Inessa Mudrova, a marketer with 10 years of experience in promoting personal brands, a jury member of the Armenia Digital Awards, a jury member of the ECDMA Global Awards, winner of the National Business Award in the nomination of Promotion of the Year for a Personal Brand, winner of the ECDMA Global Awards in the nomination of Social Network Professional of the Year. A member of the Guild of Marketers and a member of RASO shares professional tools that will help optimize marketing, content creation and take the promotion strategy to a new level.
In the era of rapid digitalization and artificial intelligence, especially with the advent of ChatGPT, social media content is undergoing a significant change. Previously, users sought expert advice and information from blogs or specialists, but now they turn to AI that provides personalized recommendations. This is transforming audience expectations: instead of dry facts and instructions, people are looking for emotional connections and personal stories.
As a personal branding and marketing specialist, I see that successful content today is built on authenticity and experience.
Working with bloggers from different countries, I have become convinced that the audience values stories about real experiences, mistakes and conclusions.
For example, instead of a headline like “How to Start Investing in 2025,” it’s more effective to use “How I Lost My First $1,000 Investing and What It Taught Me.”
According to Statista, Zapreshennogram will have around 2 billion active users by 2024, making it one of the leading platforms for audience engagement. However, as the amount of content grows, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand out, especially after the introduction of the Trial Reels feature in Zapreshennogram. This option, officially introduced in late 2023 and actively promoted in early 2024, allowed creators to test videos on a new audience without publishing them in the main feed. The idea was brilliant: to remove the barrier of fear of reach and to give an opportunity to “test” interest in the content without violating the aesthetics of the profile. But the result was twofold.
On the one hand, we saw an increase in engagement, especially among new creators: test videos became a powerful tool for the first “viral” videos. On the other hand, this led to an explosive growth in the volume of similar and unprocessed content. People began to publish dozens of videos a day en masse in the hope that at least one would “take off”. The feed turned into an endless stream of cuts, clips, and “just to test” formats.
According to analytics from Later and HypeAuditor, by spring 2024, the share of Trial Reels was up to 40% of the total number of videos promoted in the Reels section. This led to a decrease in attention retention: users began to scroll faster, tired of the same frames, voiceovers, and similar templates. ForbiddenGram’s algorithms adapted and began to prioritize content with high engagement and completion rates, and not just by the number of releases.
The result: only videos with a sincere, “catchy” message hold attention. Not just useful advice, but a story – human, real, with emotion.
In an era of template overload, the winner is not the one who posts 10 videos a day, but the one who hits the mark once a day. That’s why it’s important to create unique and personal stories that resonate with your followers.
However, in practice, building such content is not easy. Especially for those who have been accustomed to expert positioning for years: “I know – you don’t know”, “I tell – you listen”. Many experts are afraid of losing face by showing vulnerability, or believe that personal stories are something from lifestyle blogging. In fact, it is in personal stories that deep expertise lies today.
Personal experience does not cancel out expertise – it enhances it.
When you say, “I put everything into a startup and it failed. That was the first time I realized how important it is to test a hypothesis on a small scale,” you’re not just sharing a failure, you’re teaching through it. It doesn’t diminish your credibility; it makes you seem real, accessible, and authentic. This approach builds trust, especially in niches that have long lost their authenticity due to an overabundance of “successful success.”
To reinforce the approach, here are more examples, in the same “instead of – need to” format:
- Psychology / Helping practices
“5 Techniques for Dealing with Anxiety” → “I’m a Psychologist, and Here’s What I Do with Anxiety When It Hits Me at 1am”
- Career / HR / Soft skills
“Top 5 Interview Questions” → “How I Failed My Dream Interview – and What I Realized 2 Years Later”
- Education / Online Courses / Mentoring
“5 Steps to Becoming a Mentor” → “Why I Never Finished a Single Course – and What Changed When I Started Learning Differently”
- Beauty / Esthetics / Healthy Lifestyle
“5 Rules for Skin Care After 30” → “What I Tell Myself in the Mirror When I Don’t Like My Reflection”
- Art / Creativity / Self-expression
“5 Exercises for Developing Creativity” → “Why I Stopped Drawing for Half a Year – and How I Found Permission to Return”
Honesty is at the core of such stories. This does not mean that you need to turn an expert account into a diary. But it does mean that you need to talk not only about the result, but also about the process, doubts, dead ends, and emotions. This is what holds attention.
Now even algorithms reward highly engaged content: posts where people don’t just read, but leave comments, share, forward to friends. And in 90% of cases, these aren’t collections or lists, but personal stories that grab attention.
Even if you work in a “dry” niche – law, accounting, medicine – it works.
When working with clients, I recommend using AI tools like ChatGPT to generate ideas and plan content, but focus on the personal experience and emotional component. This helps establish trust and build a strong relationship with the audience.
Success in modern digital marketing depends on the ability to be authentic, share your stories, and use technology to amplify that message. This is the only way to create content that truly resonates with people and stands out in a crowded information space.
