The written arm of my content ecosystem is probably the strongest of the bunch. As I have been doing it the longest, and I would say I enjoy it the most.
Writing comes naturally to me, and while sometimes I don't always adhere to a lot of the normal writing conventions. Especially for a post like this that is more for my own news outlet.
I find that a lot of the posts on this site could be helpful to you in some way. With topics ranging from Omnichannel Content and marketing, to the physical 💪🏾💪 Polymathic Exercise, and even monthly updates on my own personal life 🍃 NOW Page.
The Evolution of the Blog
Let's talk history, and now I'm not going to bore you too much with the change of technology stacks.
However I do need to mention the change to Ghost CMS, which was a game changer in more than one way for my site. Not only was it cleaner on the frontend, but more importantly in this case... it was cleaner on the backend. Far more minimalist, and still had the power needed to do more stuff than say Substack.
I cannot overstate how much of a difference it has made as the writer of this site. I came into it with maybe a couple hundred posts, max. I'm thinking it was around 160/170ish maybe. However now I have around 640 posts as of Jan 2025, which is pretty insane to think about.
Always I try not to pump out any garbage either too. It is either a personal anecdote or story, OR it is a useful piece of content around a subject people are looking for.
Recently, as in within the last couple months, I created a new version of my site with this current theme. It changed everything about the site, including all of the good things about the last one. I'm still a bit miffed on how the blog posts look as compared to the old version, but everything else is improved.
Navigation, blog showcases, newsletter, and memberships all get to shine a lot more now with this new version.
Tons of Posts, and then TONS more posts!
As I said before I have over 600 blog posts on this site already, but honestly I'm just getting started. I quite literally have hundreds of ideas sitting in my Obsidian Vault. Just waiting to be put out into the world.
The written portion of my content ecosystem is that of a hub for everything I create. So I even make posts like Season Six of The Polymath Polycast Interviews, where it lists out all of my interviews for that season. I think that is a helpful way for those interviews to get more views, as well as for you the reader to find a topic you may not have thought about before.
Additionally, I have a ton of sprints I want to do early on this year. For one I'm tired of trying to be consistent with the 🧮 Journey to Polymath newsletter, as last year I failed to get it out for half of the year. Whereas before I was making all 3 of my newsletters every week on the dot.
Thus during this Content Blitz I am currently doing; I am going to batch out all of the Polymathy posts ahead of time for the year. Which might sound daunting, and it is for the most part. However the quality is the same, and the posts are evergreen regardless. Meaning it makes sense, as long as it doesn't burn me out.
Which I think I'm more likely to burn out from trying to be consistent, rather than doing them in short time span.
In fact that is why I am doing this post for example. It is part of a 60ish post sprint, of remaking my old "Social Blogs" series. As they had some good topics, and good writing. However they were too weak to just post by themselves on my site, so I am remaking them (while keeping the shorter version at the bottom in case you're curious).
The Rise of PolyInnovator BOOKS
I think this year is the year where I finally get my head down, and focus on finishing not only my How to Swim book (which has been in making for over half a decade), as well as others I have planned too.
Perhaps this Blitz of content that I am doing, which includes multiple written sprints within it. Maybe that will snowball the writer in me to finish these bigger tasks. You can see from this post that I am writing more than the last, as the topic is more related to writing anyway! haha
There are at least a dozen ideas I have created, and even outlined for books. Some on 🏊 Mr. Dustin's Swim Academy or 🧠 PIOS Omni-Brain and more!
I really like this Remaking the Social Blogs series
For example this post looks almost nothing like the last one. Meaning the social blog was honestly its own thing, but the point of revamping or remaking is to reimagine the reasoning or reason for existing of the post.
The original idea was of the future of my written content. That topic hasn't changed, but the ideas, the series, and even the motivations behind what I am doing has changed.
Note: So I y.
If you want to keep reading:
Dustin Miller | PolyInnovator
This was one of my "social articles", an experiment to create medium sized blog posts, akin to newsletters. Across a variety of social blogging networking platforms. Such as Medium, Vocal Media, and Linkedin. Since it didn't quite land; I decided to take these posts and remake them into more full length creations. I'll try to include any interesting links from the original, and sometime the full previous version as well if it makes sense.
Previous Shorter Version
https://hive.blog/polyinnovator/@polyinnovator/2-polyinnovator-writing
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/polyinnovator-writing-dustin-miller-polyinnovator-/
This is what the original post said. While not overtly different, the tone and the reasoning behind the post was different in my opinion:
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The written based portions of my content ecosystem, are probably some of my most prolific. I have over 320 blog posts on my main site, however many here on LinkedIn, and a handful more scattered across the internet.
I've been blogging for ten years, and although I was off and on for many of them... I never really stopped writing. Even in the time spent away from consistent posting, there was a ton of planning. I planned out multiple YEARS worth of my #PolyInContent series (formerly known as #OmniContent). Along with a ton of isolated content pieces too, and I would eventually merge them all into one huge content pipeline database.
From the ages of old where WordPress was king, to the peak of Medium, and even now using a newer CMS (Content Management System). I used wordpress.com as my original blog, and I barely could make heads or tails with it. Let alone do ANY customization back then, as the free/cheap plans didn't offer much (this was well before the time of Gutenberg).
Given the lack of control of how things looked I went to what I would consider to be the OPPOSITE of the spectrum, that being wix.com!
It was more or less a good experience, but expensive and egregiously slow. From there I jumped back on the Wordpress bandwagon, but this time with .org instead. I was able to do a hell of a lot more then, and I played around with various paid themes too. I quite literally searched through the entire plugin library of the wordpress directory, as I was very curious of what unique things it offered. I came across BeyondWords way back in their early days as speechkit, and it was something I only found because of that search.
Side note, I even played around with Blockchain blogging platforms like airtext.xyz, which was interesting.
A Ghost of a Former Self
In this new day and age, there are far better coding technologies than the ones we commonly use. For example a huge number of websites are made in wordpress, but the problem is that it is written in the archaic PHP. An issue that plagues most of those websites in speed, as well as operations. I could never get my page speed up to save my life, and thus I switched over to Ghost CMS (build on node.js).
Why am I mentioning this? I've already talked about this story a handful of times, but the reality is that my life has been centered around content for as long as I can remember at this point. Blogging is a major form of my expression, and when I had a very rocky situationship this past Summer. The only way I could think of to process it internally was through writing (even meditation didn't help at that point).
This is ^ all of me explaining the past, and below I can focus on the future.
Here is a link to a post I wrote where my wordpress site came back like a zombie. :O
Dustin Miller | PolyInnovator
Blogging is NOT Dead
I can't believe people have the audacity to claim that blogging is dead, or it is too late to start podcasting, or anything of that nature. Creating content is part of the human experience, whether it is a physical piece of art, or even something of the digital variety. The sooner you start the better sure, but it isn't too late.
In fact I have so much planned for my OmniBlog, and my personal digital journal the Fireside Codex; That I may die before I finish all of the ideas!
Even my PolyInContent series, which is based around repurposing from on pillar type to another (video, audio, written, but in any order), starts off as a blog post. I mentioned that it can be in any order, but most people start with video. I prefer the written format to get all my thoughts down, then I can distill via video. The point is that every one of those pieces in that series starts out as a blog.
In the future I will have an even better consistency, but it seems like each year I'm getting better and better. I basically post at least once a week on my site, and I am aiming for a daily LinkedIn Pulse article too. Hence why I am writing this post today.
Any post written on here may be any subject, but what matters is that I am writing daily. Also that I am able to build up my connections with people here, so please leave a comment so we can chat. :D
