Justin Flom: A Magician’s Journey to Social Media Stardom

Justin Flom, a popular magician and social media influencer, boasts over 20 million subscribers on YouTube and over 9 million followers on TikTok

His rise to social media stardom occurred during the pandemic, when he dedicated himself to creating content full-time. Earlier this month, Justin reached the #1 spot in the U.S. Top 50 for YouTube views and ranked #3 globally.

Balancing his work with his personal life, Justin enjoys spending time with his wife, Anna, and their daughters. His interests and hobbies blend seamlessly into his work, creating magical experiences at home that he shares on social media. Despite the classic proverb warning against making hobbies a job, Justin loves his work and finds joy in it.

For mental health, Justin emphasizes the importance of ignoring negative online comments, recognizing that many commenters don’t see YouTube creators as real human beings. Instead, he focuses on the data and how people interact with his content. Even if commenters express dislike, the analytics often show high engagement, shares, and likes.

Justin Flom talks about how he tackles the TikTok algorithm to achieve his impressive social media success with AdBuzzDaily. Flom also offers tips on building and growing YouTube channels based on lessons learned from other creators and how creators can hack the algorithm to get their content seen.

I see you have a very massive following on TikTok. Can you share what led you to the platform and how you gained your audience on the platform?

I was early to TikTok, which was great because audience building in 2019 and 2020 was incredibly fast. The algorithm was very pure, so if a video was good, it reached millions of people. Since then, TikTok has become a much more difficult platform to break through because there are many hidden parts of the algorithm that affect the reach of your video. Your page might get flagged without your knowledge, causing your videos to get significantly fewer views.

What attracts me to TikTok now is that my videos will be stolen and put on TikTok anyway, so I might as well be the one uploading the content. I know this isn’t the most glowing review of TikTok, but that’s where the industry is right now.

What specific techniques or strategies are creators using to hack the algorithm and ensure their content is seen by a larger audience on YouTube?

The longer people watch your content, the more people will see it. Everything is still based on how long people watch your content. However, people won’t watch your content for long unless you can get them to stop swiping through the feed of videos. So, my main technique is to stop the swipe with an interesting opening shot or a novel idea that leaves the audience wanting to see how it plays out. This is how I end up with the longest watch times on YouTube Shorts.

Do you have any examples of how you successfully grew your channels by learning from the experiences and lessons of other creators?

A big part of my job is studying trends on different social media platforms. When I see a video with 100 million views, my job is to determine why. How does this video have 100 million views? I learn from that and remain very flexible in the content I produce. I avoid being stuck in my ways of producing only specific types of content. Instead, I am always open to doing what is working on other platforms. Often, you see others finding success in new genres or a new style of creating.

What are some key takeaways or best practices that new YouTube creators can adopt to build and grow their channels based on the successes of established creators?

Start uploading now! Start uploading often and monitor the watch end times in the backend data. You are going to upload bad videos for a while, so you might as well start and get that out of your system right now. The biggest mistake I see new creators make is putting too much time and energy into planning what they will someday film, instead of picking up the camera and uploading something immediately.

When it comes to brand opportunities, which collaborations or partnerships stand out to you as particularly beneficial for YouTube creators, and why?

Brand deals are great for creators because, in the current market on platforms like YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Facebook, revenue from the sharing programs is down. This means that even though we are still getting millions of views, we are not being paid as much as we were previously. We can supplement this with brand deals. Brands want to be in front of a hundred million people, and we have the ability to create content that reaches that audience. Therefore, brand deals are beneficial to any YouTuber or creator.

What criteria or qualities do you look for in YouTube creators when identifying potential for brand partnerships and sponsorships?

This one is a challenge because there is often a big distinction between a branded YouTube creator with a personality and a following, and someone like me, who can anonymously get hundreds of millions of views without an audience that deeply cares about it. My content thrives in the swipe feed despite my name not being a household name. So a brand must decide what is more important: do they want a hundred million eyeballs on their content, or do they want a personality with an engaged audience?