Playbook
How short video actually travels
12 pieces on the mechanics: what the platforms are measuring, what the first second is doing, and what to change when a video goes nowhere. None of it promises you a viral video, because nobody can. All of it is the part you control.
Understand
What the platforms are actually measuring, and how to read a video that worked.
TikTok
How to go viral on TikTok, and what that actually means
TikTok does not decide whether a video is good. It decides, repeatedly, whether to show it to a slightly larger room. Here is what it is measuring at each of those decisions, and which parts of it you control.
Instagram
How to go viral on Instagram Reels
Reels is not TikTok with a different logo. It sits inside a network where you already have relationships, and the thing it optimises for, sends, is the one most creators are not even measuring.
Analysis
How to reverse-engineer a video that went viral
Copying a viral video makes you the second-best version of it. Taking it apart properly gives you a structure you can put your own subject into, which is a completely different and much more valuable thing.
Create
Getting from a blank camera to a finished recording without the week-long stall in the middle.
Hooks
How to write a hook that stops the scroll
A hook is not a strong opening line. It is an unresolved one. The difference is the whole craft, and it is the reason most advice about hooks does not survive contact with a real video.
Scripts
How to write a short-form video script
A 45-second script is about 110 words, which is less than this paragraph and a half. That constraint is the whole discipline, and it is why scripts for short video are written backwards from how people expect.
Ideas
How to never run out of content ideas
Running out of ideas is almost never a shortage of ideas. It is a shortage of a system for capturing them, and a habit of judging every idea at the moment it arrives, which kills most of them.
Filming
Using a teleprompter without sounding like you are reading
The reason teleprompter delivery sounds wrong is almost never the teleprompter. It is a script written to be read, an eyeline a few degrees off, and a scroll speed set to the wrong thing.
Improve
Reading the feedback you already have, and diagnosing a video that went nowhere.
Retention
Retention: the number that decides how far a video travels
The retention graph is the only honest feedback short video gives you. Most creators glance at it, see it going down, and conclude that videos go down. Here is how to actually read one.
Troubleshooting
Why your Reels are not getting views
Eleven real causes, in the order they are worth checking, from the boring technical ones almost nobody looks at to the honest one at the bottom. Shadowbanning is not on the list, and there is a reason.
Grow
The parts that compound: being findable, being consistent, and getting more out of every recording.
Timing
The best time to post on TikTok and Instagram
Every chart of best posting times is an average of millions of accounts that are not yours. Here is what the averages actually say, why they disagree with each other, and how to find your own in about ten minutes.
Discovery
Hashtags or keywords: what actually gets you found now
Hashtags did not die, but their job changed. Both platforms now read your words, your caption and your transcript, which means the thing worth optimising is what you say rather than what you tag.
Repurposing
One recording, a week of posts
Repurposing has a bad name because most of it is reposting: the same file, on three platforms, with a watermark. Done properly it is a different thing, and it is the difference between posting twice a week and posting daily without working more.