Winning organic reach and building brand in 2024

Executive overview

Organic reach has shifted: Instagram is overcrowded, while LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok still offer real distribution. Attention is the only asset that matters, and the way to earn it is through storytelling at scale — not ad spend.

Across every business question, the same answer surfaces: reduce friction, create content relentlessly, and build brand instead of staying a commodity.

The core insight: every business has a marketing problem, and content is always the answer — the platform just changes.

Platform strategy for organic reach

• LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok offer the best organic reach right now
• Instagram supply has outpaced demand; audience fragmented heavily post-TikTok
• Platform choice should match audience — B2B SaaS belongs on LinkedIn, not Snapchat
• Search-driven platforms (YouTube, LinkedIn) compound over time; prioritise them for B2B

Reducing friction for new technology adoption

• Consumers do not resist concepts — they resist friction in doing the thing
• Staking, ownership, web3 mechanics are understood intuitively; the terminology is the barrier
• Getting an app into the App Store removes one of the biggest friction layers
• Once friction is solved, the remaining problem is a pure marketing problem
• Map your current friction to a historical analogy: email receipts in 1996, Twitter on desktop, Uber pre-iPhone app

Building a content engine at low cost

• Film your best customers at work — flattering them creates content without hiring a crew
• iPhone quality now exceeds what professional cameras delivered five years ago
• The "gold standard club" model: anoint 12–20 top customers, film them on the job, redistribute that content
• Warehouse staff, long-tenured employees, behind-the-scenes footage are all underused content sources
• Writing a book while filming the process is the marketing of the book
• The content itself is the lead generation engine for B2B; SEO compounds on top

Building audience before launching a product

• Products launched cold face a 99% failure rate in consumer packaged goods
• Content built 7–9 months before launch creates community that mitigates that risk
• You do not need to talk about the product — build authority in the category first
• Rachel Ray did not sell cookware before building a food audience; sequence matters

Expanding beyond your initial identity as a creator

• Creators who grow on one type of content (body, dance, niche persona) often get stuck there
• The "and" strategy: keep what works, add singing, cooking, or any third format alongside it
• Every third post should reflect what you actually want to be known for
• One right person hearing one piece of content can change the trajectory — low-view posts still matter
• Fear of low view counts on new content types is the only real obstacle

Turning a commodity business into a brand

• Every category eventually becomes a commodity (insurance, payments, shipping)
• Flow, Jake from State Farm, and the Geico lizard exist because commodity products need mascots
• If you are comfortable on camera, be the brand; if not, create a character or mascot
• High-touch local relationships are a brand asset; content scales that warmth nationally
• Company Instagram and social accounts should function like "The Office" — banter, culture, and personality alongside the product

Web3 and blockchain: weathering the stigma cycle

• NFTs have a stigma now, the same way the internet had one after the dot-com crash in 2000
• Social media took 15 years to be taken seriously; web3 is on a similar arc
• Deep-fake video proliferation will make blockchain verification the most important technology on the internet
• 99% of NFTs will not hold value — the same is true of sports cards, art, comic books, and sneakers
• NFTs are not the asset class; they are the framework — individual projects within the framework are what matter
• The macro thesis on blockchain has not changed; the price cycles are noise

The "and" business model for marketing services

• Staffing + training + AI upskilling is a differentiated model versus pure staffing or pure agency
• Small businesses do not care about methodology — they care about price
• Win on price first, then prove value; enterprise clients require a different pitch
• Offshore or nearshore talent reduces cost enough to win small business deals on margin
• LinkedIn content explaining why the model works builds pipeline while you are still selling

Content creation as the foundation for every business

• Do not wait until a product is ready to start making content
• A year of food content before launching a spice brand builds the audience that makes the launch viable
• Organic content compounds; paid ads require continuous spend and produce no residual value
• A company page should run like a TV show — recurring characters, recurring tension, recurring value
• Filming daily tasks, draws, or process creates documentary footage usable as marketing now