Do What Lights You Up
Forget the rules about format and content length. Do what energizes you and what you can sustain for decades, not what growth gurus say works best.
Blogging Outside Format. Manifesto, post #12/14
Text or video? Short posts or long reads? Reels or articles?
The real answer: do whatever gets you fired up. If you love writing short, funny notes — write them. If you love shooting vertical video — shoot it. When the money comes, turning good writing into video (or the reverse) is a solved problem.
I write what I have to say. Length doesn't matter. What matters is getting the idea into its right shape. The rest figures itself out.
Video is easier for growth, but it's not required
Here's the truth: reaching new people is easier through video. It's the only format that can catch fire through recommendation algorithms. YouTube, Instagram Reels — they find new readers for you.
But not everyone wants to be on camera. Not everyone finds it easy. If that's you, filming becomes a burden too heavy to carry, and you'll quit. The whole point is to still be doing this in thirty years.
Between 0 and 2,000 words, engagement grows linearly. Longer pieces get read longer — not skimmed faster. "Power readers" spend 105 minutes a day with text. They're looking for long. They exist.
Lifestyle content — only if you want it
Showing your life makes sense when your life and your work are inseparable. Teachers, consultants, therapists — people need to see that you're real, that you're human, that you can be trusted.
If there's no connection between your personal life and your work, you don't owe anyone a window into it. And you definitely don't owe it if it makes you uncomfortable, or feels beneath you, or just feels wrong. A blog about nothing but your work is a perfectly good blog.
We're not short on people performing their lives online. We are short on people who write for years, on their own terms, in their own way.
I want to do indie journalism in Pamplona. Photograph, write, catch the atmosphere of the place. Broken legs, pain, and tight money keep getting in the way. Maybe later. The format isn't the problem. The problem is staying power. Do what you can do for thirty years.
