If your business relies on content to grow, don't make this critical mistake

Today’s Tip: A massive mistake business owners make when building content engines is fumbling their initial platform/format selection. Here’s how to avoid…

When you understand how to play the content game, it will feel like a cheat code.

But until then…everything will seem hard.

Here is a massive mistake you have to avoid as a business owner if you want to make the content game easier on yourself.

Mistake: Poor Initial Platform/Format Selection

This will sound obvious, but you need to fish where your fish are.

There are fish in every pond (buyers on every platform)…but which pond has the highest density of your fish?

Start there.

You shouldn’t play on every platform or across every format until you know you can dominant at least one.

So how do you pick where to play first?

Here’s the framework:

1. Confirm Ideal Viewer Avatar (IVA) - Do you know who your ideal viewer avatar is? If you could create this person in a lab and sit them in a chair in front of you, who would they be, what would they believe in, and where would they spend time? It’s critical you know who this is before you step foot into the content arena

2. Identify IVA Pond - Figure out which platform (IG, LinkedIn, Tiktok, YouTube, X, Email, etc.) has the highest density of your ideal viewer avatar. Each platform will have some representation, but where do the majority of them spend the most time? This is the platform where you should spend the most time. In other words, what platform would you have the highest hit rate of getting a cold DM back if you messaged them? Content is essentially a cold DM disguised as a mini TV show. You need them to want to watch it (e.g., if you sell B2B agency services, this is probably LinkedIn; consumer products = IG/Tiktok; info products is IG/YouTube, etc.)

3. Format Selection - Once you identify the dominant platform, you need to pick your hero format. I’ll save you the time. Whichever format is native and video, pick that one. So on IG/Tiktok/LinkedIn, this is short-form video. For YouTube, this is long-form video. If a picture’s worth 1,000 words…a video’s worth 1,000 pictures. All platforms are pushing video. Trust is built fastest with video. Make video. Others formats (text, audio, image) will do okay, video will crush them

4. Focus & Compound - You’ve now selected your hero platform & video format for your ideal viewer avatar. Do not deviate from this for the next 6 months. Compress all effort on this and crack it before moving on. If you’ve picked correctly and installed all of the frameworks/tactics I talk about for free on YouTube, you will start winning in a big way

Too many business owners make the following two mistakes when it comes to platform/format selection:

• Platform before audience - they decide to “make YouTube videos” before confirming that their IVA has a high density on YouTube. This means wasted effort

• Expanding into two formats before dominating one - they decide to split focus/resources across short-form and long-form before cracking one. This means fractured effort

Don’t make these mistakes.

Pick the single pond where most of your fish live, catch them, and then move on to other ponds after you’ve caught a bunch.

PS - If you want more help improving your videos, you can check out my full breakdown on the psychology of great hooks (responsible for billions of views)