Like many of the topics we cover here, I was inspired by an email I received from a vendor who, not surprisingly, provides tools to create clips, explaining why your reels are not working, which they claim is “Something they keep hearing:”
“Your clips are getting views but they’re not converting.”
But is that even a problem.
In this case, it’s important to the vendor. They sold a service on the premise that it would convert reel watchers into podcast listeners. And now they’re worried you might notice it’s not delivering on that promise.
And beyond this one vendor, almost every podcast guru assumes the purpose of a Reel, Short, or TikTok is to drive people somewhere else. But there’s no law that requires everything to be a funnel.
Funnels, Funnels, fricken Funnels everywhere.
I was on a creator community call this week and someone asked what I have against funnels as an “effective marketing strategy.” In some sense, nothing. Funnels can work. My objection is how funnels become a way of seeing people.
If every blog post exists to sell the newsletter...
If every newsletter exists to sell the podcast...
If every podcast exists to sell coaching...
If every interaction exists to move someone to the next stage...
...when do you stop and ask whether this piece of content was worth their time on its own?
There’s that old line about niching down, how if you’re speaking to everyone, you’re speaking to no one. I think there’s a similar truth about funnels: If you’re always selling, you’re never really selling.
You’re just teaching your audience that every interaction has an ulterior motive.
Meet People Where They Are
But getting back to clips, I talk a lot about meeting people where they are. Not everything has to be a lead generator.
Someone opened Instagram because they wanted Instagram.
Someone opened TikTok because they wanted TikTok.
Why are we trying to convince them they really wanted a 45-minute podcast?
For my serious work, I try to deliver a version of what the Outrage Overload brand is on every platform. If that’s all someone ever consumes, I’m okay with that.
And here’s the irony of the whole thing. If your reels are delivering value, if people fall in love with your brand, guess what? This approach produces the very thing the funnel advocates are chasing.
Trust.
The hard-sell won’t do that. Delivering value, over and over again, does. The content itself has to earn trust. And trust often produces the outcome the hard sell was chasing all along.