I posted on social media every day for 365 days & gained 50K followers

+video of my reaction to start the blog!

To start 2023, I set a goal of posting an original video every day for 365 days straight.

I gained 2,500 followers in the first 10 days.

And reflected on my progress after reaching Day 100 ✅.

You can read more about my feelings at each milestone below ⬇️

Explain goal-setting in basketball terms

How I went from 0 to 2,500 Followers in 10 Days

I posted on social media everyday for 100 days

But today, I’m here to celebrate reaching Day 365 ✅

Here are some quick stats 365 days later ⬇️

🤳 Filmed 40K+ basketball clips

📲 Posted 1.8K+ videos on social media (365 videos x 5 platforms)

📈 Garnered 50M+ views & 3M+ likes

🫶 Gained 50K+ followers

This post is a one-year reflection on (1) my experience with daily content creation, (2) the Regular Hoops social media stats, and (3) the journey thus-far. Topics include…

🔔 Gaslighting myself (via Pavlovian Conditioning)

🏁 Ending daily content creation

🚀 The top 1%

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Daily Content Creation Experience

Part I: Staying consistent

When I discussed this topic in my Day 100 ✅ blog, I was testing out different ways to stay consistent. I tried…

• Batch editing videos on Sundays

• Editing and posting one video/day in between classes

• Editing and posting one video/day early in the morning (<9am)

But creating early morning videos became my go-to strategy to stay consistent because it is situation-agnostic.

Whether I was going to class, traveling post-graduation, or working full-time, my early mornings were almost always the same—making it easy to develop a routine.

Part II: Pavlovian Conditioning

To turn this morning routine into a habit, I used Ivan Pavlov’s idea of classical conditioning.

Classical conditioning: A behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent physiological stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a neutral stimulus (e.g. the sound of a musical triangle) - Wikipedia

Pavlov’s research on classical conditioning became popular after he published findings from his dog experiment.

Source

Before conditioning, dogs would (1) produce saliva at the sight of food and (2) have no response to the ring of a bell.

But by ringing the bell AND providing food simultaneously, over time, dogs would start to salivate at just the ring of a bell.

Classical conditioning was even used by Jim from The Office—when he pranked Dwight by associating the sound of a desktop rebooting with eating a mint.

So, how did I use classical conditioning?

This might sound crazy, but I would not eat breakfast until I created each daily video.

Physiological stimulus = Feeling hungry/Breakfast

Neutral Stimulus = The act of editing & posting a video each morning

I basically gaslit myself in viewing breakfast as a reward.

It got to a point where I would feel weird if I ate anything before editing & posting a daily video.

But don’t worry, I live a *regular* life now.

Part III: Ending daily content creation

I decided to stop posting daily after reaching Day 365 ✅.

This is because my perspective on “Quantity vs. Quality” changed.

When I started at zero followers, I focused on “Quantity” to maximize the chances of posting a viral video.

Daily = 365 chances

Weekly = 52 chances

Monthly = 12 chances

In addition to having more chances to go viral, posting daily forced me to publish a video even if I thought it wasn’t ready. Said another way; there was no room for “analysis paralysis.”

This perspective was valuable because there were many days I created a video that “wasn’t good enough” in my eyes.

But because I needed to post everyday, I would publish it anyways.

And sometimes those videos went viral.

Focusing on “Quantity” these first 365 days was the right decision.

But now, I’m going in a new direction.

And here’s my data-driven reason…

Know Your Meme

In all seriousness, posting 365 videos across five social media platforms provided me with the analytics of over 1,800 videos.

With this data, I found that highly-produced videos performed better than short highlight clips even though the short clips had greater audience retention (>100% retention on short clips).

I thought retention was an algorithm hack, but these short clips did not convert into likes and follows at the same rate as highly-produced content.

Ideally, I would post highly-produced content daily. But since it’s highly-produced, it takes more time to edit and post.

However, now that I built up an audience through daily uploads, I want to only focus on publishing highly-produced content that engages and builds community.

I’m hoping to do that through (1) YouTube and (2) growing my personal brand.

In the short-run, posting less frequently could lead to a decreased amount of views, likes, and follows when compared to this time next year.

But I see Regular Hoops as a brand that can deeply connect with people. And that requires high-quality content built for the long-run.

While I continue to create with “Quantity” in mind, focusing more on “Quality” is the next step for Regular Hoops.

In other words, I will use “Quantity” to test out different forms of content that lead to higher “Quality” engagement.

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2023 By the Numbers

Here is a look at the Regular Hoops 2023 social media stats…

Part I: Day 100 vs Day 365 Follower Count

Regular Hoops follower count after 100 days:

Snapchat (100 days): 14

TikTok (100 days): 5,731

Instagram (100 days): 1,714

Facebook (100 days): 373

YouTube (100 days): 342

Total = 8,174

Regular Hoops follower count after 365 days:

Snapchat (365 days): 28,171

TikTok (365 days): 11,400

Instagram (365 days): 7,418

Facebook (365 days): 1,852

YouTube (365 days): 1,769

Total = 50,610

Part II: Quick thoughts on each platform

Snapchat:

I’m shocked that Snap is my biggest platform. It took me 100 days to get just 14 followers. In my Day 100 ✅ blog, I wrote that…

“Snapchat has seen very little growth. But I’m posting on it because it takes zero lift to copy & paste a caption and upload the same video to Snapchat Spotlight. I’m hoping for a situation similar to Facebook [for a video to go viral].”

And indeed, a video went viral… and then multiple videos went viral.

What’s more surprising is I’m noticing great engagement on Snapchat in terms of comments, likes, and follows. The conversion rate is high, so I’m excited to figure out more ways to interact with this community.

TikTok:

This platform humbled me real quick. I had a lot of initial success. But then my content stopped receiving the same amount of views even though I was creating better videos.

Nevertheless, I was able to crack 10,000 followers, so I’m now eligible for monetization through the TikTok Creativity Program Beta. This requires creators to upload videos that are more than one-minute. Long-form content seem to be where TikTok is headed, so I’m looking to build out that strategy.

Instagram:

This remains my favorite app to post on because it is the platform I built Regular Hoops around. I can tag everyone and easily see who shares my videos.

I feel the impact of my content through Instagram, while on the other platforms, it is difficult to replicate that feeling through just numbers.

Facebook:

Beyond making a few hundred dollars off Facebook ad revenue, the platform has seen little growth. I saw a lot of success early on and anticipated more, but that has not been the case.

I’m not looking to invest much energy into Facebook now, especially since creators can no longer get paid through ad revenue.

YouTube:

I didn’t post any long-form videos and just stuck with YouTube Shorts. This led to some subscriber growth. However, I don’t think the quality of these subscribers is high.

The top YouTubers built an audience by converting followers through long-form videos, so that’s my new priority.

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Closing Thoughts

This year, I filmed over 40,000 clips from regular basketball games.

That means I only shared ~1% of my videos on social media.

(365 posted/40,000 filmed = ~1%)

Editing & posting the top 1% of content came with sacrificing early mornings, nights, and weekends.

And in the moment, I thought I was making those sacrifices in exchange for posting a viral video.

But since taking a break to reflect on everything, it’s the people I’ve met on this journey that have made the sacrifices worth it.

Their passion inspired me to keep pushing…

and now it’s time to tell those stories through basketball.

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Accountability text chain with myself lol

PS—If you liked this, you might also enjoy reading how I snuck in the Nike HQ and worked with NBA All-Star Victor Oladipo.