Week 9: Social Media Growth, I Learned Something!

Last night I went to Chili's with some friends, one of whom happens to be a very successful content creator. His name is Blaine, and he has spent nearly a decade creating social media content for a variety of companies, ranging from the aquarium where he works to his side hustle buying and selling Pokémon cards. Considering our shared interest in content creation and cardboard addiction, it probably isn't surprising that we get along pretty well.

At one point during dinner, Blaine pulled me aside and gave me a bit of a crash course on how social media actually works behind the scenes. His advice was surprisingly simple: you need engagement.

Likes, comments, shares, saves, watch time... all of these interactions tell the algorithm that people find your content interesting. Once that happens, the platform begins recommending your content to more people, who (hopefully) engage with it as well. It's essentially a snowball effect. The difficult part, however, is getting that first push. If nobody knows who you are, why would they interact with your content in the first place?

His answer was one I've heard before but never really appreciated until now: overwhelm the algorithm with content. In March, when we first started talking, Blaine tasked me with posting content daily. It didn't matter what I was posting, how creative or unique it was. Just create consistently. Experiment often. Every post becomes another opportunity for someone new to discover you. Most of those posts probably won't go anywhere, and that's okay. The goal early on isn't to go viral; it's to collect data. Which videos get watched all the way through? Which thumbnails attract clicks? Which topics generate comments? Over time, those analytics begin telling a story about what your audience actually wants, allowing you to refine your content into something people genuinely enjoy.

That conversation immediately made me think about this week's readings. We often talk about social media platforms as places where people create and share content, but behind every successful creator is an enormous amount of invisible data. Every click, scroll, like, comment, and share becomes another signal that platforms use to decide what deserves attention. In many ways, the audience becomes a collaborator in the creative process. Their interactions influence what creators make next, while the algorithm determines which ideas receive the opportunity to grow.

Looking ahead to our produsage assignment, this has me thinking less about simply building a useful resource and more about building something that people will actually discover and contribute to. Simply creating a website and posting a link probably won't be enough. If nobody finds it, it doesn't really matter how valuable the content is.

Right now, I'm imagining something similar to my curation project, but hosted on a platform that I build myself. It could be a website, blog, or even a Discord server that collects YouTube videos, articles, tutorials, and community discussions centered around the topic I'm exploring. Rather than acting as a static library of resources, I'd like it to become a place where people can recommend new materials, discuss ideas, and contribute resources of their own. That feels much closer to the spirit of produsage: a community where users aren't just consuming knowledge, but actively helping create and improve it.

Of course, the real challenge isn't building the platform. It's convincing people to show up in the first place. If Blaine is right, and I think he is, then growing a community may have less to do with having the perfect idea and more to do with consistently creating opportunities for people to discover it.

As a final note for this week, I want to share that posting daily works. In March, when I first started, I had 150 followers. Tonight, after Chilis, and posting daily for several months, I now have 954... just a few away from 1000!