When Dr. Mikhail “Mike” Varshavski speaks about medical content creation, he doesn’t start with algorithms or viral trends. Speaking at last weeks 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai he unpacked the secret of his success: trust.
“The key to why I have this many views and why our team has been so successful in creating this content is because we lead with trust first,” said Dr. Mike, whose medical content garnered over 4 billion views in the past year alone.
Long before he became social media’s most-followed physician, Dr. Mike recognized a critical gap in online healthcare information. In 2017, he warned the American Academy of Family Physicians about the dangers of medical professionals’ absence from digital spaces. His concerns proved prescient during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we saw during the pandemic was an influx of myths and disinformation, where it led people to make really bad decisions for their health, so much so that they lost loved ones, made terrible decisions for their children,” Dr. Mike reflects.
In an online landscape where absolute certainty often garners the most attention, Dr. Mike takes a counterintuitive approach. “The easiest way to differentiate between a real expert on social media and someone who’s just faking it is the amount of confidence by which they present the accuracy of their information,” he explains.
This philosophy stems from his real-world medical practice. “When a patient comes into my office and asks me about their abdominal pain, I won’t give them the exact diagnosis. I’ll give them the most likely diagnosis, followed by three other diagnosis that it could be, a treatment plan that might or might not work, the second treatment plan that might work if the first one fails. That’s how we should do medicine.”
Creating medical content for millions comes with unique challenges. Last year alone, Dr. Mike’s team produced thousands of videos reaching billions of viewers. While maintaining accuracy at this scale isn’t easy, he emphasizes the importance of transparency and humility.
“Everyone’s gonna make mistakes when you make as much content as we do,” he acknowledges. “Information changes. Things that I once learned in medical school need to be updated. So you have to go back and update certain things.”
Despite his massive following, Dr. Mike’s approach remains grounded in human connection. “I’m a human first, and that’s what needs my content to be so relatable,” he explains. His content strategy focuses on making medical information accessible without sacrificing accuracy.
“When I make content, it’s always in a way where I’m trying to tap into a communication method that will allow me to be relatable, transparent, honest, and reach people on a different level,” he says. “Because traditionally, doctors present information, frankly, doesn’t work. We talk about scientific textbooks, but the more we can incorporate cultural events, entertainment, laughter, be more human, the more we can reach people on a wider scale with our knowledge.”
When asked about dangerous medical trends online, Dr. Mike points to a broader systemic issue. “It’s not about one piece of advice that’s gone viral. I think it’s more about the insidious impact of fostering distrust with us as professionals and medical organizations.”
He advocates for healthy skepticism while maintaining respect for the scientific process. “We need healthy debate. We need healthy skeptics. But it’s about waiting to get good information as to why we’re being skeptical.”
As social media continues to evolve, Dr. Mike’s success offers case study for experts seeking to share knowledge online while maintaining professional integrity. His approach – combining medical expertise with relatable content, leading with transparency, and prioritizing trust over viral metrics – demonstrates how professionals can effectively communicate complex information in the digital age.
The result speaks for itself: billions of views, millions of followers, and most importantly, a trusted voice in an often-chaotic online health information landscape. As Dr. Mike puts it, success in expert content creation isn’t about the numbers – “it needs to be about principles, passion and the definition by which you live your life.”
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