Bangers + Bingers + Builders

Had a video go nuclear this week on all platforms…it was my take on the cult phenomenon behind Stanley Cups, a 40 oz. water bottle/cup that has become a bigger status symbol than Louis Vuitton (joking…kind of).

And even though short-form views are mostly empty calories, it felt good to see this one resonate with so many people.

The traction on this video plays nicely into something I’ve been thinking a lot about…my content strategy.

What type of videos should I make?

I’ve realized that people love following journeys more than any other type of content.

X person doing Y thing overcoming Z obstacle to accomplish A goal.

If I want to build a cult following around “Kallaway” as a brand, I need to be much better at storytelling through a journey.

I hadn’t really been doing that up to this point.

As of now, the only consistent content I produced around a journey is this newsletter…which in my opinion, has the deepest cult fandom of any content property I’ve created.

So here’s a framework for how I’m going to start thinking about video content across short-form and YouTube: Bangers + Bingers + Builders

Bangers

Bangers are pretty self-explanatory.

These are my attempts at videos that I think will generate the widest possible reach based on my current skillset today.

The Stanley video was an example of a Banger that fully connected.

In Banger videos, I’m specifically picking topics and engineering the script/edit to go viral.

The majority of the time spent is on optimization with the existing tools I have in my toolbox (vs trying to learn new skills that I haven’t yet validated).

Bangers are designed for one purpose…bring maximum new eyes into my world.

Now you might be wondering…why wouldn’t you try to create only Bangers?

In season 1 of my content journey, this is what I did. I tried as hard as I could to make all my videos go as viral as possible.

The problem with a Banger-only content strategy is that your following quickly becomes too wide.

And when your following is too wide, niche content designed to sell products performs poorly.

It gets throttled down by the algorithm before it reaches your intended audience because it didn’t resonate with everyone else.

If you have a 200K person audience, but only 20K are your intended demographic, a niche video designed for the 20K will never make it to all of them because it doesn’t appeal to the other 180K.

Said another way, if the algo takes a random sample of 100 followers, and 90 aren’t going to be interested in that content…it’ll flop.

Bangers typically come from fresh takes on trending stories.

And while it’s helpful to have spikey influxes of new eyes, what you really want is for your intended demographic to follow you.

For me, I describe this as creators, entrepreneurs, and builders, or those who aspire to be one.

Rather than have 10,000 new people across gen pop demographics follow me from a single video, I’d rather have 2,000 of the “right people” follow me.

This is so that when it comes time to sell a product or service, I have a higher density of applicability.

Bangers are helpful because they expose your profile to lots of new eyes at one time, but it’s important to optimize your profile (bio, pinned posts, pro pic) so that your intended audience are the ones that follow.

Bingers

Bingers are pieces of content designed to create a rabbit hole that your true fans can go down.

Where Bangers are designed to help expose your true fans, Bingers are designed to give them things to chew on once they find you.

I find that longer-form content is best suited for Bingers because it builds trust the fastest.

So for me, our podcast wknds and this newsletter Blueprint are two examples of Binger content.

If you’re a creator/builder/entrepreneur trying to use content to grow an audience, build brands, and sell products, you’re going to be happy spending 3 hours going down the wknds/Blueprint rabbit holes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to create Binger content through the short-form medium as well.

To me that looks more like a raw style of video where I rehash the best topics from Blueprints or wknds, but in a more snackable package.

I also think making series is a great way to create short content that is bingeable.

Instagram doesn’t have a great foldering system to help categorize series, but this can be done through thumbnail titles. It’s also easier to do on Tiktok and YouTube as playlists.

Bingers inherently will not pull as many views as Bangers, but should have deeper engagement with a higher comment to view ratio.

Your truest fans will look forward to your Binger content the most.

Builders

Builders are videos designed to help build your skills as a creator.

The goal is to try a new storytelling framework, editing style, or infuse a specific editing technique.

As hard as it may be, you should not care at all how Builder content performs. It’s not for your audience, it’s for you to learn how to be better for them in the future.

You may be wondering…if it’s not for them, why would I post it at all?

For the same reason that 95% of courses aren’t finished even though the participant paid…without forcing yourself to post in public, you won’t actually learn the new skill.

For example, in my “Kallaway Season 2” video, I wanted to learn how to use masking to put myself on the TV screen (shown in the opening clip) and try using internet b-roll to tell a story (instead of my typical A-roll only style).

This video was designed for me to learn those skills, rather to pull a ton of views.

It ended up performing well because it helped show my journey (see below), but I didn’t feel bad that it didn’t go viral.

It’s important to infuse Builder content into your mix so that you’re continually trying new things and pushing the envelope for what’s possible.

Once you’ve honed a new skill from a Builder video, you then have it in the toolbox to make better Bangers

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Now to my point above, if people love following journeys more than any other type of content, how can I infuse more journey content into the Bangers + Bingers + Builders framework?

There’s two ways to do it.

Builder content is inherently journey content…watch me figure out how to learn this skill.

So if your goal is to include more journey content, get better at showing the behind the scenes of you building new skills.

My homie Brandon Wang is a master of this. He showed the behind the scenes of building physical products for his company, Blanked Studios. Another good example is Zack Kravits, building a luxury bag brand.

The second way to infuse more journey content is longer-form, vlog style Binger content that happens to showcase behind-the-scenes.

Calum Johnson and Zach Pogrob are doing this. I’m going to start doing this on YouTube as well.

My strategy will be to film weekly Blueprint vlogs (horiztonal) and then create a highlight reel (vertical) on short-form to drive people to YouTube.

Btw, my homie Oren also has a great way to frame content strategy, following a wide → narrow funnel. If my framing resonated with you, you’ll like this video he made talking through his content strategy.

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