If you ever get stuck with low performing content, try this simple hack to get unstuck

Today’s Tip: When you’re stuck with low performing content, a simple hack for getting unstuck is to create for an audience of one (explained below).

When your content isn’t working (low views / low traction / low conversion), it’s usually because of an audience </> content fit problem.

Either you’re sharing the wrong messaging to the right people or the right messaging to the wrong people.

• If you’re sharing the wrong messaging to the right people, this is an issue with the content (you need better/different information or enhanced clarity)

• If you’re sharing the right messaging to the wrong people, this is an issue with the audience (you need a more precise audience persona)

An exercise to help improve both problems is to create for an audience of one.

This means literally picking a single person (preferably someone in your ideal viewer/buyer avatar) and trying to get just them to take the desired action (view/like/comment/share/DM/buy).

So in theory, if your video only got a single view/like/comment/etc, but it was from this one person, it’s considered a win.

Why is this a helpful exercise?

Because in order to make this happen in practice, you have to begin asking yourself different questions:

• What does this person want to hear?

• What are this person’s pain points?

• What could I say, in what way, so that this video gets shared back to this person?

• What would “over the top” look like so that others would have to get this person’s attention?

By using this audience of one exercise, it forces you to down select into a single audience persona, step into their shoes, figure out what they care about, reverse engineer their pain points, and then speak directly to them.

This is how you should be approaching content anyways (with an ideal viewer avatar persona), but sometimes it’s harder to create for a group of people than a single individual.

Of course, when you approach making content for an audience of one, two amazing things happen:

• If you are able to get that single person to respond, you win, because then your desired action will likely come true

• By proxy, you will also appeal to every person like them, which is your “ideal viewer avatar” and what you were trying to do anyways

This process is essentially Miyagi-ing yourself into doing what you need to do…and when you do it, you’ll solve your audience <> content fit problem and get unstuck.

I’ve tried this process myself and it worked super well.

At the time, I was trying to test if I could get a video to resonate with entrepreneurs that were building apparel businesses.

My audience of one was Jesse Sebastiani (@mtvjesse).

He was one of the co-founders of Nelk and is currently building one of the coolest apparel/innovation holdcos, Sunday.

I knew if I could make a video breaking down “the business of apparel” and get him to respond, it’d be a win for the audience I was trying to curate at that time.

This is the video I ended up making: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cxs0GEwLsag/?hl=en

It was an ambitious attempt at breaking down his operation and business model, in my style, in a way that I thought he’d find valuable.

It worked.

He saw it, reshared it, followed me, and we became friends IRL. The video ended up getting 1.7M views across IG/Tiktok.

This helped me refine my thinking around this audience and got me “unstuck” after a period of low views and confusion on direction.

The morale of the story is…this is an amazing exercise to force yourself into getting hyperspecific about your who (audience) and the associated what (value-based messaging).

Use it when you need to stop overthinking and get unstuck.

PS - I recently made a video breaking down my best psychology tricks for getting viewers addicted to your content. Check it out if you want help leveling up your retention!