Deep Dive

This week I listened to a talk Jay Clouse (Creator Science) gave at a recent newsletter marketing summit.

It was titled, "Content Strategy of The Top 1%", and it was all about the secrets behind why the top businesses all understand the power of having an email list.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to breakdown his entire talk, but today I wanted to start with something he called, The Death of a Follower.

This isn't Jay's idea - it was coined by a guy named Jack Conte who gave a talk on it about a year ago at SXSW (I'll link the entire YouTube video at the end of this email).

A Slow (Painful?) Death

Let's look at the timeline of how a "follower" came to be, how we got to where we are now, and why to grow your business in the future, you need to shift your thinking.

• 2000’s: Social media starts with chronological subscription feeds

Back when Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all these other social media platforms got started, if you decided to follow a creator, and you looked at your feed, you would see updates from all the people you followed in a chronological order.

Ah the good ole' days!

• 2010’s: Ranked subscription feeds

After about a decade of data, platforms start to evolve.

They're still showing you content from people you chose to follow, but now they start ranking the content according to what receives the highest levels of engagement so you stay on the platform longer.

So the incentive started to change. But we as users don't notice too much because we’re still getting content from people we chose to follow.

• 2020’s: Ranked “For You” feeds

Today we're all familiar with "For You" feeds.

Basically the platforms are saying:

We know best. We know what you’re interested in. We don’t actually care all that much who you told us you want to follow. We’re going to take what we know about your interest and show you best, highest-engaging content for someone we believe is like you.

And they moved to this model for a reason.

It’s dang effective - we as users don’t move outside of it. We spend the most time on these feeds, and advertisers can now sell to us here too.

What This Means For You As A Creator/Business

Suddenly, if you're creating online content, you're not just competing with those who decided they liked your content enough to "follow" you.

You're competing with EVERYONE.

These platforms aren't dumb. They have a lot of incentive to keep "For You" algorithms:

• You create more content to put on the platforms

• You try to make your content more engaging to get more views, likes, and follows

• You're able to reach a wider audience

But there's no such thing as a free lunch right?

So what's the cost of this model to you, the creator?

You must spend:

• More time

• More energy

• Make more broad content for less certainty as to whether or not it'll actually get seen, and get seen by your ideal follower

The treadmill moves faster and faster for you just to maintain the status quo - ie. trying to reach the people you’re already reaching.

This is sometimes called The Red Queen Effect.

If you've ever read Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland for us Disney fans), it's in there.

Basically it says you have to keep running faster and faster just to say in the same place.

Does this type of business model serve us?

No - this is serving only one "person" - the social media platforms.

A Light At The End of the Tunnel

It doesn’t have to be this way!

If you prioritize:

• Maximizing trust over attention

• Long-form over short-form content

You minimize your dependence on social media.

Where you invest your limited time and attention matters A LOT in this new content-attention ecosystem.

If you're like me, there’s NO shortage of places you and your team can be putting your energy in the content world.

The question then becomes:

Where do you place the most resources to get the best outcome?

How do you choose?

That's exactly the questions we'll answer in next week's edition.

You can watch Jack's full video HERE.