The 1 Thing Frustrated Creators Get Wrong About Their Target Audience
Millions start to create content online every year, leading to more creators being frustrated at their lack of growth.
Recent data showed the ~50 million content creators in 2020 has ballooned up to 400 million in 2025. As more creators come online, frustrations rise when content falls flat and blame is place on the algorithms favoring large creators. The rise of "AI slop" has not helped the frustrations due to perceived low effort receiving more views and engagement.
Serious creators will look to make changes, but most frustrated creators go about it the wrong way.
The Problem: Thinking "My Target Is Too Small"
A common faulty belief is that maybe their target audience is too small and they should widen the target.
If we target more people, then more people will be able to see the content to engage, right? Think about how many users a platform like YouTube or Instagram has and that any public content could be shown to any of them. If you're making content about the best drills to buy in 2026, will someone looking for leaks about the May The Forth LEGO sets be interested? Definitely not.
The algorithm's 1 job is to put the right content in front of the right person, so if the 25 people it shows a piece to aren't interested, it suppresses it and moves on.
The Counter-Intuitive Solution: Narrow Even More
While most try to widen their target, try narrowing it instead by at least 1 more level.
Think like an archer trying to hit a target in a football stadium. The stadium has thousands of seats, lights, grass, cables, and windows, but only 1 target. The archer will always aim at the center of the bull's eye, regardless of the thousands of other potential places they could hit.
The archer who aims at the field might hit it, but miss the target complete and score no points.
