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I’ve got 4 straight days of sun coming, and I couldn’t be more excited. Even better, three are concerts—Turnstile wrecking a crowd in Brooklyn, the Philharmonic in the park, then my beloved hometown piano-pop-punkers Jack’s Mannequin on a rooftop. I’ll take those sunburns over to the legendary West 4th basketball courts on Sunday where I’ll play my second pro-am streetball game (and hopefully, um, score this time).

Basically, get me away from my computer. But until then, let’s learn about social media, shall we? Today we’re talking:

• How to accurate guess your social idea’s performance before publishing

• How predicting social gives you pushback power vs. executives

• A social playbook with insights from 1,000+ marketers

—Jack Appleby

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You should guess your social data

No content strategist’s more coveted that Paddy Galloway right now. He’s more YouTube focused with previous clients including MrBeast and Jesser, but I think social professionals could learn so much from his thinking. There’s a line he dropped the other day that I really loved:

"Estimate your video ranking before upload. Measure against that."

In plain English—we should be able to guess how our content’s gonna perform longgg before the analytics report comes in. And getting into the practice of predicting performance might be the most valuable brainstorm tool you’ll ever learn.

Social media performance is predictable

As social media professionals, we’re paid to understand content, platforms, & audiences. When we’re pitching a strategic or creative idea, we should be able to make a solid, educated guess about what’s gonna hit, what’s hitting averages, and what’s gonna flop. If we can’t make those guesses to at least some degree of certainty, we’re not marketers anymore—we’re just people making funny little videos with no accountability.

But far too often during my far too lengthy LinkedIn scrolls, I catch many social professionals shrugging about content performance, or even trivializing the work we do. Complaints of the algorithms not surfacing their brand’s content. Gripes about organic reach. Or the one that really drives me nuts: “I spend hours working on most of our posts, but it’s always the one I whipped up in 5 minutes that goes viral!”

We’ve got the coolest jobs in the world! We’re paid to be creative, professionally! But we need to really care about the numbers, and care to learn to pitch ideas that grow those numbers.

Measuring against your own intuition

I wanna bring Paddy’s quote back for a second.

"Estimate your video ranking before upload. Measure against that."

The real value here comes in those last three words. The suggestion isn’t just to guess how your content’s gonna perform—it’s to see if you understand the value of ideas. To see if you can vet the difference between good, bad, and fine creative concepts.

It’s an exercise that the biggest YouTubers in the world work through with every single concept. Something I’ve loved about meeting more creators: they’re views obsessed. They viciously beat up their own ideas until they find a concept they’re fired up to make that they believe will generate big numbers. They’re not thinking in content calendars or numbers of deliverables—they’re thinking in performance.

Us marketers could learn so much from creator idea evaluation, and it starts with guessing your content performance.

Getting started with guessing your social data

The next time you’re brainstorming your next idea, I want you self-evaluate the concept with a couple of questions.

• Do I honestly believe this idea’s better than our content last month?

• How much better? Slightly better? Significantly better? Viral potential?

• Do we know how to sell this idea within our organization and/or clients?

• Do we have what we need to pull off this idea?

• Do we have enough time to create this content?

This is where social professional and creator life are understandably different. YouTubers can spend as long as they want on their videos. We’ve got expectations and deadlines and deliverables, and we have to contextualize our creativity through whatever brand we work for and the politics that come with being professionally creative. But also, those aren’t excuses for not being able to vet our own ideas.

If you can guess your social performance, you can also push back against bad ideas

I’ve pitched plenty of concepts over the years where I truly believed in the initial idea, but watched all the cooks in the kitchen water them down to where I know they wouldn’t work. And I got tired of it, and accidentally developed probably the most important one-liner of my career: “I can’t personally recommend that change, and I really do think it’s gonna affect performance, but hey, if it’s important to you, we can do it your way.”

I cannot tell you how many big executives backed down on their willy nilly suggestions when they realized I wasn’t gonna take responsibility for their ideas. I mostly got back “oh, if you think it’ll hurt performance, don’t worry about it.”

That’s not a line I could deliver if I couldn’t confidently predict how content will perform!

Guessing makes you a better social pro

Once you start making these predictions, something else happens: you get better at knowing which ideas deserve your time.

You’ll start catching the “meh” ideas before you waste 6 hours on them. You’ll stop chasing formats that never really perform. You’ll realize that a post you thought was a 10/10 is really a 5/10 with a better hook.

It also helps you advocate for your work. When you’re pitching ideas internally, you can say, "Here’s why I think this will outperform our average. Here’s the bet I’m making." It sounds small, but that kind of clarity builds trust.

The Bottom Line

Surprises are fun. But if your content calendar is full of surprises, you’re not in control.

Social media strategy should be just that—a strategy. And the best way to prove you actually have one is by making predictions, seeing wha

t lands, and learning every time you’re wrong.

Start guessing. Quietly if you need to. Write down your expectations before you post. Track what you got right, and where you missed.

That’s the skill no one talks about. But it might just be the one that sets you apart.