The Maker/Creator Content Funnel: Get Discovered, Followed and Sell Things

Friends and clients often tell me they want to use content and get that sweet inbound business attention, but they feel overwhelmed:

“I know I need to make content, have an email list, etc. But I’m unsure of the big picture and how everything fits together.”

I’m not an expert, but I’ve spent possibly 50+ hours nerding out on this topic.

These are my notes and I hope they help if you’re an online coach or indie founder figuring out your content strategy.

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Every platform has it’s strengths and weaknesses. So use different channels for each part of the funnel.

Creator content funnels seem to involve 3-4 major moving parts that help you get found, capture emails and direct your following to build trust or sell stuff.

These channels are:

• 👀 Discovery channels. Platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, or even Facebook. Places you can post short, quick content and get free organic visibility without an audience, that builds up over time.

• 🧲 Lead magnets/email capture. Helps you build your email list by offering giveaways on your discovery channels or suggesting people subscribe on your other channels.

• ❤️ Retention channels. These are things like Skool communities, Facebook groups and email lists. Jay Clouse from Creator Science mentions they’re for building relationships at scale (link). Used to direct attention to products or other content, too.

• 🧠 Long-form channels. YouTube, blogs and podcasts. These channels are used to nurture your followers to know, like and trust you.

You don’t need all of them. Some people achieve all 4 functions with only Instagram or Twitter.

It’s commonly suggested that fewer channels are better than more. Running each part is a separate skill, and audiences compound, so spreading yourself thin across multiple platforms for each part is unnecessary.

Examples

Here are some examples demonstrating different creator content funnels.

Vanessa Lau

I didn’t keyword reply but I’m guessing this is the video she was directing people to.

Vanessa used Instagram in 2018 and added YouTube in 2019, teaching coaches how to use both channels effectively.

• Posts frequently originally on Instagram, used reels to attract followers and slideshow posts to nurture them.

• Used captions on her posts to direct people to webinars like How to Turn Followers Into Customers or other content.

Promoting newsletter signups and webinars via keywords.

• Probably used a ManyChat automation to auto-dm reply people who used keywords in the comments. Learn how to do that here (link).

• Previously she seemed to rely a lot on DMs and webinars to promote her group coaching program, which was very highly rated.

Justin Welsh

Uses tweets for discovery, leads people to his newsletter, builds trust, and gently sells.

Justin is famous for popularizing the content-marketing based solopreneur movement overall using LinkedIn as his main discovery channel.

• Posts daily on LinkedIn. Engages daily in the comments to improve performance.

• Started Twitter later to diversify and leveraged his LinkedIn audience to build his following.

• Plugs his newsletter on high performing posts in the comments or directly in the post.

• Broadcasts 4-minute articles to his newsletter every Saturday, also posting them on his blog.

• At the end of each email, he gently promotes his courses.

You can learn exactly how he does content for his solopreneurship in his course The Content OS (link) (affiliate link).

To make starting easier, get started with fewer channels, not more.

I agree with

Robin Sanah Kai

that it is better to keep things simple rather than spread yourself thin. Pick one platform. Most personal branding experts tend to say you should go where you already spend time. It’s also probably right to pick channels that your target audience uses, too. If you can.

And if you wanted to add one more piece to the funnel, email seems to be the most important according to teachers like Nicholas Cole.¹

For me, Substack gives me some level of discoverability via it’s it’s Twitter clone, Notes, and I get to use it’s native newsletter function for retention too. I then use my YouTube channel to build that trust in my profession as well as blog here, too.

What’s your plan?

1. Nicholas Cole, If I started writing on X in 2025, here’s what I would do (0 to 200k followers) (25 mins)