2 builders who never spoke to each other · contested
Decide if attention bait feeds or leaks the funnel
One argument is that provocation, lifestyle flexes and throwaway jokes are now the only reliable way to be seen at all, and that attention climbs a ladder into followers, subscribers and eventually buyers. The other, from someone who read the performance data behind thousands of published pieces, is that a crowd gathered by entertainment wants more of it and never graduates into the substantial work.
Where this splits
One says lead with attention bait because useful writing no longer gets seen, the other measured that entertainment audiences never convert.
side 01 · 2 claims
Lead with attention bait, useful writing goes unseen
Nick Huber
- 1Lead with posts built purely to grab attention, provocation, lifestyle flexes, throwaway jokes, because writing that is merely useful no longer gets seen.
- 2Treat content as a four-step ladder: attention becomes followers, followers meet your useful material and subscribe, the newsletter and podcast build trust over time, and a fraction of subscribers eventually buy.
side 02 · 2 claims
An entertainment audience never graduates into buyers
Alex Hormozi
- 1Choose the content format the buyer you actually want already consumes, since entertaining short posts can gather a big audience while moving nobody toward hiring you.
- 2Do not bank on a funnel in which light entertaining posts graduate people into your longer, more substantial work, because the crowd that arrives for entertainment mostly wants more entertainment.
What it returned
Hormozi's aim is to convert authority into equity by earning the trust of business owners, and he found his entertaining posts caused no meaningful shift at that end of his funnel.
Hormozi reached this after going through the performance data behind thousands of pieces he had published.
He says he wishes it were otherwise but has stopped seeing anyone win on useful content by itself, where a few years ago maximally useful articles did bring in customers.
Sources
- Evidence that you should take your content diet more seriously – Jakob GreenfeldAlex Hormozi · jakobgreenfeld.com · Evidence that you should take your content diet more seriously · 2024-05-04 · dissenting
- The Content Game (I learned from Nick Huber) – Jakob GreenfeldNick Huber · jakobgreenfeld.com · The Content Game (I learned from Nick Huber) · 2023-06-11
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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