Your audience isn't as valuable as you think

Most people making content believe the following…“as my following grows, so does the ‘compounding asset value’ of my audience.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case anymore.

The asset value of an audience is only as strong as your ability to reach it on demand.

On owned platforms, like email, private communities, or SMS lists, your audience “asset value” does grow in lockstep with your audience size. (Hint: you should probably get started building one of these)

But on rented platforms, like social media, YouTube or X, your primary audience "asset value” isn’t guaranteed to compound.

Whether you have 5K followers or 500K followers, your next video might only get 5,000 views.

Because of this, your audience might not be the compounding asset you thought it was.

The real compounding asset, when it comes to content, is catalog value.

And for any person taking content seriously, this is the one thing to bet the farm on building. It also happens to be the easiest way to measure the value of an audience.

Catalog value means your previously published videos have the chance to be rewatched after their initial half-life has expired.

• On short-form channels, a normal video’s half life is about 5 days

• On YouTube, it’s about 3-4 weeks

• On X, it’s about 48 hours

After these windows are over, most content will no longer get traffic.

The reason cult-shows like The Office or Friends are such valuable franchises isn’t just because they were great shows when released…

It’s because their catalog value persisted for decades in the future.

When you have an active content catalog, all of your historical videos continue to be rewatched, which maintains their status as active sales agents for you.

This is where “compounding audience value” actually comes from.

The reason why long-form YouTube is considered the GOAT platform for building businesses is because the catalog is activated by default.

When people watch one video that they like, they tend to go down the rabbit hole and watch things posted from years before.

Most people write off short-form video on social media because of the lack of catalog value.

But as it turns out, catalog value isn't exclusive to just long-form.

It's possible to build extreme catalog value on short-form, but you have to choose the right topics and build bingeability rails in a specific way.

Over the last 90 days, I’ve speedrun my new @kallawaymarketing channel on Instagram to 60K+ followers on just ~5M total views, while driving 20,000+ email subscribers.

This type of follower growth (with this level of lead capture) is only possible by designing extremely effective catalog value (where a new viewer watches many of my videos in one session, follows, and converts down the funnel).

If you want more catalog value on social media, you should do the following things...

• Cover topics that are evergreen, not time-sensitive (easier said than done in some niches)

• Build series content and literally link the videos together (using the link features on IG)

• Use other content formats (like email) to consistently drive people back to older videos in the catalog when relevant (e.g., short-form < - > email)

• Use Story Highlights to resurface old videos on the top of the feed and build quick access collections

• Use the "Repost" feature on IG (equivalent to retweet on X), to resurface old videos 2-3 months after originally posting

• Dial in the clarity on the thumbnail cover photo text so a quick profile scroll can actually find old videos that are on topic

• Build thematic story highlights at the top of your channel so a viewer could rip through all of your videos on a given topic

• Repost your best performing videos 90 days after the original post

• Use 10x more CTAs. I use a CTA in every single video. Comments force the algo to serve more of your content to the commenter sooner in the feed 

All of these things seem trivial on their own, but when stacked up, this is what turns one view into a binge session that gets way more mileage out of your existing catalog.

When I initially grew my tech channels to 1M+, I was extremely focused on instant virality, and much less focused on long-term catalog value.

This worked super well for tons of reach, but not well for conversion or lead gen.

On the marketing channel, I took a completely different approach, intentionally trying to rev the catalog value so the audience compounded on itself and leads sky rocketed.

Because of this, I've scaled my following without needing to go mega-viral (zero videos have been above 1M+ views), and stacked trust and authority much faster, which drove tons of leads and sales.

I’ve now been installing this same “low virality, high authority” strategy in SFA and it’s crushing across every niche that tries it.

If you want me to help you install it, reply back with “System”

Keep going 🫡

PS - If you’re looking to improve your content workflows with better AI systems, this video breaks down my 5 favorite ones (with free Claude skill to download)