Warning: this piece has been written by a human, as a result, it is imperfect, full of strange thoughts and might even be a little funny.

As a marketer I often get asked about content creation. Various people – founders, marketers, content creators, VCs – ask me not only how to write but also what to write, and where to write so that they can get the best results.

While there is a lot of nuance when it comes to committing to starting a Substack, newsletter or your own blog; a general rule of thumb is always this: write what you can stick to with any passable regularity.

However, the reason I decided to sit down myself and write about this, doesn't have that much to do with content per se but rather with what you need to consider before you begin your content journey, and that is your distribution.

Before we dive into what this means and how to think about it, a brief history lesson, and I promise it won't be that boring.

The narrative that "content is king" has been popularized pretty much since social media took over the marketing world in a big way. Once sponsored content became ubiquitous and regular people realized they could make money from brands purely through amassing a large number of views on social platforms, the cat was out of the bag.

Today, it's hard to imagine that there was ever a world before influencers, before #ad, and before virality was THE GOAL, as if the ancestral viral DNA has suddenly awoken in us and told us to spread everything.

Who remembers Internet before Facebook and Instagram?

Back in the olden days when you wanted to browse content related to a particular niche you had to use a web browser, search a particular term, and scan a number of random websites for what you were looking for. Information about websites containing particular content spread from person to person through word of mouth as much as it did through imperfect and clunky browsers.

I feel like an elder passing off ancient wisdom but does anyone remember web directories? We craved content, we craved newness and discovery as much as we do today - the only difference is that web 1.0 didn't master feeding us that content just yet.

In many ways, the evolution of the web can be characterized by the speed and accuracy with which it is serving us content. We created and evolved the algorithms to give us what we want because the services that didn't are today just bookmarks in the Internet's history.

This is all to say, that although content very much existed before the dawn of social media, it was scattered across custom websites (hello to all those who had their own fanfiction websites, hardcoded from scratch) without built-in discovery.

As we cycle from one media platform to the next the discovery has been evolving. Here is a quick, non-exhaustive cheat sheet on where search started vs where it is today:

1. Early browsers + web directories

2. Google, Amazon

3. Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube

4. Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit

5. TikTok

6. ChatGPT + other AI

Okay, why am I rehashing all of this? Mostly because I think people don't understand that:

This is not exactly the point of this article but if you are a founder working on a tech startup that includes within it a need for any form of search, and you want that product to be successful, you MUST nail search / content discovery. You might be surprised that I included Amazon in my list but you shouldn't be - Amazon has the best search engine in the product category. There are so many retailers that launched websites and apps but their search features remain laughable as if they don't understand that the point isn't that they HAVE product but rather that people are able to FIND product.

Okay tangent (I told you this was written by a person who is prone to random thoughts).

We're all pushing against the wave of absolute content saturation and content fatigue. In 2025 everyone knows that the fastest way to any sort of notoriety is to produce some form of content that spreads across the Internet.

However, many people don't seem to know how to make it spread. They don't seem to understand what I described to all of you above, that distribution isn't locked into Twitter/X, or TikTok or Instagram or any other particular platform. Distribution is something you take into your own hands as a marketer every single day. Those who can find novel way to distribute, really benefit from the first mover advantage and will succeed.

This is also the reason why it is relatively easy to grow on new platforms - with just enough scale to have some audience but not enough to be totally oversaturated.

One of my favourite examples here is Medium. They used to have a really good content distribution method built-in. You could blog natively on Medium and then get your content syndicated via reputable publications. Eventually, they hit a wall as many of those publishers took over and became less open to content syndication from independent bloggers.

It feels soul crushing to work on something for two weeks and get 3 likes. That’s why I always recommend knowing where your engagement is going to come from.

If you already have a small but engaged following on a social media platform then you can start experimenting with longer form content. Don't expect long form content you're writing to bring you engagement. You earn engagement on social platforms through engaging not through content. Engaging means being a part of the conversation.

Start by offering your opinion on various topics, see what's appreciated and if people ask for more. Start with easier, less time consuming content - expand on takes that people resonate with and build from there.

Then think about how you're going to supplement your content distribution. Here are some tips to consider:

1. Start a subscriber's list

2. Appear in media - podcasts, spaces, content collabs, events

3. Push the same content multi-channel - blog, newsletter, X, LinkedIn, IG, Tik Tok

4. Consider content syndication - is content valuable? Who can repost it? Who can amplify it?

5. Word of mouth - tell people about your content; in DMs, group chats, forums

6. Get mentions - appear in lists, directories, other people's articles, offer quotes

7. Find another way*

The key to a lot of this is good strategic alignment. If you're planning a collab for example - you want to make sure that the person you're collaborating with has access to audience that's aligned, interested in similar things and ideally slightly larger than your own.

Today, search and discovery are being reinvented yet again, this time not by social browsing but by AI. This creates opportunities for those willing to step into them. Whenever there is a new game in town, there will always be unsuspecting winners before the house fully learns how to control all the rules. There is no doubt that social has been a tightly controlled game for a while now, and we're due for a shakeup. I am really interested to see who manages to hack distribution through AI and how they are going to do it. The door is wide open.

*I suggest you think what "another way" means to you. Creativity is encouraged. And remember: medium is the message.

Warning: this piece has been written by a human, as a result, it is imperfect, full of strange thoughts and might even be a little funny.

As a marketer I often get asked about content creation. Various people – founders, marketers, content creators, VCs – ask me not only how to write but also what to write, and where to write so that they can get the best results.

While there is a lot of nuance when it comes to committing to starting a Substack, newsletter or your own blog; a general rule of thumb is always this: write what you can stick to with any passable regularity.

However, the reason I decided to sit down myself and write about this, doesn't have that much to do with content per se but rather with what you need to consider before you begin your content journey, and that is your distribution.

Before we dive into what this means and how to think about it, a brief history lesson, and I promise it won't be that boring.

The narrative that "content is king" has been popularized pretty much since social media took over the marketing world in a big way. Once sponsored content became ubiquitous and regular people realized they could make money from brands purely through amassing a large number of views on social platforms, the cat was out of the bag.

Today, it's hard to imagine that there was ever a world before influencers, before #ad, and before virality was THE GOAL, as if the ancestral viral DNA has suddenly awoken in us and told us to spread everything.

Who remembers Internet before Facebook and Instagram?

Back in the olden days when you wanted to browse content related to a particular niche you had to use a web browser, search a particular term, and scan a number of random websites for what you were looking for. Information about websites containing particular content spread from person to person through word of mouth as much as it did through imperfect and clunky browsers.

I feel like an elder passing off ancient wisdom but does anyone remember web directories? We craved content, we craved newness and discovery as much as we do today - the only difference is that web 1.0 didn't master feeding us that content just yet.

In many ways, the evolution of the web can be characterized by the speed and accuracy with which it is serving us content. We created and evolved the algorithms to give us what we want because the services that didn't are today just bookmarks in the Internet's history.

This is all to say, that although content very much existed before the dawn of social media, it was scattered across custom websites (hello to all those who had their own fanfiction websites, hardcoded from scratch) without built-in discovery.

As we cycle from one media platform to the next the discovery has been evolving. Here is a quick, non-exhaustive cheat sheet on where search started vs where it is today:

1. Early browsers + web directories

2. Google, Amazon

3. Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube

4. Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit

5. TikTok

6. ChatGPT + other AI

Okay, why am I rehashing all of this? Mostly because I think people don't understand that:

This is not exactly the point of this article but if you are a founder working on a tech startup that includes within it a need for any form of search, and you want that product to be successful, you MUST nail search / content discovery. You might be surprised that I included Amazon in my list but you shouldn't be - Amazon has the best search engine in the product category. There are so many retailers that launched websites and apps but their search features remain laughable as if they don't understand that the point isn't that they HAVE product but rather that people are able to FIND product.

Okay tangent (I told you this was written by a person who is prone to random thoughts).

We're all pushing against the wave of absolute content saturation and content fatigue. In 2025 everyone knows that the fastest way to any sort of notoriety is to produce some form of content that spreads across the Internet.

However, many people don't seem to know how to make it spread. They don't seem to understand what I described to all of you above, that distribution isn't locked into Twitter/X, or TikTok or Instagram or any other particular platform. Distribution is something you take into your own hands as a marketer every single day. Those who can find novel way to distribute, really benefit from the first mover advantage and will succeed.

This is also the reason why it is relatively easy to grow on new platforms - with just enough scale to have some audience but not enough to be totally oversaturated.

One of my favourite examples here is Medium. They used to have a really good content distribution method built-in. You could blog natively on Medium and then get your content syndicated via reputable publications. Eventually, they hit a wall as many of those publishers took over and became less open to content syndication from independent bloggers.

It feels soul crushing to work on something for two weeks and get 3 likes. That’s why I always recommend knowing where your engagement is going to come from.

If you already have a small but engaged following on a social media platform then you can start experimenting with longer form content. Don't expect long form content you're writing to bring you engagement. You earn engagement on social platforms through engaging not through content. Engaging means being a part of the conversation.

Start by offering your opinion on various topics, see what's appreciated and if people ask for more. Start with easier, less time consuming content - expand on takes that people resonate with and build from there.

Then think about how you're going to supplement your content distribution. Here are some tips to consider:

1. Start a subscriber's list

2. Appear in media - podcasts, spaces, content collabs, events

3. Push the same content multi-channel - blog, newsletter, X, LinkedIn, IG, Tik Tok

4. Consider content syndication - is content valuable? Who can repost it? Who can amplify it?

5. Word of mouth - tell people about your content; in DMs, group chats, forums

6. Get mentions - appear in lists, directories, other people's articles, offer quotes

7. Find another way*

The key to a lot of this is good strategic alignment. If you're planning a collab for example - you want to make sure that the person you're collaborating with has access to audience that's aligned, interested in similar things and ideally slightly larger than your own.

Today, search and discovery are being reinvented yet again, this time not by social browsing but by AI. This creates opportunities for those willing to step into them. Whenever there is a new game in town, there will always be unsuspecting winners before the house fully learns how to control all the rules. There is no doubt that social has been a tightly controlled game for a while now, and we're due for a shakeup. I am really interested to see who manages to hack distribution through AI and how they are going to do it. The door is wide open.

*I suggest you think what "another way" means to you. Creativity is encouraged. And remember: medium is the message.