1. People actually do want to know the personal side of your life. This was a big surprise to me BUT — although the world will push you to share everything about your life, you don’t have to.

2. Write about any of these topics to get 500+ comments: Your philosophy on tipping at restaurants, politics, parenting, or how little you paid for your wedding.

3. The world will push you to appeal to the lowest common denominator on social media. Resist it! If I post a random pic of a beach, I get a ton of likes. If I post a carefully constructed argument, I get 1/100th the engagement. This explains why there are so many damn pics of sushi and Cabo online. It’s fine to post vacation pics, but there are a ton of smart people online who want to read intelligent stuff. They’re not as vocal as people who want bikini pics, but they’re out there. And those people are willing to pay for the best. (Hence iwt.com/products and growthlab.com/products.)

4. If you write great stuff, people will read it. Our emails are several pages long. Our longest sales page is over 75 pages long. People love it. Don’t listen to people who say, “Nobody has an attention span anymore.”

5. If you write about, say, personal finance, the majority of your last 10 posts should be about personal finance. People want to put you in a bucket. Maybe you’re the “personal finance guy” or “the negotiation woman” or “the glute guy.” Try to have most of your last posts on-brand. (This is a rule I don’t always follow myself.)

6. A good rule of thumb to spot losers: if they have “bitcoin” in their bio. One year ago, they had “AI” in their bio. Two years ago, it was “Big Data.”

7. People are more honest on email than Twitter/Facebook. Sometimes I ask questions on Twitter and get back almost uniform responses (like when I asked if you’d mind if your partner made more than you). Sounds good! The only catch is … when I ask on email, I get back the absolute opposite responses. Turns out people are way more honest in email than on Twitter or Facebook. Try to guess why.

AND THE TOP LESSON LEARNED FROM SOCIAL MEDIA:

8. Never post a photo of your squat or a fitness photo. You will get 3,000 DMs correcting your form from people who should really log off Instagram and go for a walk.

This happened when I posted a squat photo a while back (comments), and on a recent Instagram photo.

LOL when you click the profiles of people giving unsolicited feedback, most of whom appear not to have seen the inside of a gym since the Nixon administration.