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. When we kick off our engagement to develop their new show or elevate an existing podcast into a truly differentiated original, I begin with that stat -- not to scare them, but to remind them who the competition really is:
All competition.
We have to fly out and meet the most super-powered voices on earth, all of whom are creating content today. (That's why I tell people, I don't develop podcasts. I design super-suits. Your show has to be a strategically tailored vehicle to showcase your strengths and give you new abilities you wouldn't have as a mere mortal on a mic.)
But whether you cast pods or shoot video, write newsletters or books or blog posts, deliver keynotes or produce social content, you are in competition with every single other person competing to be on the finite list of things your desired audience can fit into their lives.
Again I say unto you:
Yikes.
But there's hope. Although we must compete with the biggest and best, we don't have to BE the biggest and best to earn a place on someone else's short list of things they spend time with. We have to be something else:
Their favorite.
I see this as good news because it 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.
Think about your own favorite things: your favorite shirt, sports team, restaurant, animal, city, or sure, newsletter or podcast. Are those things objectively, scientifically, academically "the best"? Can you prove it? Can we all agree? Because if I ask you to define the best three-point shooter of all-time, and we can agree to define it as "most three-pointers made in their career," then I can pull up a list of stats and end the argument there.
The thing is, YOU are not Steph Curry, and WE are not shooting threes (I mean, I'd love to shoot around sometime. Let me know the next time you're in Boston. But I digress...)
"Be the best." What does that even mean? We can't agree. Furthermore, it's not how people pick stuff. Sure, Steph Curry might have made the most three pointers -- but there's still plenty of debate about "the best shooter of all-time."
Sticking with sports a moment: My favorite sports team is the New York Knicks. For the hilariously long period of time lasting (checks notes) my entire adult life, the Knicks have been mostly terrible. For literal decades, they were among the worst choices objectively ... yet they were my favorite.
Does that sound like rational thinking to you? No. It sounds like human thinking.
So yes, we have to compete with the biggest and the best in each category of content we produce. But no, we don't need to BE them to compete with them. In fact, I'd posit there is no objective or academic way to declare something like a newsletter or a podcast or an expert or a brand as "the best." Everyone is making subjective, emotional decisions, then rationalizing them later. In our line of work, "the best" doesn't exist -- and it wouldn't matter if it did, because that's not how people make choices.
Don't be the best.
Be the favorite.
The question, of course, is how?
* * *
Today I want to introduce you to the visual model we're calling the Idea Impact Matrix.
I say "we" because I developed this alongside the great Melanie Deziel. Mel is my cofounder in the mastermind group, the Creator Kitchen, and she's a former editor of branded content at the New York Times, HuffPost, and TIME, Inc., in addition to being a ridiculously gifted speaker. She also just started a newsletter which of course I want you to subscribe to once you're done here. (Link at the end.)
Mel and I have a shared goal through the Kitchen and, by extension, all our content:
We want to help you create higher-impact content.
To do that, we've defined the enemy: commodity content. This is stuff that is useful at best, excruciating at worst. It's also ubiquitous. I can get it anywhere, so if you create it, you're Yet Another in a long line of similar-sounding, identical ideas. (You've heard people lament the "sameness" problem, yeah? That's commodity content published at scale, and it's only getting worse.)
Because creating commodity content is so low-impact (that is, any one piece isn't that valuable nor original), it causes us to start playing a rather exhausting game:
The volume game.
Perhaps you're familiar with this notion of "the content hamster wheel."
Perhaps your left eye just started twitching.
In an effort to make our work work, we start to create more-more-more-more-more-more-MORE. We rely on tons of channels, in every conceivable medium, across every social network, publishing weekly -- nay, daily -- and of course, repurposing our content until we're blue in the face, taking one BIG piece of content and creating 75 smaller pieces which we can then ship to all those various places we're supposed to be.
(Are you okay? You're sweating. Do you need to sit down?)
I'm so tired of this. I was tired of creating work like this when I had corporate jobs. I am tired of being on the receiving end of it out there on the internet (it's rough out there).
I say it's time to ask a simple question: What if?
What if ... we could step off that hamster wheel?
What if ... we could craft higher-impact content?
What if ... "doing more with less" means creating less stuff but getting more results?
What if ... we could stop competing on volume and learn to compete 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 and -- wow, it's sunny here -- I was on the internet and there were all these people sharing advice, but it sounded so aggressive like 'steal my playbook' and 'don't get left behind' and '99% get this wrong, but I can show you how to win.' And there were all these -- wait, is that a UNICORN? -- There were all these people sharing video clips from their podcast, with all these really flashy captions and emojis and animations, but their videos just said nothing. Just nothing. Just nothing at all and -- oh wow, thank you, yes I'd love some lemonade. Again, I need to revisit the unicorn thing once I've calmed down -- and anyway, THANK YOU FOR CREATING THE STUFF YOU CREATE!"
Imagine that reaction. 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 that obnoxious squeaking of hamsters who won't shut up about the stuff that isn't actually worth anyone's time and MY WORD can we please clean out that cage or something because this STINKS.
Don't bother. Let's toss it out entirely. We need something new. Something fresh.
No. More. Commodity. Content.
In the commodity cage, you're forced to compete on volume. No one idea, project, or piece is all that valuable or original, so you have to create A LOT of those commodities.
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: 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.