Everything you need to know about building a personal brand on X right now

Nikita Bier, the head of product at X, has spent the last week in the replies.

Getting into it with users who think the platform is dying, explaining algorithm decisions to people who are furious about them, and casually dropping product updates in the middle of arguments like he's texting a friend.

It's a strange thing to watch. The person with the most influence over how the platform works is also the most accessible person on it. And if you've been paying attention, he's basically been announcing the new rules of the game in real time.

Here's what he's said this past week, and what it means for anyone building a presence on X right now.

1. Video is the priority. Right now.

Nikita's been explicit about this before. X has almost no talking-head video content currently, which means anyone posting original video is walking into an empty room and the algorithm is actively trying to fill that room. He's not being subtle about it. He wants original video on the platform, and the reach right now reflects that.

This is a specific window that exists because supply is low. That window closes as more people figure this out.

If you've been sitting on recordings, interviews, walkthroughs or anything you've filmed but haven't posted to X directly, this week is a better time than next month.

2. Links don't kill your reach anymore.

For months, the widely-held belief was that posting a link suppressed your reach. It was treated as gospel. People were adding links in the first comment, jumping through hoops to avoid putting a URL in the body of the post.

Nikita addressed this directly. Link clicks on X are higher than they've ever been. The issue was never the link, it was posts that dropped a URL with no context and expected the algorithm to push it anyway. His guidance is to put the link in the body, but give the reader a reason to click it before they get there.

That's just good writing. But it means the workaround everyone's been using is no longer necessary.

3. Reposts are getting punished. Original content is getting rewarded.

This one has teeth. X announced that aggregator accounts which are accounts that exist primarily to repost others' content had their revenue payouts cut to 60% this cycle, with further cuts coming. Reposts from third-party networks are now receiving up to a 90% impression reduction.

X is trying to become a place where things are created. If your strategy has leaned on resharing, screenshotting, or summarizing other people's content, the algorithm is now working against you.

The accounts this rewards are the ones with a point of view, something original to say or a reason for the content to exist that doesn't depend on borrowing someone else's work.

X is actively restructuring to reward the things that have always been hard to fake such as original thinking, original content, consistent presence. The shortcuts that worked two years ago are getting systematically closed.

For the people who were already doing it that way, this is good news.

For the people who were optimizing for the shortcuts, this is the warning they needed.

— Wiz

If you want to know how this changes your content strategy specifically, reply or book a call with me and tell me what you're working with. I'll take a look.