The Middle Is Where Content Goes to Die
Let me save you an hour of podcast listening...
This week I was 30 minutes deep into a breakdown from the editor of Diary of the CEO. One of the biggest shows on the planet. I was waiting for the secret hacks.
There weren't any.
But there WAS one number that stopped me. He said 50% of an episode's success is the guest. Not the editing, not the thumbnail, not the title. The guest. Their energy, their story, the stuff they've actually done. Half the whole game, decided before you ever hit record.
Second thing: audio. Even if people are watching the video, they're really listening. If the audio is bad, nothing else matters.
And here's the part I found most interesting... this editor didn't come from podcasting at all. He came from cinema. Movie trailers. Plots and storylines. That's why the show feels the way it feels.
So my first thought was, okay, we should get more cinematic...
But then I remembered the other thing I keep seeing.
The content blowing up on Instagram right now is the exact OPPOSITE. Super low budget. Minimally edited. Just a person talking to a camera and telling their story. Gen Z calls it yapping. And it's pulling hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of views.
So which is it? Go cinematic or go raw?
Both. The answer is both.
Think of it like a barbell. All the weight is on the two ends. On one end you've got high production: multiple angles, story-driven editing, the movie trailer treatment. On the other end you've got raw: one camera, one person, zero polish, pure story.
The middle is where content goes to die.
The middle is "pretty good" lighting, "pretty good" editing, "pretty good" everything. It's too polished to feel real and too cheap to feel premium. Nobody shares it. The algorithm shrugs at it. You spent real money and real time to make something invisible.
If you're a business owner making content, here's what I'd actually do with this:
- Pick your ends. One format you go ALL in on production-wise, and one format that's just you talking. Phone camera is fine.
- Get the inputs right before you polish the outputs. Great guest, great story, clean audio. That's most of the game before editing even starts.
- Stop making middle content. If you catch yourself "kind of" editing something, either strip it down or dress it up.
The raw stuff costs you nothing but reps. The cinematic stuff costs real effort, so save it for the stories that deserve it.
But whatever you do... get out of the middle.
Stay in the fight, Kevin