The Secret to Growing on Social Media in 2026

What's up guys welcome to the social media entrepreneurs podcast teaching you have become a full-time entrepreneur by leveraging modern social media strategies on your host Derek fight. Oh we got a big episode today we're gonna be talking about how to grow on social media in 2026. This is the scope of the landscape of what's going on that you need and every year it is a slightly different episode this year is going to be a big difference because it's a counter intuitive strategy that you must master so before we get started just want to say we are nearing episode 500 I'm also denoting this episode as the start of season 12 for no reason just because it feels like it's season 12 now all of my seasons are simply because it feels like it's a new season so it's season 12 and on episode 500 we're gonna do something exciting so be sure you're subscribed to the show now what you need to know about growing your business in social media 2026 is that doing less is the way to really do more you need to do a lot less social media to do a lot better on social media what I mean by that is a lot less scrolling a lot less time wasting a lot less of strategies that you know do work for some businesses and some people but you haven't been able to get it to work but you have gotten other things to work and you ignoring anything but your own data at this point I know that if I wanted to commit myself to mastering short form 9x16 video that I post on Instagram TikTok and YouTube would be a great way to grow a business I also know that posting on LinkedIn consistently or posting on YouTube consistently or doing called email a variety of things are all viable strategies none of these things are things that you need to do okay very rarely even over time is there something that is such a massive opportunity that it is like disastrous if you miss the boat on it right even like TikTok when it was on the rise you didn't miss the boat on it necessarily there was TikTok on easy mode for a bit but it was also really hard to know what to do on there on a new platform it's it's always weird to know how to act or how to post or anything so it is difficult to you know jump in the game like no one missed it and if you didn't get started by now you're fine you can get started you can make your Instagram right now you've not missed the boat on things like we often like to talk about these strategies but you do miss the boat on you know growing your business when you do things that have not worked for you but you've subscribed to it being a good idea because you've heard it enough times right you got to be on Instagram you got a post consistently you got to do the same on TikTok you got to do the same on other platforms it is very okay to get very real with yourself and say this is what has a high ROI and this doesn't and do more of that high ROI thing for me posting on YouTube is so much more productive to me than for me than posting on Instagram especially if I'm going to do like nine by 16 vertical videos that I'm going to script out film multiple times send over to a video editor have them make it you know over the next five to seven days before I finally post it and I just batch so much content and as much as people like to say how to make a hundred videos in two hours that's not fucking possible and I know you didn't do it in two hours you recorded them in two hours and then you spent another like 20 on the editing and the posting of them especially of the repurposing of them on every platform and if you have some new AI tool that auto post them on every platform for you I already know that you're fucking sucking when the view as far as views goes because the platforms hate when you do stuff like that so there's a lot of these like automations that people talk about with content like how to make this many posts in a and a few hours it's always like the biggest red flag like that they really don't know what they're talking about apart from how to satisfy that metric with no regard to how well you actually do on those platforms after posting so if you are doing any kind of form of posting by the way on Instagram that requires like more than two hours for you to make a post you need to switch the way that you do content that would be a really easy rule to live by but yeah you don't need to do all these things so I need to post on YouTube and I need to run ads on Facebook and Instagram what that means is that I don't need to have the Instagram app or the Facebook app on my phone or even the YouTube app because I record my videos and I send them to my video editor and then he does the thumbnail and the description and post it I know that that is not a plausible step for a lot of you you do have to be making a good amount of money before you can hire someone who is good enough to do the job or can do the job better than you even more so usually costs quite a bit of money and you know a consistent cash flow in your business and that could take years to get to so I understand that might not be your case in your case then I would say you should download the app and post it and then delete the app because if you just took all of the hours that you wasted on scrolling which is all of you okay it's all people we just need to be real about that like we're also addicted to our phones that were just like yeah we know it's not a big deal right we're addicted to our phones the same way we're addicted to coffee like sure yeah I'm gonna drink it every day I I don't want to be without it I don't I can go without it I just don't want to the right we have that kind of relationship with social media and it's very easy to keep scrolling and convince yourself that you're doing market research or something that is productive just because you're on your business account so you don't want to be a user of social media you just want to make money from it so you can either post on the apps and delete it or get to the point where you know when I run Facebook ads I am not needing the apps I can just do those but I can get a ton of benefit from social media in that regard and then YouTube I don't even have to have the app on my phone now every once in a while I do download the apps or I'll just access Instagram on desktop where it's not addictive and then I will respond to my DMs so it's not like I've never been I never go on the app ever but I don't have it on my phone because you're working by yourself at home you don't have a boss it's very easy to procrastinate and go on Instagram and I really feel like that discipline is not about having an extreme amount of self-control as much as it is not subjecting yourself to situations where you have to have self-control it's easier to just not have Instagram on your phone than to have Instagram on your phone and tell yourself that you're not going to use it for more than an hour a day it's a there's a lot easier answer to just not subject yourself to that so I also want you guys to apply this concept beyond that because this really is the most implementable instantly noticeable you know increase in results that you can create for yourself as an entrepreneur is giving yourself more time and what should you how should you do that you should get rid of the things on your schedule that mean absolutely nothing to the goals that you're trying to accomplish for me one of the best things that I ever did was stop playing fantasy football I love fantasy football I get really into it so rather than tell myself hey I need to spend less time on fantasy football per week I just got rid of it I haven't played in like four years now and I did play for like seven to ten years in a row before that and I played a win I am researching all the players I am watching back all the games I'm doing an insane amount of research just so I can put some trade offers out there and I'm trying to win and in the end if you win you get like five hundred bucks or something like it doesn't matter even if it was more it would still be a waste of time because I'm gambling right so it was so much time instantly saved me ending playing fantasy football that gave me like ten to twenty hours back a week in mental space at the minimum mental space because I wasn't think driving around thinking about who was I gonna start or sit that week I wasn't thinking about football at all right so doing something like that is gonna be one of the best things that you can do for your business which is also what I'm saying in regards to deleting social media apps that are not necessary for the reality of what is working for you get real about it. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to do any of the next big marketing thing. You just have to do what works for you. And until you know what that is, yes, you should try everything. And you should keep your mind open to like, "Oh, this guy says he's getting great results over there." That seems like it might work for my business. Go try it out. Your goal is to get conclusive results on whether it's a good idea for you to be doing at all or not. Is very much a good way to think about, "You know, I am going to try to do some blog articles for my business, or I'm going to try to do something." Now, this is also a sticky situation because it does take a couple of years before blog articles will truly give you SEO benefits. Sometimes it does take that long before YouTube might play out for you. So you do want to get your proof that the path is going to work eventually for you is more what you're looking for. Not, "Hey, is it producing a ton of results yet or not and having like a short leash on something?" So it's a sticky situation and that's why wisdom is all that matters in entrepreneurship for making the right decisions. And I can't help you on a podcast as much as I would like to. I wish that I could, but if you book a free call with me, that's going to be way better. Whether you want to buy stuff for me or not, if you have a very unique situation right now where you don't know where you should be putting all of your time into, I can't tell you on a podcast. I really can't because I just ran into like a bunch of problems with the example that I just gave you. I gave you an example that was true, but then I was like, "Wait, there's actually a bunch of exceptions to that. There's a bunch of exceptions to everything and I am very in tune with them for pretty much every business that you could imagine at this point because I've done thousands of these free calls. So if you could benefit from that, go ahead and book that below. And of course, all of other things to sell if you need it, but I really am so down to just give you advice because that's the point of the podcast is to give you some free advice. And I just can't give you free, amazing advice on a podcast. I can't give you free advice in person, one-on-one. That's more what I meant to say. I can't give you amazing advice on any kind of evergreen piece of content out there, right? A YouTube video, whatever. But I can on a 25-minute phone call, so I encourage you to do that. Stay on social media. Think about doing less to do more this year.