How to stay human as a content creator

Cole Feldman

Jan 30, 2024

Have a place where you can post anything and everything.

No branding. No niching down.

Just whatever you feel like writing about. Whatever’s on your mind.

That’s your ocean.

Do that for like 3-6 months.

Then you should have 50+ posts.

What are the main themes?

Categorize the posts by theme.

Examples of themes:

Writing
Investing
Entrepreneurship
Spirituality
Work
Travel
Education

For each theme, launch a brand.

These brands are the rivers that your ocean can flow into.

Example: if you find that you’re writing a lot about sales, launch a brand like Break Into Tech Sales (this is one of my brands). Now, all the content about sales in your ocean can flow into a website and YouTube channel for the brand.

At minimum, have at least one platform for written content and one for video content.

Bonus points if you have a platform for audio content (podcast) and a community (on Slack, Discord).

Why this is the most human/successful way to create content

You’re a human. Your interests change. If you only have one brand, you feel the pressure to stick to the theme of that brand. If you have an ocean where you can just dump all the content that comes to mind, you have creative freedom.
Readers/viewers expect consistency. If I subscribe to a baking newsletter, I expect to get newsletters about baking. If I get newsletters about something other than baking, I’ll probably unsubscribe. In order to retain your readers/viewers and grow the brand, you need to give them consistent content.

This “ocean to rivers” strategy allows you to (1) have creative freedom as a changing human, while also (2) succeeding in the business/marketing world.

What platform is best for your ocean?

For me, I write my drafts in Notion and then publish the best ones in this newsletter. In the past, I’ve had a WordPress blog.

Medium and Twitter can also work.

I don’t suggest doing a physical notebook or notes/docs on your computer because you want to get it out into the world. Get some feedback. Start some conversations.

You can have your drafts (raw thoughts) in a notebook or on your computer, but you still want to have a public platform where you can publish.

There’s something about hitting the “publish” button. It forces you to look at what you’ve got and ask yourself, “Okay, what’s good and what’s not?”

Who follows/subscribes to your ocean?

Don’t expect to get a lot of followers for your ocean.

Don’t even worry too much about trying to grow it.

When friends/family ask what you’ve been up to, you can say, “I’ve been writing a lot lately. Posting it here: <link>”

Friends/family are the people who will follow your ocean.

They’re following it because they’re interested in you.

They want to know what you have been up to.

They’re not following it to get information about a specific topic.

Anybody who subscribes to your ocean to get information about a specific topic will probably eventually unsubscribe.

Keep filling your ocean

As you start funneling your content into the brand rivers, keep filling up your ocean the same way.

Write down ideas when they come to you.

Start a practice of journaling in the morning.

If you notice that one river isn’t getting as much flow from the ocean, that’s fine. Maybe it’s time for that river to dry up. If you’ve grown it substantially, maybe you can sell it. Or just let it be dry for a while and maybe your ocean will naturally start to feed it again in the future.