Personal Reflections: "It's About How Well You're Able To Market It..." - Eric Suarez' Advice on Social Media Success
In either late 2023 or early 2024, I was technically a personal finance creator and I'd recently blown up to over 60,000 followers on instagram in that niche.
But while I very much like the niche, especially since the topic very much resonates with me having come from zero money when I grew up to where I am now and money being a constant constraint and deciding factor in my life, I didn't think it was necessarily the optimal niche.
Should I switch to college admissions? Grad school admissions? Scholarships only? Narrow my focus? Or does my production value just suck? Should I get out of finance since it's such a low barrier to entry? (whereas college admissions and earning a full ride to your dream school is NOT) etc.
So many questions like this have popped through my head over the last few years as my social media career has started and stopped and sputtered, gaining insane momentum sometimes, and completely coming to a halt for months on end at other times.
But the true answer to ALL of my questions isn't "what's the best way," but instead is:
"It depends on how well you're able to market it!"
This is what interview (and now AI) influencer Eric Suarez told me when I asked him "do you think that would college admissions be a lucrative niche for me?"
And it brings the profound insight that it's not so much the niche that you pick, or even your expertise, but much moreso on if you can deliver a product or experience that the audience will actually want.
One of my Professors from Spring 2025 at USC, legendary NFL Head Coach and Super Bowl Champion Pete Carroll, said something similarly profound: "What we're trying to stand for.. is to help you guys realize that it's not so much the job you get right now, it's what YOU DO with the job you get!"
In other words, if you mapped this to social media success, then it would be about not so much the niche you pick, but what you do with the niche you pick - or how well you're able ot package/"market" it, as Eric said.
Obviously you should still use all of the other principles that maximize your chances of success such as Steven He's study/optimization process, while also seeking and finding a strong product(/content)-market fit, minimum viable product (MVP), and all of the other principles outlined in these blogs (obsession, introducing comedy the right way, being contrarian, having a contrarian thesis, picking a niche that you have an unfair advantage or authority in, etc.).
Conclusion / Main Takeaway
But put succinctly, once you have those correct feedback loops and "systems" in place, success on social media ia all about "how well you're able to market it" at the end of the day!
Thoughts On How It Applies To My Content
As of January 2026, if I want to still take advantage of this content wave and make a living as a full-time creator, the main thing that I probably need to change is finding a product-market fit where there's a version of my content that I still want to make but is able to serve my audience in the way they want it as well (but also doing a Minimum Viable Product version of it which does that but also doesn't take a ton of resources since I'm still sort of cash-tight at the moment).
For example, maybe instead of talking into the camera and giving really good college/grad school admissions advice, or even giving it in skit form and then having to find costumes and script, edit, etc., but instead maybe the best intersection of a "Minimum Viable Product" and Product-Market Fit would be to instead do "man on the street interviews" about college admissions, and then just crank out a ton of videos from there.
Lighting is so much easier outside (most of the time), I don't have to be super scripted, you can constantly get an influx of new people, and I can get a much larger quantity of videos filmed, and they're (once I get my processes down right) likely much higher engagement than most skit-style videos (at least in terms of effort vs resources right now, even though I have formal education in sketch comedy now), AND I also still have access to USC - or will once I finish my Spring hiatus in Colorado - and am still close enough in age to college/grad students where college interview videos wouldn't be inaccessible to me yet (this is an unfair advantage that, say, a 50 year old with a mic wouldn't be able to do most of the time).
I'm also experimenting with the "multiple channel" methodology, particulalry after hearing Steven mention that you want to think of your content as a traditional business with traditional product line(s), and if you serve too many different things per channel it'll likely tank as opposed to having each channel being really good at serving one type of product or format, and then making other channels for different products.
Whether you can still mix formats or not - I'm actually not sure about. For example, if the same page is all on the same topic (particularly in short form), I'm not sure if you're supposed to mostly stick to one format or if you can mix format types (e.g. street interviews about college admissions and then also character sketches/skits about college admissions, etc.).
My hunch is that with longform, it matters less, but for short-form in particular, sticking to one video style (even if the overarching topic is the same - which it should be in most cases!), is probably the way to go especially based on Steven He's repeatable audience experience analogy and his experience switching formats too much in the past before he went with 10% pivots.
Furthermore, I attended an event with renowned podcasters/creators Colin and Samir at The Lighthouse in Venice California in June of 2025, and something they mentioned during a Q&A breakout session was that they think that you should seperate channels in most cases, since you should think of each channel like a "TV Show" where you come back to see the same type of episodes every week.
Like if you're watching an episode of say... Friends, but then instead of that, you get an episode of Spongebob or Teletubbies the next week, the audience will likely be very dissapointed.
So find something that works well, that is a repeatable audience experience, then deliver that to the audience like a recurring TV Show - and keep channels seperate if you do make content in multiple different niches.
That's my take as of now!