Followers Don't Matter Anymore. Here's How Content Actually Wins

The Vanity Metric Everybody Is Still Chasing

It's not about followers anymore in the social media game. Followers are no longer important. Yes, it's cute. It's a great vanity metric. You feel good about having followers. But here's the good news: if you are at zero followers today, the market right now gives you an opportunity to penetrate and get attention at scale.

The algorithms on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, all of these platforms are built on one thing only right now: quality of content and quantity of content. Do those two things consistently and you can actually penetrate the market. Honestly, you can post your first video ever on Instagram with zero followers and get 100,000 views. Or 5,000 views. Or 1,000 views.

How does that even make sense? Because these platforms are built on interest. They serve people content based on what they're interested in, not based on whether they follow you. Scroll any of these platforms and you'll see it: content served to people who actually care about that topic. And the algorithm is getting smarter and smarter and smarter.

The Rule of Seven Still Runs Everything

There's an old marketing adage that has been around for generations. The rule of seven says that in order for somebody to trust you, know you enough, and feel confident enough to give you their money and open up their wallets, they need to see you at least seven times.

Social media is built on the rule of seven concept. Strangers don't easily trust others because of how many brands are out there. So my social media marketing strategies, the ones that lead people down a journey where they eventually buy something from me, are built on quantity of content and getting people to engage with that content.

I don't sell things to strangers. I apply the rule of seven. If you want something sustainable, something that becomes a legacy, you build it on your content strategy.

Not All Video Watchers Are the Same

Here's something most people don't know. On Facebook, somebody who watches your video for 3 seconds is considered a video watcher. Somebody who watches for 30 seconds is also a video watcher. Somebody who watches for 10 minutes is also a video watcher.

Now analyze those three audiences. Are they the same? Which one could you sell something to? The person who watched 3 seconds and just kept scrolling, or the person who sat down and gave you 10 minutes of their time?

You have to know how to separate these audiences. Because when you're pushing content out there and you finally have an offer, a product, a service to sell, you should be pushing that offer to the right people: the ones who already know and trust you and are most likely to open up their wallets.

Inside the Ads Manager: Where the Magic Happens

Let me show you exactly where this lives. Go to Meta Business Manager, formerly the Facebook Business Manager, open Ads Manager, and click on one thing: Audiences. That's what it's all about. That's where you create audiences of people interacting with your Facebook and Instagram pages. All of my marketing revolves around that interaction.

In my own account, these audiences are big. We get hundreds of millions of views. One audience built on the Frank Suarez Facebook page is estimated at 22 to 26 million people. Another date range, 21 million. Another one, 40 million. An Instagram one, 9.4 million. And it keeps going.

Click Create Audience and you get two main options: custom or lookalike. A custom audience is built on your data. You can feed it your email list or phone list and it will match those people on the platform. Or you can tell it: create an audience of people watching my videos on Facebook, watching my videos on Instagram, or my most engaged fans. That's where the real marketing magic starts happening. You want to be creating audiences all the time. If you randomly advertise, you're going to end up going broke.

The Gold Mine: The 75 Percent Watchers

My number one strategy for building an empire of nine-figure product sales every single year across several brands is a content strategy of educational video, and then moving those people to the next step of the journey. When I create video-watch audiences, look at the options. Do you think somebody who watches for 3 seconds is qualified to buy my products? The answer is no. They're not interested. They don't even remember you. So why are you marketing to all video watchers?

You have to know the difference between that 3-second guy and the gold mine: people who watch 75 percent of your video. In an era where we have a six-second attention span, for somebody to sit down and watch 75 percent of a five-minute video, that deserves respect. These people are interested in your message. My favorite audience to test new products is the deepest one of all, the people consuming most of my videos.

When I roll out a new product, say a new supplement for dogs, I target the most engaged audience on Cesar Millan's social media channels. That way I introduce the product to people who already like, know, and trust the brand and trust Cesar. In this example I built an audience of people who watched at least 95 percent of the videos. And keep the window tight. If you set 365 days, somebody who watched your video a year ago might have already forgotten about you. A 90-day window is far more qualified. The closer to present time, the better.

This Works on Every Platform

Once the audience populates, and Cesar's will end up being several million because of how much attention his content gets, I select it and build a marketing campaign on the back of it. Click create campaign, target that exact audience of people who watched a large percentage of your content, and tell the platform what you want. Traffic? Leads? Sales? Just communicate it.

And here's the thing: everything I just showed you is applicable to all the other platforms. TikTok has done the same thing Meta has done. Google is similar. Same steps, same logic, same video-watcher audiences.

So take a budget. Test the platform. Create content at scale. Build those audiences. Then start retargeting them with high-quality ads that get them to purchase your products and services. That's how you win the game.