How To Climb Above Everyone Else

Every platform has an invisible pecking order. It’s not follower count - it’s perceived status. It determines whose posts get shared, whose opinions get weight, whose DMs get opened, and whose offers get accepted without a second thought.

It’s the difference between posting something and having it land with authority, versus posting the same thing and hearing crickets. Two coaches can share the exact same sentiment, yet one gets 400 shares and a ton of engagement, the other gets three likes from their mum and a bot.

There’s no visible hierarchy or leaderboard, but everyone on the platform has an intuitive sense of where they are. It’s felt rather than being measured, and it governs an awful lot of what happens on social media platforms: who people follow, who they buy from, who they trust.

There is merit in climbing that hierarchy for leverage rather than for vanity markers. Your content will do more work per unit of effort. You will not need to post a thousand times per day because each piece will carry more weight anyway.

The coaches stuck at the bottom of the hierarchy aren’t any worse at coaching - Often they’re better, but they’re invisible. Invisibility in a market that’s crowded is a problem.

I think it’s fair to argue that expertise is only worth something if the right people encounter it with the right frame of reference. The hierarchy now dictates that frame.

If we want to climb the hierarchy, there are 5 things we can do.

Authority - If you position yourself as the person who sets the rules, the voice of the industry - then other people will reference you, and you will become that authority.

Personal - Being incredibly relatable is a human skill in itself, and people will flock to follow ‘their person’, rather than the profession itself. Lots of people will only follow one or two people that do your job.

Humour - You disarm people by being funny, charming, sarcastic, entertaining - People share you because you make them feel clever for finding you, and getting it.

Expertise - You go seriously deep on your topic area, and your content is the explanation of the intricacies of a topic, that other people wish they’d written.

Counter-signalling - You dismiss the hierarchy, and mock those who care about it - Which, paradoxically, signals you’re already above it.

Most coaches default to expertise because it feels safest - ‘I’ll just share what I know. Which only works if it’s distinctive, else you can’t stand out.

The two ways to win are to pick the one that feels most authentic to you, and double down.

OR try and do all of them. Try and be an expert, but show your personal side, have a laugh, and show that you know that social media is just a game and you’re having a good time playing.

The coaches at the very top usually combine two or three of these without thinking about it. They don’t think about it, they just show up as themselves and don’t pretend to be a type of creator they aren’t.

Which one are you suppressing?

Connections

• [[Hierarchy Moving]] — This spark is the applied version of the Hierarchy Moving taxonomy. Both identify the same five pathways (Authority, Personal, Humour, Expertise, Counter-signalling), but this spark adds the practical observation that most coaches default to Expertise because it feels safest — and that the coaches at the top usually combine two or three without thinking about it. The theoretical taxonomy gains teeth here: the question shifts from “which pathway exists?” to “which one are you suppressing?”
• [[Signalling Theory]] — The invisible pecking order this spark describes is signalling theory operating at scale. Perceived status is not follower count (a measurable signal) but an aggregate of costly signals — consistency, intellectual depth, social proof, audience engagement quality. The reason two coaches can post the same sentiment with wildly different results is that the signal cost differs: one has spent years building credibility (expensive signal), the other is broadcasting from zero (cheap signal, therefore ignored).
• [[Status is Contextual]] — The “invisible pecking order” this spark identifies is not one hierarchy but many overlapping ones. A coach who dominates in the evidence-based nutrition community may be invisible in the business coaching world. The five pathways are not just different routes up the same ladder — they are routes up different ladders. Counter-signalling works on Twitter among intellectuals; Humour works on Instagram among a broader audience. Diagnosing which hierarchy you are in matters more than choosing which pathway to climb.
• [[Higher status is desirable]] — The observation that “invisibility in a crowded market is a problem” is the practical consequence of the evolutionary status drive. If humans are wired to pursue higher status, then audiences are wired to notice and defer to those who hold it. The invisible coach is not just missing opportunities — they are failing to activate a neurological circuit that their audience cannot override. Expertise is only worth something if it arrives with the right frame of reference, because the frame is what triggers the status-recognition system.
• [[We hate social climbers because they remind us there’s a ladder to climb]] — Counter-signalling (dismissing the hierarchy, mocking those who care about it) works as a climbing strategy precisely because it triggers the opposite of social-climber resentment. The counter-signaller says “there is no ladder” — which, paradoxically, signals they are already above it. But the resentment research warns: if the audience detects that the dismissal is itself a strategy, the free-rider alarm fires and the counter-signaller becomes the most resented figure of all.
• [[The Lionel Messi of Content]] — Messi embodies the “combine two or three without thinking about it” observation at the end of this spark. Messi’s force is not one pathway — it is spatial intelligence (Expertise), calm under pressure (Authority), and apparent effortlessness (Counter-signalling) fused into something that looks natural. The coaches at the top of the hierarchy do the same: their positioning is not a strategy but an expression, which is why it cannot be copied by someone consciously performing a single pathway.
• [[Coaches unwilling to force themselves up hierarchy on IG, a social platform - will struggle]] — This spark provides the diagnosis for the coaches in that spark who refuse to play the attention game. They are not rejecting hierarchy — they are defaulting to Expertise (which only works if distinctive) and avoiding the other four pathways. The question “which one are you suppressing?” is the therapeutic intervention: it reframes the refusal as a temperamental mismatch, not a principled stance.

Tensions

• The taxonomy may create the illusion of choice where none exists. Telling a coach to “pick the one that feels most authentic” assumes they can accurately self-diagnose. But authenticity is itself a performance (as signalling theory predicts), and many people suppress pathways not because they are inauthentic but because they are frightening. The coach who avoids Humour may be naturally funny but terrified of being judged. The framework prescribes self-awareness, but self-awareness is the very thing most people lack.
• “Just show up as themselves” is survivorship bias dressed as advice. The coaches at the top who combine two or three pathways without thinking about it may not be doing so because they are authentic — they may be doing so because they were lucky enough to have a personality that maps well onto the platform’s reward structure. Telling coaches to “just be yourself” when the platform algorithmically rewards certain personalities over others is advice that works for winners and confuses everyone else.
• The hierarchy itself may be the wrong game. The spark assumes that climbing the social media hierarchy is a worthwhile objective for coaches. But the most profitable coaching businesses are often invisible online — built through referrals, word of mouth, and direct relationships. The coaches stuck at the bottom may not be invisible; they may simply be playing a different game that this framework does not recognise.