TL;DR: After 20 years of blogging, I’ve learned that not everything belongs in the same place. Your blog, social media, private communities, local notes, and AI conversations each serve a different purpose. The key is matching the content to the right layer of openness.
I’ve been publishing online since 2006. What started as a personal blog where I documented my life eventually grew into a finance site, spun off into WP Mayor (one of the largest WordPress blogs), and spawned the Good Life Collective community. Along the way, I made every mistake you can make with publishing online. I published personal notes as blog posts. I let lists go stale. I avoided social media entirely because I was afraid of losing ownership of my content.
Recently, I sat down and rethought the whole thing. This is what I came up with.
The Problem With Putting Everything in One Place
My original dream for my blog was to create a kind of manual for life that my kids could read one day. Investing lessons, health habits, travel tips, recipes, thoughts on how to live well. Over time, the blog became something else. Strangers came for the P2P lending reviews and crypto guides. The personal stuff got buried.
Worse, I had hundreds of short posts that were really personal notes masquerading as articles. A list of my favourite podcasts. A 200-word post about how to copy a garage remote. A coffee recipe. These were useful to me as reference material, but they weren’t genuinely useful to anyone searching the web. In the age of AI search, where tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity synthesize answers from authoritative sources, thin content doesn’t just underperform. It actively hurts your site.
The fix wasn’t to stop sharing. It was to share the right things in the right places.
The Layers of Your Online Identity
I now think about publishing in layers, each with a different audience, a different level of openness, and a different purpose.
Layer 1: Your Blog (The Permanent Archive)
Your blog is the only platform you truly own. No algorithm changes, no account suspensions, no platform shutdowns. It’s your canonical source of truth.
But that means it should contain your best work, not everything. I now only publish articles on my blog that meet a simple test: would I send this to a stranger who asked me about this topic? If the answer is yes, it belongs on the blog. If it’s a personal reference or a half-formed thought, it doesn’t.
The blog’s job is depth. Long, experience-based articles that AI can’t generate from generic sources. Your real investing results over years. Your actual experience living abroad. The kind of content where your personal data and perspective is the value, not information that’s freely available elsewhere.
Layer 2: LinkedIn (Professional You)
LinkedIn is where you know exactly who’s reading your content. You can see their faces, their job titles, their companies. That makes it the most personal of the public platforms, paradoxically. You’re not shouting into a void; you’re talking to people you’ve chosen to connect with.
The content that works here is professional but personal. Not corporate jargon, not motivational quotes. Real opinions, real experiences, real lessons. I write about investing, building businesses, AI, and sometimes padel. The key is: anything I post on LinkedIn, I’d be comfortable with a business partner, a client, or a journalist reading. It’s personal without being vulnerable.
LinkedIn is distribution, not the destination. Write the deep article on your blog, then extract the sharpest insight for a LinkedIn post that links back.
Layer 3: X (The Megaphone)
X is reach. A good post can hit thousands of people you’ve never met and will never meet again. The viral mechanics reward bold opinions and sharp takes. That’s both its power and its danger.
The people reading your content on X are mostly strangers. You don’t know them, they don’t know you, and they have zero context for your words. Something you write as a casual observation can be screenshot-quoted five years later, stripped of all context, to damage you. I’ve seen it happen to others and I’ve been cautious as a result.
My approach: X is for ideas, not confessions. Share insights, link to your deeper work, engage with interesting people. But keep your guard up. The asymmetry between effort to post and potential for misinterpretation is enormous.
Layer 4: YouTube (The Next Frontier)
I’ve been thinking a lot about YouTube. It’s the platform with the longest content shelf life. A well-made video can generate views for years, much like a good blog post. Unlike social media posts that vanish in 48 hours, YouTube content compounds.
The barrier is higher (filming, editing, being on camera) but the payoff is proportionally larger. And for certain topics, like padel technique, gear reviews, or city guides, video is simply the better medium. I haven’t committed to it yet, but it’s where I see myself going next.
Layer 5: A Private Community (The Real You)
One of the reasons I built the Good Life Collective was to have a space where I could be completely myself. On public platforms, every post is a permanent record that can be taken out of context. In a private community, you can share unfiltered opinions, admit you’re having a bad day, or say something provocative without worrying about it being weaponised later.
This isn’t about hiding. It’s about having the right audience for the right level of openness. My GLC members know me, they have context for what I say, and the discussions that happen there are richer because of that safety.
If you don’t have a community, group chats with close friends serve the same purpose. The point is: not everything you think needs to be broadcast to the world.
Layer 6: Private Notes (Your Second Brain)
For years, I published personal reference material on my blog because it was the only thing I had access to everywhere. A recipe, a list of gear I liked, notes from a tennis lesson. I thought: if it’s on my website, I can always look it up.
That made sense in 2010. It doesn’t make sense in 2026. Tools like Obsidian, Apple Notes, or even Evernote sync across all your devices instantly. I recently moved dozens of posts from my blog to Obsidian and the blog is better for it. Those posts were useful to me but not to anyone else.
Private notes are for things you want to find later. Blog posts are for things you want others to find. The overlap between those two is smaller than you think.
Layer 7: AI Conversations (The New Layer)
This is the layer nobody talks about yet. A significant amount of my thinking, planning, and even writing now happens inside conversations with AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT. These conversations generate insights, decisions, and reflections that never get published anywhere. They exist in chat memories and conversation histories.
In a sense, AI conversations have become another form of personal content storage. The reflection I’m having right now about my publishing strategy? It started as a conversation with Claude while reorganising my blog. The AI remembered context from earlier in our session, connected dots between different topics, and helped me articulate things I’d been feeling but hadn’t put into words.
This layer is new and its permanence is uncertain. But it’s worth acknowledging that some of your best thinking might now live in places that aren’t your blog, your notes app, or your social feed.
Choosing Your Platforms
You don’t need to be on every platform. In fact, you probably shouldn’t be. Here’s how I think about the decision:
- What’s your goal? Reach (X), professional network (LinkedIn), visual storytelling (Instagram/YouTube), community (private group), personal archive (notes app).
- Who’s your audience? Strangers (X, YouTube), professional contacts (LinkedIn), friends (Facebook, Instagram), trusted circle (private community), yourself (notes, AI).
- What’s the risk? Public and permanent (blog, X, LinkedIn, YouTube), semi-public (Facebook, Instagram), private (community, notes, AI).
I personally use my blog, LinkedIn, X (sparingly), and the GLC. I dropped Facebook and Instagram years ago and haven’t missed them. Your mix will be different based on your goals and comfort level.
The One Rule That Ties It All Together
Write the full version once, on a platform you own. Then adapt it for everywhere else.
A 2,000-word blog post becomes a 200-word LinkedIn post with a link. That becomes a tweet thread. Maybe a YouTube video. The blog post is the canonical source; everything else is distribution. If any platform disappears tomorrow, you haven’t lost anything.
After 20 years, that’s the lesson I wish I’d learned from the start.
FAQ
Should I still have a personal blog in 2026?
Yes, but only if you’re willing to maintain it. A blog with 50 deep, well-maintained articles is more valuable than one with 500 stale posts. Your blog is the one platform you own and control. Use it as your permanent archive, not your daily notebook.
Is it worth posting on LinkedIn if I don’t have a big following?
LinkedIn’s organic reach is still strong compared to other platforms. A well-written post from an account with 500 connections can reach thousands through likes and comments. The audience quality is also higher because you can see exactly who’s engaging with your content.
What about Substack or Medium?
Both are good for discovery but create platform dependency. If you already have a blog with email subscribers, you have the same direct-to-inbox capability without giving up control. If you’re starting from scratch and want built-in distribution, they can be useful stepping stones.
How do I decide if something is a blog post or a private note?
Ask yourself: would I send this to a stranger who asked me about this topic? If yes, it’s a blog post. If it’s mainly useful to you as a reference, keep it in your notes app. The overlap is smaller than you think.
What about AI conversations as content?
AI conversations are becoming a legitimate layer of personal content creation. Reflections, decisions, and insights generated in conversations with AI tools are real intellectual output. Consider periodically reviewing your AI chat history and extracting anything worth preserving into your notes or blog.
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