This monthly growth guide keeps you updated on trending formats, viral hooks, and new apps, and gives you the tools you need to plan your strategy for the month ahead.
If you’re a marketer, creator, or app founder in the Social-Networking niche, this guide will give you:
- An overview of what happened in the last 30 days
- Top hooks and formats to test in March
- The hottest breakout accounts and apps
- Access to a full list of hundreds of videos you can explore with our advanced analytics
- A full dataset on current UGC formats and hooks so you can look beyond what apps are doing and get inspired by the best organic content out there
Use it to spot trends early, borrow what’s already working, and avoid wasting time on formats that are already outdated.
Let’s get started.
Niche Snapshot
Over the past 30 days, Social Networking content has pulled 29.7M views, with an average 2.54% engagement rate across the niche. On average, that’s roughly 900k views per day.
We analyzed the best 100k+ accounts and 20+ videos to understand what’s driving performance in this space.
These numbers come from performance across founder, UGC, ambassador, and network accounts, broken out by views, likes, comments, shares, and saves.
The niche shows strong upside potential. Despite having just a few apps, both accounts and products are already gaining meaningful views and momentum, signaling clear room for growth.
Every month comes with its own spikes and dips, so we reverse-engineered the tactics behind what worked (and why), which accounts outperformed the rest, the hooks and formats that went viral, and the repeatable patterns behind them.
Top Hooks & Formats to Test
- “JACKSON HARVEY just added me back!?!”
From: Locket
Hook type: Surprise validation
- 315.5k views
- 19.8k engagement
Format: In-car reaction + app reveal
Type: Face
What it looks like: A woman sitting in her car reacting in shock and excitement, then showing her phone screen with the app to explain what just happened.
2. “surviving Valentine’s Day when ur in a situationship”
From: Ditto
Hook type: Relatable relationship
- 305.8k views
- 32.5k engagement
Format: Get ready with me (GRWM) storytime
Type: Face
What it looks like: A woman doing her makeup and getting ready while talking about surviving Valentine’s Day in a situationship, blending personal storytelling with light humor or advice.
3. “POV: she falls asleep on your arm…”
From: Pengu
Hook type: Cute POV
- 236.9k views
- 28.9k engagement
Format: Animated cuddle scene
Type:
What it looks like: An animated scene of two penguins cuddling softly, representing virtual pets, with wholesome and cozy vibes that mirror the romantic POV text.
Apart from these top-performing hooks, here are 20+ more that are performing well in this niche:
Breakout Accounts & Apps
Kndrd
Kndrd, a social app focused on fostering real-life friendships, gained traction thanks to its main creator, @bella__ventura.
In 2024, three story-driven clips broke out: one about NYC’s cost of living (3.2M views), one retelling a date (1.6M), and one offering her date to followers after 50 first dates (1.5M).
Each viral post was hook-led and personal. As the content shifted toward event invites for her NYC girls’ club, views dropped significantly (recent example: 1.7K views), showing that story-first content drove momentum more than direct community promotion.
EmyBFF
EmyBFF built a 112.5M-view growth engine around one stunt series: dropping their plush mascot 1mm for every new follower until it “reached” the height of the Burj Khalifa. There was no product demo, just a public goal viewers could influence.
After hitting 830K followers, they posted the payoff: dropping Emy from a helicopter in Dubai (2.5M views after a month of silence).
The account now sits at 1M followers with just 7 posts total and a new target, “take Emy to space.”
Newcomers
Circles – Know Your People
Circles, a new social app built around small private friend groups, has broken into the Top 100 in Social Networking in the UK and the Netherlands shortly after launching.
The app centers on daily prompts shared within a “circle” of up to 20 friends, designed to deepen real-world connections.
Growth has been largely founder-led. A cinematic promo titled “Your Group Chat Is Dead” reached 240K views and sparked active discussion, helping the app gain community momentum.
Resources & Next Steps
We’ve got a bunch of resources to help you hit the ground running and take your Social Networking content even further.
You can dive into our full hooks dataset for ideas that are already winning, explore 50+ faceless formats that are easy to adapt and scale, or check out our How-to TikTok Guide if you’re new to the platform.
In case you’re struggling with turning views into real results, our TikTok Marketing Funnel walks you step-by-step through increasing conversions and growing your app or brand faster.
You can access everything here.
These resources are designed to save you time, help you stay ahead of the game, and ensure that every piece of content you create has a genuine chance of going viral (and converting).
About SGE
Social Growth Engineers is a growth-first research and content platform built for consumer apps.
We break down what’s actually working on organic distribution across short-form platforms, from viral formats and strategies to retention-driven storytelling and data-backed playbooks.
Our goal is to help founders and marketers grow smarter and faster.
For more daily insights, trends, case studies, and bite-sized hacks, follow us on X, LinkedIn and YouTube (here and here).
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