The bad social media advice that’s keeping you stuck (and how to break out of it).

There’s a lot of social media advice floating around online. And while some of it can genuinely help you grow… a lot of it can also hold you back and hurt your growth. Lately, I’ve been seeing a wave of common social media advice that’s either being misunderstood, oversimplified, or explained without the full context that creators actually need.

So today, I want to break down some of these popular tips, tricks, “hacks,” and so-called magical fixes and talk about what they really mean.

Before we jump in, I want to make one thing clear: there’s no single “right way” to grow on social media. Every educator teaches from their own experience, and every creator’s journey looks different. The goal here isn’t to shame any strategy; it’s to help you understand which advice truly supports your growth and which might be slowing you down.

As always, take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, and trust your gut before implementing any advice… even mine.

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Common Social Media Advice That’s Actually Hurting Your Growth

Bad Advice #1: “You need to be posting every day” (3-5x a day)

One of the most common pieces of social media advice floating around right now is that you must post daily — or even 3–5 times a day — if you want to grow. And yes, some creators have grown this way… but many of them also had something you don’t: a content team, a repurposing workflow, or the bandwidth that comes with years of experience.

Are you a new creator or a solo creator? This advice is almost guaranteed to push you straight into burnout.

That said, let’s talk about the truth behind this social media advice, because it’s not completely wrong. Posting more frequently can help you grow faster. When you post often, your content gets tested more quickly. You get more analytics, faster. You learn what works, what doesn’t, and you can pivot in real time.

That’s why creators who post multiple times a day often see quick traction.

And you can get those same benefits from short-term spurts like a 30-day challenge or a focused content sprint. But you don’t need to go from zero to five posts a day just because someone else said that’s the “right” way.

Here’s the real truth: you do NOT have to post every day in order to grow.

In fact, some of my students have seen significant growth by intentionally posting just 2–3 times per week. Why? Because social media platforms prefer consistency over intensity. And consistency is only possible if the pace is sustainable for you.

What to do instead:
Find a posting cadence you can stick to long-term, even if that’s 2–3 posts per week. Build the habit first. Then, when you’re ready, try a short sprint to accelerate your growth without burning out. Here’s an example of a 30-Day Sprint for TikTok.

TL;DR: You don’t need to post every day to grow. Prioritize a sustainable posting cadence you can maintain, then use short content sprints when you want a boost. Consistency beats intensity every time.

Bad Advice #2: Quality Over Quantity

One piece of social media advice I hear all the time is “quality over quantity.” While it sounds helpful, for new creators, this can actually lead to creator paralysis, where you end up feeling like nothing is ‘quality’ enough to post.

This advice is best for creators who’ve been posting for 1–2 years but haven’t seen significant growth. For them, it’s a way to step back, refine hooks, improve editing, and make more polished content. But if you’re just starting out, focusing too much on “perfect” content can keep you from posting at all.

What to do instead:
In the early months, do whatever you need to remove friction so you can actually start posting. Show up consistently, even if the content isn’t perfect. I love it when people say, “Quantity leads to quality.”

Just like working out, the more you practice filming, editing, and posting, the faster your skills improve. Over time, you’ll naturally get better and produce content that is both authentic and high-quality.

TL;DR: If you’re a beginner, don’t let “quality over quantity” stop you from posting. Focus on showing up consistently, learning as you go, and refining your skills over time. Quantity will lead to quality.

Bad Advice #3: You Need to Be on Every Platform

I know this social media advice is going to be a little controversial because some big content creator coaches say you need to post on multiple platforms (even content creators whose social media advice I listen to!). But I disagree with this when it comes to creators just starting out.

I believe that if you’re just starting out and want to build a personal brand, it’s a good idea to pick just one platform to focus on. For new creators, I think it’s best to study one platform at a time. This allows you to get to know your audience on that platform, understand the algorithm, and figure out how to create content that will specifically help you grow.

While you are creating and posting to that platform, you are more than welcome to repurpose that content for other platforms; be my guest. But if you’re creating for TikTok and then resharing to Reels and Shorts, don’t expect those platforms to blow up for you just because you’re posting. Ideally, you’re posting content you’ve specifically created for TikTok.

My biggest piece of advice to new creators is to make sure they aren’t repurposing content for another platform and then obsessing over why it’s not performing as well as it should. You need to be obsessing over the platform you’ve chosen to focus on.

Repurpose to other places simply to maintain your brand presence and not for growth.

And once you’ve mastered a platform or at least gotten into a rhythm of creating, posting, and you’re seeing growth, then start to look at other platforms. What I’ve noticed when working with my students is that if you try to post everywhere at the beginning, you just end up confusing yourself. Because while all these algorithms have overlaps, they are different enough to drive you crazy. You’ll find yourself wondering why a video performed well on one platform but flopped on another.

What you’ll end up doing is showing up poorly everywhere instead of powerfully on one platform.

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Bad Advice #4: Trends are the Only Way to Grow

I want to rephrase this piece of social media advice.

Trends, if done strategically, can absolutely create temporary spikes in followers. But, if they’re done “incorrectly”, those followers will actually turn into ghost followers down the line.

For example, on my personal TikTok, I hopped onto a general trend. It was a trending audio and a trending dance, which was all I did. That video went viral, and I ended up getting 2,000-3,000 followers from that video – which sounds great (I know).

But two years later, I don’t see any engagement from those followers. None of the people who followed me because of that video are actually interested in the content I’m posting (because they’re not related at all). So those followers are now ghost followers, and having ghost followers completely kills your engagement and will hurt you later down the line.

What to do instead:
I want you to integrate trends strategically into and throughout your content calendar. So this means I want you to mix trends with your original content, signature series and evergreen content. And when you use these trends, use them strategically and only if they align with your personal brand.

Here’s an example of a trend I hopped on because I could apply it to my niche.

At the end of the day, people don’t follow trends; they follow creators. So if you’re going to lean into trends (which you totally can), make sure they always tie into your personal brand.

Bad Advice #5: You Have to Pick a Niche if You Want to Grow

We’re going to have to dive into this piece of social media advice more because… yes and no. Let me explain.

Identifying your niche is great. There is a reason everyone is always telling you to niche down: it works. And I do agree with this, to some extent.

But… here’s what I’ve noticed when working with my students this year.

The only place where you really need to niche (at the time of writing this post) is Instagram. Instagram creates account-based embeddings and categorizes your entire account under a single topic. That is how their algorithm figures out who to push your content to.

They look at what you generally post, and then they’ll assign your account one topic. From there, they’ll show your content to people interested in that topic.

Now, a misconception about niching down is that many people think they need to pick one topic and stick with it forever. An example of a defined niche might be helping new moms navigate their fitness journey from home while balancing the rest of their ‘mom life’.

The problem that I see with new creators is that this prevents them from even getting started. It stops them before they even get to pursue their dreams. And if you pick a niche that you don’t like, it can hinder your growth and even cause burnout.

So what do we do? What’s the magic fix with picking a niche?

What to do instead:

If you’re someone who knows right away what your niche is, great! Niche down from the start. You’ll be fine, you can go to any platform and start posting. But if that doesn’t align with you and you just don’t know what niche you want to fall into… There are a few other things you can do.

1. The Audience Approach: Pick an audience and create content that aligns with it. For example, if you’re a college student and you want to reach other college students, you could post about college fashion, dorm room food, studying in college or even the easiest plants to keep alive when you’re living in a dorm. Just tie everything you create back to the audience you’re creating for (in this case, college students).
2. The Identity Approach: This is the advice that I usually give to lifestyle creators who want to talk about everything. In this case, talk about everything – but don’t let that be an excuse to be messy. You still need a strategy, and that strategy can be: every time you post content, make sure it revolves around a common theme or axis. There should be an overarching thing that brings all the content together. This will be something about you:
   1. Your life
   2. Your Identity
   3. Your unique traits

You just need to figure out what that’s going to be for you.

At the end of the day, both of these approaches are still forms of niching down. People just don’t want to call it niching down because that tends to have a negative connotation in the Creator space – where people think having a niche will make them feel trapped.

At the end of the day, I think people just misunderstand what niching down means.

There are so many ways to build a theme into your content that can help you write consistently and see growth.

Bad Advice #6: You Should Boost Your Posts to Get More Followers and Engagement

I don’t know why people are still giving out this social media advice. I still hear students say that they posted something and it didn’t perform well, so they boosted it… and it still didn’t perform well. Let’s just stop doing this.

The only time I want you to boost your content is if you are going to get money in return. That’s just a general rule of thumb.

Some examples of posts that are worth boosting:

1. You’re building a freebie, and you’ve created a post about it. You could boost the post to get people to sign up for your email list.
2. You have a paid offer, let’s say it costs $27. You can create a post promoting that offer and then allocate ad spend to drive sales.

But even in that sense, I still really wouldn’t do it.

Ideally, you should only be boosting posts that performed well organically. If your post did not perform well, it’s not going to magically perform well when you put money behind it.

What to do instead:
If you posted a video and it didn’t perform well, figure out why. Study the message, the hook, the intro and the other elements that might have impacted the engagement and effectiveness of that video. Don’t boost posts. Let’s instead focus on creating naturally engaging content that organically boosts your account and business.

Bad Advice #7: Delete Your Old Posts

I’ve seen people suggest to creators that they should delete posts that don’t perform well, or, if they’re rebranding, delete old posts so they can start new ones. There have also been students of mine who’ve done this. They’ve had personal accounts, and decided to start a creator account; they just deleted (not archived) all their content so they could start fresh.

Now, this might not be what the algorithm does… but in my experience helping these students, when they deleted all their posts, it was like they were starting completely from scratch on the platform, getting no engagement. It was almost like Instagram forgot who they were, and they had to build that up all over again.

What to do instead:
So, if you’re someone who wants to get rid of old posts, I recommend archiving them over time (on TikTok, you can make them private). Let’s say you archive one a week, or every three days. I do not recommend removing them all at once.

If you’re someone who’s doing a complete brand shift, let’s say you used to post about makeup and now you want to start a bodybuilding account, I recommend starting a new account. Don’t simply delete all the posts on your makeup account and use that account instead. That’s going to be confusing for Instagram and for your old audience. So instead, if you want to change what you’re doing completely, start a new account to share your new content.

Basically, don’t delete your posts.

Now, these next few bits of social media advice are some of my biggest pet peeves.

Bad Advice #8: These Hashtags Will Help You Go Viral

Honestly, there’s nothing to say here. There is no magical hashtag or hashtag strategy to make you go viral. Anyone telling you otherwise is just using clickbait to get your attention.

Hashtags are simply supportive keywords that help algorithms identify what your content is about and push it to the right audience. That’s it. That’s all that hashtags do.

What to do instead:
Create good, engaging content on whatever platform you’re creating for. And then use hashtags as a supportive form of SEO to explain to your audience and to the platform what that content is about.

Bad Advice #9: Upload at These Times if You Want to Go Viral

This piece of social media advice is the same as the hashtags. If someone is telling you there’s a magic time to post online… It’s clickbait. There’s no ‘one time’ to go viral.

What to do instead:
Look at where your audience is based and what times they’re most active. Then use that data to post when your audience is more likely to be online. I try to post at 5-6AM PST so that when people on the East Coast are waking up, they can watch my videos. But that’s if you want to have a strategy. You can also just post ANYTIME.

Bad Advice #10: X Platform Changed Their Algorithm

Alright, this isn’t really social media advice… but I still want to talk to you about it. I see people posting WEEKLY videos with this topic. And here’s the issue… they’re right, but they’re also wrong.

There are multiple algorithms on each platform, and they change daily because human behaviour changes. Every time you like or ignore a post, or even open your app, your algorithm will store that data and update.

So yes, the algorithms are changing all the time. BUT if the core algorithm changes, Instagram (for example) will let us know. Like when Adam Mosseri came on to tell us that Watch Time is more important than likes. That’s a core update. That’s relevant. Someone else using the algorithm to scare creators into clicking on their content every week… that rubs me the wrong way.

What to do instead:
Stop following those people because they’re trying to lure you in to get clicks.

Is there any other social media advice that you’d like me to review? Do you agree or disagree with any of these things that I’ve shared? Let me know in the comments below!

I recommend you check out this post next, it’s all about Instagram SEO.

Thank you so much for being here! I’ll see you in the next one. Follow your joy.