Stop Trying to
"Outsmart" the Algorithm

By Twisha: Marketing, real talk, and why "best practices" are often the worst.

Reading time: 3 minutes Mood: Anti-Hustle 📉

We need to talk about the "Growth Hack."

You know the one. You see it on your feed every morning. "How I gained 10k followers in 10 days." "The secret hashtag strategy that 10x'd my reach." "Post exactly at 8:04 AM on a Tuesday or you’re invisible."

As marketers, we are exhausted. We have become obsessed with the container (the algorithm, the timing, the hacks) and completely forgotten about the contents. We are so busy trying to feed the robot that we’ve stopped feeding the humans on the other side of the screen.

I had a call with a founder recently who was panicking because their engagement dipped by 12% last month. They wanted to pivot the entire strategy to chase a trending audio format.

My advice? "Stop. You are optimising for noise, not signal."

In this edition of Unfiltered, let’s debunk the three biggest lies we tell ourselves in digital marketing right now.

Lie 1: "You need to be everywhere."

The Omni-channel Strategy is the quickest way to burnout-town. We tell ourselves we need a newsletter, a LinkedIn presence, a Twitter/X thread strategy, a TikTok, and maybe a podcast.

The Reality: Diluted effort yields diluted results. You don’t need more channels; you need more depth. A mediocre presence on five platforms is infinitely worse than a cult-like following on one.

Try this: Pick one channel where your actual customers (not your peers) hang out. Master the language of that room. Ignore the rest until you are so undeniable there that expanding is easy.

Lie 2: "If it didn't go viral, it failed."

We have addicted ourselves to vanity metrics. Likes give us dopamine, but they rarely pay the rent. I’ve seen posts with 100,000 views convert zero customers, and posts with 500 views bring in three high-ticket contracts.

The Reality: Virality is usually an accident. Consistency is a choice. The "boring" posts, the ones that educate, the ones that solve a specific problem for a specific person, often get lower reach but higher trust. Trust is the currency. Likes are just confetti.

Lie 3: "B2B marketing has to be 'Professional'."

And by professional, we usually mean "boring." We strip out all personality, use words like "synergy" and "paradigm," and then wonder why nobody engages.

The Reality: B2B is still H2H (Human to Human). The person buying your SaaS software is the same person doom-scrolling Instagram at night. They want to be entertained, challenged, or understood. They don't want to read a whitepaper that sounds like it was written by a compliance bot.

The Unfiltered Takeaway

Stop trying to outsmart the algorithm. The algorithm changes every Tuesday. Human psychology hasn’t changed in a thousand years.

If you want to win at digital marketing today, stop looking at the metrics dashboard for five minutes. Look at your last five posts. Did they make someone feel understood? Did they teach something valuable? Or were they just feeding the beast?

Be human first. Marketer second.

- Twisha

Before you scroll...

If you're tired of marketing fluff and want real conversations about building a brand in the messy real world, this is the place.

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