How To Build A World (The 2-Hour Content Ecosystem 2.0)

turn 1 piece of quality writing into posts for ALL platforms each week

You don’t need long sales funnels.

You don’t need VSLs or webinars.

You don’t even need pushy sales copy.

All of those have their place, and can be effective when put into the right hands, but you want to create from a place of meaning and passion.

Thankfully, there’s a different route.

It comes from building an undeniable body of work.

A small-scale Marvel Universe or Star Wars.

You have your movies (long form content), TV show spin offs (short form content), toys and action figures (products or paywalls), and they’re all presented in a binge-worthy fashion.

Some people are viewers.

Others are fans.

Fewer are superfans.

But people only become fans or superfans from time under attention. If you don’t have enough for people to sink their teeth into, you’re not giving yourself the surface area for them to discover why they want to stick around for more.

Your job is to give superfans an easy way to binge all of your content over a month or two.

This is the long term play for your life’s work.

Your first pieces of content will obviously not get millions of views and likes. But over time, and as momentum builds, you’ll be surprised at the web of ideas you’ve created.

Like putting the best parts of your mind in public for people to explore.

Last thing before we begin: I am very against trying to write unique content for all platforms. I firmly believe the best route is to create the most authentic and high-quality content you can and ensure people see it by spreading it far and wide. People won’t get mad if they see it twice. I promise. Been doing this for 5 years.

The Big Picture – 2 Levels To The Game

In short, here’s the entire process:

1. Take an idea with high potential
2. Write a newsletter from that
3. Link your products in the newsletter
4. Create spin off posts from your newsletter
5. Plug your newsletter under your posts once a day
6. Take the best posts and use those starting back at number 1

Then, repeat for years.

But there’s nuance to this, and that’s only level 1.

For that level, you only need one place to write long form and one place to write short form.

In my opinion, the long form should be a newsletter on something like Substack, Beehiiv, Kit, or any other email provider. Doesn’t really matter which.

One caveat is that the newsletter platform should allow you to post that newsletter as a public post so you can share a link to it. You’ll understand why soon.

For short form, I recommend Substack, X, LinkedIn, or Threads.

Why? Because they’re writing based. You focus on the quality and engagement of your ideas before you start focusing on image designs, video editing, or speaking. When you can write an idea, then everything else grows in quality. If you start with something like video first, a lot of the focus is taken off the idea.

I’m late to the Substack game, and don’t want to recommend that as the “one way” too soon… but it does have both short form and long form in one place. So, that could be a solid option. Check them all out and see which fits your vibe the most.

Once and only once you have that down (don’t spread your focus thin too soon), you can move on to level 2:

• Use your newsletter as a YouTube script
• Post the YouTube video to all podcast platforms
• Embed the YT video in the public newsletter post at the top (so when you promote that newsletter, people find your YouTube as well)
• Turn your best posts into images for IG, LinkedIn, or YT community posts
• Turn some of your best posts into short video scripts for reels, TikToks, and YT shorts
• Promote old newsletters once a day on all platforms

Now you have a circular content system that leads to more email subs, sales, and views on all platforms.

Please only start with one long form and one short form platform.

You need to get good at writing content first. And once you do, now you have a backlog of validated ideas that you can cross post to other platforms.

Your best newsletters can be used to kickstart YouTube on the right foot.

Your best posts can help you grow faster on a new platform.

The Newsletter = Lead Magnets & Stealth Sales Pages

A common question I get is, “Should I start a newsletter if I’m just starting out?”

And the answer from me is always yes. Not because you’ll get a ton of views or subscribers, but because:

• Good ideas come from writing through bad ideas
• More newsletters = greater backlog of potential YouTube scripts
• You need somewhere for new followers to go to get more value
• You need something to promote as you are first growing your audience

Also, stop thinking of your newsletter as just a newsletter.

If the newsletter is good, it also acts as a lead magnet or free guide.

When you post social media content, you can link your newsletter in a comment with a caption that follows the PAS (problem, amplify, solution) framework.

When people click and read, some of them will subscribe.

That’s a much better way to build your newsletter than having an opt in page.

And… once you have a few newsletters written, it’s easy to link a newsletter that is on the same topic as the content, so you aren’t promoting an opt in page with a boring “Subscribe to my newsletter” call to action.

Even further, you should promote a product or service you offer in the newsletter itself.

Why?

Because long form content builds trust. You will get many more customers if you promote in your newsletter vs on social media.

So, not only is your newsletter a lead magnet, it’s a stealth sales page.

Every day when you link your newsletter under your best post (that is already getting attention), some people will click through, some will subscribe to your newsletter, and some people will purchase your product or service.

If you are a beginner and don’t have anything to sell, then wait for another paid post on that. You can always start a paid newsletter in the meantime, although it may not be the most lucrative thing to do as a beginner.

Actually, one thing I really like about Substack is that I can link a paywalled post in my newsletters. Since paywalled posts can be on any topic or subject, it’s easy to create and link the most relevant ones, rather than only having one product on one subject.

I’m really going to become a substack fanboy aren’t I.

Their 10% fee sucks though!

Remember from this section:

• Link your product or service at least once in your newsletter. This can be as simple as “if you want [x, y, z benefits], check out [name of product]” in a relevant section of the newsletter.
• Link your newsletter under one social post a day to make sales and gain newsletter subscribers.

For level 2, when you are cross posting everywhere:

• Link your product or service in the YouTube and podcast descriptions
• When you read the newsletter as a script for those, just read the line followed with “the link is in the description for that.”
• On instagram, the best way to link your newsletter for a post is either by sharing the post to your story along with the link there, or writing a caption and using a DM automation with something like Stan (also hosts digital products)
• On LinkedIn, you can either write a caption and end with a call to action with a link to your newsletter, or link it in the comments (spend some time on LinkedIn and you’ll see this everywhere, because it works)
• For reels, TikToks, shorts, etc, you usually have to have the link in your bio and come up with a clever way to get people to look there. On Instagram, you can use the Stan DM automation to have them comment a word to receive it

How To Write Posts From The Newsletter

The next question that stems from all of this is, “How do I write posts for my newsletter?”

Because most people think they should just copy paste sections of their writing onto social media.

The thing is, those don’t do well because you still need a hook and standalone value. You need to be in control of those things. Most excerpts from a newsletter lack the context that make them work, so you need to take the ideas and make them punchy on their own.

So, yes, you will have to write the posts from scratch, or use something like my Deep Posts Prompt to format the ideas from your newsletter well.

I personally like to do this by opening my newsletter I wrote in Kortex, create a new document and open that on the side, then:

• Start reading through the newsletter
• Find an idea that is rather compelling (or think about the big ideas from the newsletter as a whole)
• Then start writing drafts of those ideas as if they were standalone ideas

Personally, if I write 1 newsletter a week, I aim to write 7 posts from it (one for each day of the week) so I can link my newsletter under that post.

But, on most of these short form platforms, you want to write 2-3 posts a day, so where do those come from?

Validating & Experimenting With Ideas

Here’s a general rundown of my writing process:

• I go on walks and listen to audiobooks or long YouTube videos/podcasts
• I curate my social media timeline so that it shows ideas I could see being under my brand
• I take two types of notes in my phone:
• First, are ideas for my newsletter for that week
• Second, are ideas for standalone posts
• When I sit down to write, all I’m doing is making the ideas more clear and engaging. The heavy lifting is mostly done.

The thing is, most beginners are just posting random ideas, not validated ideas.

So, if you are using ideas you gather from a book or other place, read through this guide on how I turn normal ideas into viral ideas.

As a beginner, here’s what I would do to write great social posts from the start.

These can be turned into newsletters down the road if they perform well for you.

• Follow big accounts in your topics on YouTube
• Filter their videos by most popular
• Screenshot 10-20 of their videos that you could see yourself remaking under your own brand
• Use their titles as inspiration for social posts
• Follow good accounts on other social media
• Use tools or filters to see their highest performing content
• Create spin offs of those as well

It’s difficult to see the best performing posts on most platforms.

I used to use a tool like Twemex to see an accounts best posts, but something is up with them lately. I think they are revamping it, so it may be worth checking out.

TweetHunter allows you to schedule tweets, but also has a search tool that kinda works.

Your best bet is to just scroll their page and look for outliers (posts that have done much better than their average posts).

The 2 Hour Content Schedule

Here’s how I would personally schedule your content writing each week.

For each level, this shouldn’t take more than 2 hours of deep work in the morning.

Level 1:

• Write newsletter for 60 minutes 5 days a week (more than enough time)
• Outline the newsletter on one day and post on the other
• 30 minutes a day for writing posts
• 30 minutes a day for being active on socials (link your newsletter on posts during this time)
• After work blocks, generate ideas and take notes on books, podcasts, videos, content, etc

Level 2:

• Same thing, but now that you’re better and faster at writing:
• Exchange one newsletter writing day for filming the video based on the newsletter as the script
• Exchange another newsletter day for editing, or hire an editor if you can
• For your 30 minutes of being active on socials, bake in cross posting to all platforms and respond to a few comments

Nuances With This Content Ecosystem

A few last things to note:

• This is just the content ecosystem. The next step is learning how to write posts and newsletters. Practice practice practice. Build your world and you will naturally become good *if you error correct.
• What we talked about above is maintenance mode. It’s something you can do every day for years. But when it’s time to launch a product, book, or some other notable project – you drop everything else and only promote that for a month or two. Then you can work it into your newsletters from there and continue with the content ecosystem.

I believe I’ve covered this in as much detail as we need.