I have been shocked at the rise of subscription services on social media. I was just curious as to what people's experience with them. Do they love it? hate them? Why, why not?
youtube premium is the only one i sort of get but 14 bucks is nuts for what boils down to no ads and background play on your phone
One useful distinction: YouTube Premium includes YouTube Music Premium, so it may be worth more if it replaces a music subscription you already pay for. Snapchat+ is different: its regular plan offers extra features, while the ad-free options are in its Platinum plan. I’d check the exact benefits before subscribing, since “premium” means different things across these apps.
Better account support feels like a grim subscription perk. Getting proper help with a hacked account shouldn't depend on whether you've paid for a badge.
I tried the meta one so that I could talk to a real person. Complete waste of money. My organic reach actually declined and the guy that answered my call knew about as much as the AI, which is nothing.
A lot of marketers are still making content for the version of social media that existed 4 years ago. Polished graphics. Perfect branding. Overplanned content calendars. Safe hooks. And then they wonder why nobody watches. Meanwhile the creators growing fastest are filming in their car, reacting to something they saw 10 minutes ago, and pulling 500k+ views with barely any editing. The gap between “professional looking” content and effective content has never been bigger. One thing that completely changed how I approach content was studying creators that are actively breaking through not the already famous ones with massive built in audiences. And once you start analyzing enough breakout posts, certain patterns become painfully obvious. Most viral content feels immediate. Not overproduced. Not corporate. Not “approved by 4 people in Slack.” Immediate. It feels like a real opinion, a real reaction, a real observation, a real emotion. That’s why reaction style content works so well right now. A contractor reacting to bad renovation videos. A fitness coach reacting to terrible workout advice. A marketer reacting to cringe ad campaigns. People don’t just want information anymore. They want perspective. Another thing I’ve noticed: most creators waste energy trying to be everywhere at once. TikTok. Reels. YouTube Shorts. LinkedIn. X. And they end up building nothing anywhere. The creators growing fastest usually dominate one format first. Because every platform rewards people who deeply understand pacing, hooks, audience behavior, and native style. You don’t learn that by spreading yourself thin. Also, almost nobody has a content creation problem anymore. They have a research problem. There’s already an insane amount of winning content patterns out there. The problem is most people study random viral posts, copy huge creators too late, chase trends after they peak, and miss why something actually worked. The fix is boring but it works: track creators suddenly blowing up, spot hooks repeating across platforms, notice formats migrating from TikTok to Reels to Shorts, and catch content styles gaining momentum before saturation. I’ve been using SHunt for exactly this. Not for inspiration just to see what’s gaining traction before it peaks. Once you see enough breakout content, you realize virality is way more pattern based than most people think.
I've just watched this docu 'Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere' on Netflix that dived into a truly dark corner of the internet a.k.a *the manosphere.* It is honestly shocking to see how social media has let men with deeply misogynistic, oppressive views build such massive platforms. Plus, a lot of these creators have audiences made up of minors. Do we need stricter age restrictions on social media to protect younger users? This is genuinely corruption. How might this affect the next generation of men? And more importantly, how do we push back against it?
For years I tried being original, filming quality content, building an audience the right way, doing everything the big creator coaches were telling me. You know what that got me? Like $8 after months of effort. I also wasted way more than that trying to buy engagement. Don't do it. Complete waste. Here's what I did instead. I stopped trying to be unique and started actually studying what was already working. Not in a vague way. I mean I spent real time tracking what was getting pushed in my niche, what formats were showing up over and over, what kinds of videos the algorithm was clearly rewarding right now. Then I made my version of that. Use SocialHunt for a lot of this now because manually scrolling for hours trying to spot patterns is a full time job on its own. Also use vidIQ for the YouTube side of things. There's a smaller tool called Tikmatics that catches TikTok format and audio trends really early before they hit everywhere, barely anyone uses it. I also figured out that a ton of the reels blowing up were using comment triggers. Saying "comment this word and I'll send you something" in the caption or on screen. Since everyone doing well was doing this, competing without it was fighting with one hand tied behind your back. Started doing it on every post. Views started coming in. Some reels crossing 20K, a few hitting 50K to 500K. Eventually got a DM from a brand outreach coordinator. They paid me to mention a product in a video. Hit $5K in a single month from brand deals. Problem was I was spending way too much time going back and forth on emails just to get paid. Lots of scammers too. Always ask for 50% upfront. Never trust otherwise. Couldn't break past $5K for a while. Then I saw a similar account selling a digital guide on how to make videos like theirs. Thought it was stupid at first. Why would someone watching your content buy a guide from you? Felt backwards. But I stopped trying to reinvent things so I did it anyway. About 10 posts a month went to sponsors. The other 20 promoted my own guide. Mentioned it in descriptions, told people to comment for a free version, then upselled from there. Somehow it worked. When you're pulling millions of views a month even a tiny percentage buying a $20 guide adds up fast. Sold 300+ copies the first month. Also put affiliate links inside the guide for tools I actually use and started collecting commissions from that too. Monthly income from this Instagram hit $12K. Happy to answer questions if anyone has them. // UPDATE After the original post took off I got flooded with messages. Here's what happened since. A bunch of people suggested I upload the same reels directly to YouTube Shorts right after posting. They were right. Reach started slow but some videos are now crossing 100K views there. The best part is I can offer that reach to existing sponsors as bonus distribution without making a separate video. Easy upsell. I don't use post schedulers. My income depends on this now and I don't want to test anything that might break it. Last time I tried one my reach took a hit. For people asking to see examples without me exposing my niche, just search "would you rather" or "Reddit stories" or "texting stories" on Instagram or YouTube Shorts. That's the format. You'll see it everywhere. That covers most of what people were asking. Drop anything I missed below.
I only have time to do one properly. LinkedIn gets more reach, but half the feed reads like a motivational poster. X has better conversations but unless you already have followers it feels like posting into the void. If you have used both, which one helped you build a professional audience better and how long did it take?
I am in college and I’m thinking of creating a faceless channel on all socials to help students build social media side hustles to boost their profiles and portfolios for their future as we know that in today’s day and age, academics isn’t everything at all. If anybody has any ideas they want to share or experiences they’ve had in this field, it would be appreciated if you let me know.
Hi friends, I really need some advice on something. My friend and I recently started a social media page focused on educational content and STEM. Even though it's only been a month, I im not sure im seeing any results. So I wanted to know what YOU all would want to see. Like what kind of topics, what kind of explanation would you not skip past on Instagram regarding STEM, and do you prefer in-depth explanations or just brief explanations? Would prefer any and all help! This is something I want to expand