We just hit episode 30 of the #seen podcast.
I went back and re-listened to every one in the lead-up to writing this. Thirty hours of conversation, twenty-six guests, two Hot Takes roundtables with Gabby and Hana from the Sked team — community managers, founders, agency leads, ex-platform people, comedians, in-house brand teams, a 17-year-old who won a $10,000 challenge with a single TikTok.
I noticed a lot of things in the re-listen. Words I lean on too much. Interview questions that aren't really questions. The specific moments where a guest's whole approach clicked into focus.
But the one thing I cannot stop thinking about is this: nobody on this show ever credited the two pieces of social-media advice that show up most often on LinkedIn.
Nobody said "I just stayed consistent."
Nobody said "I was just being authentic."
Across 30 episodes, the people who built something that worked — Maddi at Kic, Cal in London at Iris, Maddie King at Canva, Sal at Ampersand, Yasmin at Emu Australia, Chris who's still in high school — won by being aggressively specific. Specific platforms. Specific timeframes. Specific numbers. Specific creators. Specific moments. One specific thing done more sharply than the person next to them.
That's the through-line of 30 conversations and the thing I want you to leave this article with: specificity is the strategy. "Be consistent" is generic, so it produces generic results. "Post a 1:30 vlog at 7am AEST every Tuesday and Thursday for 30 weeks, where the visuals show your routine and the voiceover talks about something completely different" is specific. That's what Maddi Daffara did at Kic. That's why it worked.
Here are the 30 lessons that came out of 30 conversations. They're grouped into six themes, not because I want the article to look tidy, but because once you put them side by side, you can see the patterns the show has been circling for nine months.
Chris is 17. He took a $10,000 challenge to grow his boss Tim's Instagram from 2,500 to 10,000 followers in a month. He won it with a single video — a 30-second AI-narrated "false hook" reveal filmed in a field, hitting 150,000 views with hours to spare. But the lesson he keeps repeating isn't about that video. It's about a different one: a shitpost about buying a 6-inch Subway sandwich that hit 3.7 million views and 380,000 likes and converted exactly 400 new followers. His storytelling videos hit 13,000 likes and converted 8,000 followers. "Views are actually I think the least important metric." Track follow conversion per post, not raw views. Listen to Chris's episode here.
Josh spent nearly three years at TikTok ANZ before founding Cocoa. His thought experiment: Brand A posts 100 videos, 99 flop, one hits 1M views. Brand B posts 100 videos, every one gets 5k views with strong retention. Brand B wins, because Brand A wasted the virality. "Actually knowing how to respond to going viral is a hundred times more important than going viral itself." When something hits, reverse-engineer the format and run it again. Three times. Five times. Until it dies. Listen to Josh's episode here.
Yazan ran social for Spotify across the Middle East. The team used the automation tool Smartly with a hard threshold: if a piece of organic content didn't clear ~5,000 impressions in its first two hours, it never got paid budget. If it did, it auto-moved into a promoted pool. Two consequences: organic still did 60–70% of the heavy lifting, and the bar to "earn" paid budget forced the content team to make genuinely good work. "Organic content had to earn the budget that we allocated for." Listen to Yazan's episode here.
Lena grew Pedestrian TV's TikTok from 500 followers to ~40,000. She uses Instagram's Trial Reels as a cheap A/B test: post the same video five times, each to a different test audience. At least 10 of her trial posts have hit hard enough that she promoted them to her main grid. "You can post the same video five times, it'll go to a different audience every single time." Listen to Lena's Episode here
A Halloween trend mashing Four Non Blondes with Nicki Minaj completely dominated Gabby's FYP. Lach and Hana hadn't seen it. None of the trend-report creators Gabby follows had surfaced it. Four people, similar age, similar demo, same country, completely different feeds. Gabby's call for 2026: "Trends are like honestly gonna die on the vine. They're just not gonna be worth your time." Verify in a third-party tool (TikTok Creative Center) before you jump. Listen to our Hot Takes episode here.
Jack runs paid creative for Canva in North America. The team launches 150–200 ads a month across Meta, TikTok and YouTube. The volume is the strategy. Frameworks (engaging hook → product on phone → output → sign-up CTA) only matter once you've accepted that creative output volume is the moat. "If I dedicate half an hour a week and batch my videos, half an hour a week is not enough." Listen to Jack's episode here.
tldv's three-person creator team each owns a persona — Ian does educational AI walkthroughs, Tom (an actual cinematographer) does film-reference sales sketches, Renee plays "maternal condescending" and "younger sister." Async Tuesday writers' call. Scripts in Slack. "We all just want to be like SNL, but for tech." If you have multiple creators, give each one a distinct character and run a writers' room cadence — don't let everyone produce in the same voice or you lose the show effect. Listen to Renee's episode here.
Recurring on-camera "TV-show characters" are 80% of what wins on TikTok in 2026. The remaining 20% is trend repurposing — but trends only land for established personalities. It's the same reason celebrities crush trends: it's not the trend, it's seeing them do it. If you're a solo founder, leading with trends is a losing strategy. Listen to Josh's episode here.
Jacob ran social for GWS Giants, now Tasmania Devils. He walks into every match with two-to-five pre-built meme options keyed to named players: "if Toby Green did this, I was ready to go, if Jesse Hogan did this, I was ready to go." When something unexpected happens, he scraps the lot and makes fresh content. Pre-built reactive ≠ publish list; it's a contingency stack. Listen to Jacob's episode here.
Matt runs 347 RSS feeds. Every morning, ~1,200–1,500 articles are waiting. He skim-reads, flags every social-relevant piece, rolls it up into the Friday Geek Out newsletter. The newsletter is the forcing function for him to stay on top of constant platform change. "I've always felt like I wasn't doing enough." Build the system that obligates you to learn. Listen to Matt's episode here.
Georgie's brand is built around AI. She uses zero AI to write her actual LinkedIn posts. "Even if you rewrite a post using AI, it will put it back in that formula again" — the dot-pointed, spicy-headline template. She'll take lower impressions to keep her voice distinct, because readers are pattern-matching against AI output and discounting it. Listen to Georgie's episode here.
Matt's frame: AI is great as a starter motor against the blank-page problem, for repurposing, for pattern recognition. But it homogenises output the moment you stop editing. "I think the way I've framed it is using AI as your wingman and not your creative director." Listen to Matt's episode here.
Jack pointed to a recent study: AI's single-edit suggestions are pointed and useful. AI's bulk-accept-all rewrites "dramatically roboticize your writing." His Slack pet peeve: messages 15 times longer than they need to be — the tell that someone has hit "apply all" on a ChatGPT rewrite. Listen to Jack's episode here.
"Where AI will really become a superpower is if you're able to learn how to do automations or scripting or engineering these processes that will help remove that really boring day-to-day admin stuff." Stop using AI to write the caption (everyone gets the same generic output from the same prompts). Use it to automate the tagging, the reporting, the customer replies — the stuff that eats your week. Listen to our Hot Takes episode here.
Sal (Ampersand Social) on the female-founder content category in 2026: every feed looks the same. The cut-through is creators and founders building their own world — a recurring cast, in-jokes, recurring formats, a visual universe. "The content creators or influencers that are really going to stand out are the ones who create their own world and we're invited into it." Listen to Sal's episode here.
Lauren built Centennial World from a beauty Instagram into a Gen Z internet-culture media network. Her advice to founders and emerging creators paralysed by the polished scripted-series instinct: "Document over create." Test what resonates first, then layer production. Listen to Lauren's episode here.
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Robin's at LinkedIn, building out the Creative Studio. LinkedIn posts that get cited by ChatGPT and Claude tend to have 10+ multi-sentence comments. Design posts as discussion-starters, not announcements. Reply selectively, "stoke the flames", keep the conversation alive long enough to cross the threshold. "People come to LinkedIn to spend time rather than to kill time." Listen to Robin's episode here.
Cal's at Iris Worldwide in London. For Brita (4,800ml jug), his team prompted the audience to DM them 4,800 times, screenshotted the exchanges, and played them back as content. On another Brita TikTok, a commenter said "100 likes and I'll get a free water filter," got four. Followers hunted through every Brita TikTok looking for the comment, pushing other videos to hundreds of thousands of views. "Get a community manager like it's 2026, just get one." LIsten to Cal's episode here.
Shelley ("My Friend Shells") doesn't use automated welcome DMs. Personal message to every new follower. One pre-night-out-tablet founder followed her on TikTok → DM exchange → that founder is now first to like, comment and share on every one of her posts. Trade automation for one real DM to every new follower for a month and watch what happens. Listen to Shelley's episode here.
"Do you think this top makes me look fat?" — Shelley's unscripted reactive video after a daycare receptionist asked if she was pregnant. 177,000 views, 4,000+ likes, 400+ comments, and a $150 voucher DM'd to her by the shirt brand. Replace open-ended "what do you want to see?" CTAs with specific, opinion-bait questions. "Ask them the questions, not get them to answer back to you." Listen to Shelley's episode here.
Medya's at Zeno London. The brands ahead of the game in 2026 are not building their own communities — they're amplifying existing ones. Asics and Salomon at run clubs. The UK canned-wine brand Nice hosting nights where people pitch their single mate to strangers. Lime Bikes' East London pop-up that collaborated with a local bakery and a local meme artist. "How can we strategically tap into them?" — before you build a Discord, find the run club. Listen to Medya's episode here.
Adrian Per (@omgadrian) posted a 365-day TikTok manifesto two years ago — sick of the sludge, sick of trend-chasing, tell stories instead. Built a movement around the mission, not himself. Jess (a 10-year podcast producer) is now applying the same model: pick a fight worth picking. Audiences rally around a stance, not generic expertise. Listen to Jess's episode here.
tldv is big in Japan and Brazil. The team has done significant mapping on "where the line is" because humour translates badly across cultures. They also stopped doing LinkedIn reposts after data showed reposts were actively hindering follower growth, not driving it. "You only punch up, you don't punch down." And check your LinkedIn repost data. Listen to Renee's episode here.
Yasmin runs social at Emu Australia. A LinkedIn case study she cited: a reel with a trending sound and no copy hit ~18,000 plays. Same asset re-uploaded with copy and a voiceover layered on top: ~1 million plays. Before commissioning new content this quarter, take your highest-performing asset of the last six months and re-cut it. Listen to Yasmine's episode here.
Maddi (Kic) posted weekly 1:30 vlogs on Instagram for 30 straight weeks. The trick: she'd show her week on camera — Pilates, work, the city — but talk over the top about something else entirely (missing family, friendship struggles, hard work patches). "They were seeing my life through this video but I was telling them more through the storytelling." The visual-audio mismatch is what kept people coming back. Listen to Maddi's episode here.
Chris's $10,000 challenge winner — the field/false-hook video at 150,000 views — got immediately repeated. Another field. Then a desert (60K). Then back to a field (10K). He kept going until the format genuinely stopped working. "If you went to a Drake concert and he didn't play his best songs, you'd be pissed. So play your best videos." Listen to Chris's episode here.
Larissa hung a gifted canvas crooked for a TikTok. The "annoyed" comments became the engagement driver. "Hooks don't need to be on screen text. They don't need to be a verbal, hey guys, come with me. It can literally be something so minuscule." Engineer one deliberate visual "wrong" detail. Listen to Larissa's episode here.
When Mamamia debated launching Move into the saturated fitness app category, audience polling surfaced one quote: "fitness apps feel like they're for a 20-something that lives in Bondi, and that's not me." That line became the launch wedge. "Good positioning is not about what the brand says, it's about what the customers repeat back to them." The line your audience repeats is the line. Listen to Isaac's episode here.
Lena emailed Pedestrian TV a TikTok pitching herself for their then-500-follower TikTok role. Enthusiastic reply, then silence. She followed up every two weeks for six months. "Hi, me again. Hi, me again." Got the role. Grew the account to ~40K. "My motto in life is like, how far can I get until it's a no?" Listen to Lena's episode here.
Kelsey was managing emails for a large Tasmanian retailer. A merge tag failed; 25,000 customers received an email that called every single one of them "Kelsey." She followed up with a self-deprecating note ("Kelsey clearly just wanted all of the discount codes for herself") and gave everyone 25% off. One of the biggest sales days the brand had ever had. "It was like one of the biggest days in sales I've ever had because we made a mistake and we owned it but it was a genuine mistake." Listen to Kelsey's episode here.
I want to come back to where we started, because the through-line matters more than any individual lesson.
Every guest on this show is doing something specific. Maddi posts a 1:30 vlog every week with the audio decoupled from the visuals. Jack ships 150 ads a month. Yazan organic-content has to clear 5,000 impressions in two hours before paid will touch it. Cal's community team DMs 4,800 conversations to make one piece of content. Chris repeats a winning format three times in a row in different fields. Lena cold-pitched every two weeks for six months. Kelsey owned a 25,000-person email send-fail with a discount code and made it the biggest sales day of the year.
None of these are "be consistent." None of these are "be authentic." They are 30 exact, repeatable, written-down specifics. That's what works. That's what's worked across 30 episodes.
If you take one thing into this week: write down the one specific thing you're going to do that nobody else in your category is doing this week. Not a vibe. Not a value. A specific.
Then tell me what it is — I read every reply to this newsletter, and the best ones make it into next week's edition.
🔗 Subscribe to the #seen newsletter — one email a week, no fluff, the same hand-written depth as this one.
💬 Join the #Seen slack group — the community where these conversations keep going after the episode ends. [link]
🎧 Listen to the full #seen catalogue — all 30 episodes on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. [link]
Thanks for being here for the first 30. The next 30 should be a lot sharper than the first.
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