Content Minutes

Content minutes is a first-cousin to the “time allocator” concept above.

It’s a super helpful frame for thinking about the efficiency of building fandom.

Think of every minute someone spends consuming your content as an individual block of time…a one-minute block…a content minute.

You goal as a creator is to convert that person from a stranger → passive viewer → follower → fan → die-hard fanatic

I call this “fan journey” the road to fandom.

To advance a potential fan through the fandom funnel, each level requires a different quantity of content minutes consumed.

In other words, maybe to convert a person from a passive viewer to a die-hard fanatic, it takes 90 content minutes.

Those content minutes can be consumed a variety of ways.

• Tweets/IG stories = .5 content minutes

• Short-form videos = 1 content minute

• Email newsletter = 2-5 content minutes

• YouTube videos = 10-20 content minutes

• Podcasts = 40-60 content minutes

• Livestreams = 60-120 content minutes

As a creator, and a time allocator, your job is to make this conversion process happen as efficiently as possible, meaning the fewest unique consumption sessions for them and the least amount of time spent making for you.

Said another way, “What is the least amount of time you can spend making content that will accomplish this conversion?”

Here’s how long it takes me to make each type of content above…

• Tweets/IG stories = 5 minutes

• Short-form videos = 2-5 hours

• Email newsletter = 2-4 hours

• YouTube videos = 8-10 hours (without an editor)

• Podcasts = 2 hours (with an editor)

• Livestreams = 1:1 with time streamed

If you look at the efficiency ratio of each at lower end (content minutes created : min. time spent), it’d look something like this:

• Tweets/IG stories = 1/10

• Short-form videos = 1/120

• Email newsletter = 1/60

• YouTube videos = 1 /48

• Podcasts = 1/3

• Livestreams = 1/1

Looking at these ratios, it’s clear that the channels on the barbells (podcasts, livestreams, tweets, IG stories) are the most efficient to create relative to the content minutes they produce.

So why doesn’t everyone just do only these?

The one huge variable not taken into account here is discoverability, or the absolute total content units consumed per piece of new content.

If you start livestreaming or podcasting today, it may be an “efficient” way to create content minutes, but very few people will actually be consuming those minutes (because of low organic discoverability).

For something like a short-form video, it may be low efficiency, but I can have 1M people consume that content minute within the first 48 hours of posting.

So then what do I do?

Here’s the big aha moment that’ll really make you scratch your head.

The goal of a creator is not to get the highest number of people with at least one content minute consumed…the goal is to get the most people across the red pill line for die-hard fanatic (e.g., 90+ content minutes consumed)

The goal is not breadth…it’s depth.

As a creator looking to make a living from this, you’re better off with fewer unique content minute consumers but more across the red pill line.

And this is where short-form video can be a trap (unless you do it for a long-time).

For me, there’s a good chance that more than 20M unique people have at least 1 content minute consuming my stuff.

But how many have over 100 content minutes? I’d guess the number is in the 4-figures (1,000-9,999).

For me, to make 250 content minutes via short-form video, at my desired quality, it’d take me ~1000 hours.

To make that same 250 content minutes through podcasts with Roberto, it’d take me ~4 hours.

Clearly, I’ve been allocating my time in a suboptimal way (if I’m optimizing for die hard fanatics, which I am).

So if you’re like me, what do we do about this?

The goal is to use high reach/low content minute channels to transport more people to low reach/high content minute channels.

The classic, “get them from IG/Tiktok → YouTube/podcast.” It’s much easier said than done.

But based on the above, I’d probably be better off spending 5x more time figuring out how to transport people and 1/5 the time on actually making the low efficiency content.

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