Consumer Trends on Social Media in 2025

The go-to formats to drive growth for creator brands on social media

August 10, 2025

Read Time: 1 Minutes 27 Seconds

Hey — Ryan here.

In today’s edition we’ll be covering:

  • 3 video styles dominating consumer in 2025

  • Why ‘documenting’ your journey is overrated

  • Proven formats you can try today to grow your brand

Is it just me or is everyone ‘documenting’ their journey on social media now?

Day 1, Day 2, …. Day 100, it’s honestly starting to get boring…

So if you’ve been suffering from low engagement or repetition

Just know there’s a world of content formats 🗺️ you can explore instead

Here’s 3 video styles that creators and brands like @areyouokayshow, @superbonsai, and @bkcoffeeshop are using to drive organic reach that you can steal

Let’s get into it

Style #1: Series-Based Content

Transform short-form content in a TV show with recurring characters

And set it all in one consistent environment

With hundreds of millions of videos being posted everyday, familiarity is key

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen @bkcoffeeshop (link below)

Oh, and there’s more

Like this one that received 1.5M views

And this one with 1.4M views

This is one of many strategies to ‘community build’ in social media

You’re literally crafting your own digital world that viewers can enter into

Why it works:

  • Predictable: The algorithm loves predictable, every piece of content should be intended to attract your ‘dream customer’

  • World Building: This is exactly how ‘world building’ works on socials, it’s one thing to get views but another to build brand affinity and recognition

  • Familiarity: The difference between a casual viewer and a die-hard viewer is familiarity - in the first 8 seconds do they know what they’re getting?

Style #2: Mr. Beast-ification

I call this style ‘Mr. Beast-ification’ because it’s set around have one huge goal that requires a great deal of effort

Creating a layer of absurdity around the challenge

Trust me when I say that viewers notice and respect genuine effort when they see it

Check out some Gen Z kids doing it like @mistuhray

Or @seb.draws.things with over 2.1M followers

Effort does not equal Quality by any means

But in many cases, putting an extra 10% effort in your videos can be the difference between 100,000 and 1M views

Why it works:

  • Community Builder: Viewers love to see creators ‘earn’ their engagement and it creates respect for the creator that you can’t fake

  • Buy-In: Develops buy-in from the viewer to see the outcome of the story

  • Hero’s Journey: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if they don’t know your ‘who’ you are, and ‘why’ you do it, they won’t care ‘what’ you’re selling

Style #3: Challenge-Based Style

Create tension. Put a timeline on it. And explain what the objective is.

@Joyride is putting up a masterclass in creator-led marketing right now:

Or this video by @adamboro that got over 39.6M views

Why it works:

  • Piques Curiosity: Challenge-style videos raise tons of questions in the viewers minds, making them stop to think for a second

  • Retention: All challenges require an end outcome, as a result the viewer’s watch time is much longer

  • Suspense: Tension and conflict is what makes these types of videos so unique

Thanks for showing up this week. We’ll see you in the next :).

Sincerely,

Ryan To

P.S. Can you guess who we’re featuring next in the Creator Marketing Series ★ on my page?

Hint: His name starts with an A_____