’s life that keeps growing they’re going to want to keep plugging in to learn from you because they’re going to wonder what are they up to now you know the truth is is people are impressed by consistency if you just
(15:44) show up every day for a thousand days and be consistent you will be impressive to other people I don’t know if you know this guy Kaady is one of the top streamers he’s like got millions and millions of views anyways he was on with Benny Blanco one of the music producers asking who’s done the longest subathon and they found a girl named Emily who had been live for 3 years straight and haven’t missed they were so impressed by that consistency they reached out to her not only put her live on his stream and invited her to join them at the
(16:12) streaming which is the number one award for that industry and change your whole life your audience wants to see that you’re consistent if you say you’re going to publish every week and you miss a week you just proven that you’re not consistent if you say you’re going to go and do Q&A every Friday you got to show up every Friday IG live every mon Monday you got to go live every Monday that’s what I’ve been doing don’t hear what I say watch what I do and copy that for yourself the truth is success is not achieved in burst a lot of people get
(16:38) inspired and they think success is achieved in burst and it’s not it’s in sustained effort over time A lot of people are scared to be consistent they’re like well if I start sharing my life on Instagram I’m always going to have to do it and here’s the deal it’s not forever you can do it you can build it up you can set it up and then you can give it to somebody else and they can manage you can just live your life record your thing and have them edit the videos and publish it here’s a crazy idea everything you see from me I do not
(17:06) review or approve before it goes live I just sit down and do my thing talk to a camera it gets edited it goes live why I know what I said there’s nothing wrong with it I trust the people on my team I decided to make it easy so that I didn’t hate doing it so I could do it for the rest of my life my goal is to die empty meaning everything I know I’m going to give it to you for free right here if you want to learn the 13 simple rules of business that will make you rich click here and I’ll see you on the other side