The Idea Impact Matrix: How to Craft Higher-Impact Content (Part 1)
The scariest stats ever released to podcasters -- especially those who, like me and probably you, are not mass-market famous -- are about the behavior of weekly listeners.
According to Edison Research, among people who listen to podcasts on a weekly basis:
81% listen to 10 or fewer episodes
57% listen to 5 or fewer episodes
Yikes.
So the question becomes, for an alarmingly short list of episodes people fit into their lives, do they pick you? More to the point for developing an audience, a brand, a cause, do they stick with you?
This is something I share with clients as soon as possible. As an advisor, exec. producer, and a sort of “director of differentiation” for experts and entrepreneurs, our shared goal is to turn their thinking into their IP and their IP into their business. What’s their premise? What’s their defensible assertion driving everything downstream of how they see this work or their space? Then, how do we take that premise and own the idea publicly through content, thought leadership, and storytelling? Often, I share Edison Research’s alarming (to me) stat to highlight one reality:
Your competition as a communicator is … all communicators. Not your industry niche. Not your peers vying for the same clients or customers. Anyone who commands any amount of time in your audience’s day is potential competition, NOT because you want to claim 24 of their 24 hours, but because they are making choices about what can fit into their day — and that determines whether or not YOU make the cut. Do they pick you? Do they stick with you? The odds are stacked against us.
But although you compete against the biggest and best in all domains, you don’t need to BE the biggest or best to earn the attention and trust of your audience. you need to be something else:
Their favorite.
People are subjective. They make emotional choices first, then rationalize why they did it.
My favorite app or city or podcast are pieces of my identity. If I tell you, “That’s my favorite show,” or, “That’s my favorite restaurant,” I’m saying something about myself more than those things, really. And there’s nothing objective or academically “correct” about my choices. My favorite shirt is not the best-made shirt that either exists or even that I own. But it feels irreplaceable to us. Imagine if we felt that way to others? Irreplaceable.
My favorite sports team? The New York Knicks. It’s getting better now, but for decades of my life, they were among the objectively worst picks — terrible team, not making good choices, not winning anything, and yet they got my time, attention, emotions, and money. Does that sound like RATIONAL decision-making to you?
Nope! But it is HUMAN decision-making. And guess what your audience is made of?
When your audience makes choices, they play favorites. The question is, are you one of them?
Don’t be the best. Be their favorite.
* * *
This has nothing to do with resources. It's not a question of anything objective. It's subjective. It's an emotional choice -- which is how we as humans make all choices. So as communicators and leaders, we have to learn how to tap the emotional reasons others would care. That’s really the crux of the issue: we might be experts, we might be smart, we might be the objectively correct pick (at least in our minds), but if we can’t show up in ways that ensure others care, they don’t act. If they don’t act, we don’t see results.
This work is not about reach. Results come from resonance.
This is why I advise both clients and members to begin with their internal perspectives, digging down to the root of their thinking, then developing that into their core premise, their perspective-turned-positioning. Finally, after digging and developing, you distribute: you launch pillar projects and share regular content and amass IP around your premise, like defining terminology and visualizing your thinking into frameworks and crafting signature stories. You do this because your platform resonates deeper everywhere you show up if you can begin with a distinct premise, then learn to explain and defend that premise everywhere you go.
In short, you stop competing on volume and start to compete on impact. You don’t need to market more when you matter more. When your work matters more, you can beg for attention less.
Introducing the Idea Impact Matrix
Most of our work actively undermines the idea that we should resonate, that we should do things that tap the personal, preferred reason others might care. We’re mostly not their favorite. We’re mostly commodities. Others can find our ideas anywhere, and I suppose we’re yet another “anywhere.” Hard to earn attention, trust, and love, hard charge a premium, hard to see the depth of response we want and feel we deserve from our thinking.
Today I want to introduce you to the Idea Impact Matrix. This is a means off that dreaded hamster wheel of commodity content. It’s a means to stop competing on VOLUME and start competing on IMPACT.
The impact of our work is directly proportional to its value + its originality.
The lowest-value content we can create is merely informational, while the highest-value content is insightful.
Informational content sounds like this:
What is AI?
The fastest-growing brands today.
The news from the last week
A summary of Anthony Bourdain's career.
Again, it's not useless, but not overly valuable. It has a short "shelf life." Once someone gets it, they're done. Not much impact or memorability, like a transaction of facts. "What is..." is less valuable than "How-to..." which in turns is less valuable than "How-to-think" or "Why." Those last two types of content are the most valuable. They're not merely informational. They're insightful.
Insightful content sounds like this:
Why AI matters to storytellers today.
The reason those brands are growing so fast.
What the week’s news means for the future.
Why Bourdain’s stories hit so hard.
These are much more valuable. Not only do they help us in the moment (much like the informational stuff), but they remain with us. It's more useful to know WHY something works than WHAT works, because once you know WHY something works, you can repeatedly use that insight to craft new WHATs. Likewise, knowing HOW-TO-THINK means you can create endless (and better) HOW-TOs.
Informational content might alert people, but insightful content empowers them.
If you want to increase the value of your content, make it more insightful.
Similarly, we can plot our content's originality:
I believe more original means more YOU. Is your idea some general concept or post? Could it come from anyone? Or could it ONLY come from you? Is it pulled from your personal perspective? Your lived experiences, individual style, and the messy bag of humanity we all bring with us to the work which some see as a gift, while others consider it a burden.
Forget what "one" would say about this. Forget what "they" want to hear about this. What do YOU have to say about it? What's your personal perspective?
(Happily, we can just look at the word "original" for some confidence. What makes something original is its origin. Start with your personal perspective. Trust your intuition.)
General content sounds like "a list of things that made Bourdain a great storyteller" or "a practical prescription for developing a better podcast."
But a story about how you dealt with a family tragedy by binging Bourdain's show and what that revealed to you about storytelling? Which then leads the reader INTO a list of things that made him great?
That's personal.
Or a dissection of the five podcasters that most influence you as a means to then reveal your practical prescription for developing a better podcast?
That's personal.
Remember: just as AI is trained on internet content, YOU are trained on the content of your own life -- and nobody else has access to that!
What a gift!
Your personal perspective is your unfair advantage. Are you using it?
Too often, we're stuck in the lower-left of the Idea Impact Matrix.
Low-value, unoriginal content. It's more informational than insightful, and anyone could have created it. Where are WE in the work we do?
When that happens, we feel stuck. Because we are.
We're stuck in the commodity cage.
But rather than escape the cage, we try to make it work. We try to succeed INSIDE the place which is causing our problems to begin with. As a result, we go into hyperdrive. We create in frenzied fashion, shipping more-more-more-more-more-more-MORE.
We're on the hamster wheel.
Worse, we're not alone in the cage. There are like 8,000 other hamsters there with us, all frenetically trying to make it work with the same, basic, commodity content, and we're all shouting at each other.
"I'll beat you so bad!"
"I'm gonna rank 1st on search!"
"I'm award-winning! Bestselling! Top-rated!"
"I'm going viral!"
(Sir, this is a hamster wheel. You are going nowhere.)
"Oh yeah? Watch me repurpose the crap out of this crap!"
(Sir, you are holding literal crap. So repurposing it is just smearing tiny bits of crap all over the internet. Who is that serving? Ow! Did you just BITE me?)
I'm sick of it. I don't want to find an increasingly efficient way to succeed ON the hamster wheel. I want to step off it entirely. I want to get OUT OF the cage.
Don't you?
Good. Now that we're agreed, let's talk about what we'll find opposite the cage, i.e. opposite generalized, informational content. There, we find insightful content delivered from someone's personal perspective. I call that place...
The field of favorites.
No cage. No exhausting race to nowhere. No frenzied creating.
In the field of favorites, we can breathe. We can stretch our legs (and our creativity) and produce more meaningful work. Because it turns out, when your work matters more, you can hustle for attention less.
In the field, we're not competing with 8,000 others. There's like ... 12 other people there.
And sunshine.
Oh, look! Butterflies!
A little bluebird flits over and sits on your shoulder. A unicorn trots over (what!) pulling a wagon full of delicious treats and iced cold lemonade served in a golden cup.
Is this...
Is this content HEAVEN?
No. This is the work. This is the job. This is HOW CREATING STUFF IS SUPPOSED TO FEEL.
We're not on a hamster wheel. We running free!
The best part is what happens when we let others know about the work we create inside that field. They wander over, looking haggard.
"Oh thank God I found you! It was awful. I was on the internet looking for advice and ideas, and it was all the same! And then the people giving me advice starting getting aggressive, lacing their ideas with sensationalized ‘hooks’ and putting me on all these drip sequences over email to ‘nurture’ me as a lead, but really it was just pummeling me with more basic content. It was awful! But it’s so sunny here! Wow, is that a unicorn?! Thank you! THANK YOU FOR CREATING THE STUFF YOU CREATE!"
Imagine if that was others’ reaction to your work. But with less unicorn.
(Fine with more unicorn.)
Even if someone is themselves not stuck inside commodity cage, they're certainly feeling its effects. They're tired of the obnoxious squeaking of hamsters who won't shut up about the stuff that isn't actually worth anyone's time, but they don’t know how to craft stronger IP, so they just force-feed the world their commodity work.
In the commodity cage, you're forced to compete on volume. You lack a premise. You don’t know how to explore and defend it. You don’t amass IP around it. No single idea, project, or piece is all that valuable or original, so you have to create A LOT of of stuff. It’s an exhausting game to play.
But in the field of favorites, you can compete on impact. The quality of your ideas, the power of your content—not the volume—start to matter. More of your work actually WORKS. It connects. It genuinely resonates in a world that's become so obsessed with reach, we're losing the script. This isn't about who arrives. It's about who stays. Who cares if you're more visible if you're less memorable? No amount of reach matters if you don’t resonate. The point of this work is to ensure others actually care.
Think it, say it, execute it: resonance over reach.
Compete on impact, not volume.
Create insightful content, pulled from your personal perspective.
Be more valuable. Be more original.
Don't be the best. Be their favorite.
* * *
In Part 2 of 2: How, precisely, we can move out work out of the commodity cage and into the field of favorites.
My quick answer?
Tell small stories with big meaning. Buried within that approach is something even smaller but incredibly powerful when our goal is creating higher impact work.