The Content Marketing Landscape in 2026 and Beyond...

While I do not think it is “too late to start”, or that you have to be “perfect” right away. You do however need to start yesterday, and you need to get to perfect as soon as possible.

The world of the creator economy, content or inbound marketing, or as I like to see it "the Digital Renaissance" is ever changing. You need to be able to adapt to those changes, and output ten times what you think you are capable of.

This post is split between the old version, which is still helpful, and will give you the baseline. Then I added on a new version to help you level up even further!

The 2025 Version:

The saturation is higher in most platforms now, and while there are ALWAYS going to be platforms where you can get the First-Move or Second-Mover advantage. You’ll need to be paying close attention to where those are. Really the advantages come from new features on the platforms now.

Such as Trial Reels on Instagram or Video/Audio distribution on Substack, as two current examples in my opinion.

Note: The topic in the video and in this blog post are the same, but what I talk about may end up being quite different, so you should watch/read both!

I started blogging in around 2013, which back then would almost seem to be “too late”, as the blogging really rose in the 2000’s right? Well look at Substack and Ghost CMS now, they’re both blowing up more and more.

Newsletters as blogs in particular, like this one, do very well now and have resurged written content interest.

I started podcasting in around early 2018, and people thought it was too late then. Then after the covid podcast boom, they thought it was “too late” in 2021 or 2022.

Don’t get me started on video and YouTube, as that becomes “too late” almost every two years.

The point I am making is that it is NEVER too late, and you’ll wish you had started sooner! I have been making hundreds of podcasts and videos, and about 800 written posts at this point. Yet I still feel like I’m only scratching the surface of what I can offer the world in my content.

That is all execution and how much effort you put forth, but even that isn’t all that matters.

Over the course of creating content you’ll learn better and better strategies to employ. I found myself struggling at some points with posting content across the mediums, as there weren’t good tools for it.

I’ve scoured the social media marketing tool market for literally a decade and half ever since I started blogging. Yet I could not find a damn tool that could do RSS to Social media automation worth its salt.

Eventually some tools had some prowess like Coschedule back in the day or Nelio Social, and now I have Nuelink which has been amazing.

Another issue I came across, even before I started using OpusClip, but was to be able to bulk schedule short form videos.

Literally no tool could do it, they often had CSV bulk upload. However that failed to do a lot of what bulk upload needed to do. I.e. on instagram selecting to ONLY post to Reels feed, not the main feed, or rather the traditional post to Reels and Main feed together. As I found my content performed better that way.

Not to mention you still had to upload all of your content to a cloud drive first. Instead of uploading to the SMM tool’s servers. Which increases chances of bitrate compression.

The 2026 Update:

You need to learn, you need to have trial and error, but that can't be your only source. In fact I think trial and error should probably be your 3rd layer down. Learn from the greats first, and I try to help distill a lot of it myself for you too.

There is too much free content, or cheap like the book "YouTube Secrets", for you to just go the trial and error route. You're just wasting time.

Something I'll talk more about over the course of this newsletter, and I encourage you to scour the Creator tag on this site too to learn more. Is that of the "Creator Equation", which is something I came up with to help you MAXIMIZE your time spent. You could feel like you are doing great work, but if you were more optimized then that same window of effort could have produced a lot more.

Most of it is skill issue.

I say that plain and simple, with no judgement. You need to simply level up in your preferred skill/content type. Then move onto the next type, and the type after that.

Part of the Creator Equation is literally just you putting in the reps.

If you want to adapt to the ever changing landscape, then experimenting isn't key. You have to be able to make stuff that is outside your comfort zone, but still at the same level as what you would normally make.

Learn the strategy from a big name, adopt it, like you would someone's gym split. Then once you've done it long enough, then you make your own. I'll also be able to coach a lot of you as well.

Find the right tools to help you keep up the pace, and reach a wider audience than you would normally be able to.

Finally, you have to be able to execute and put in the reps to make your strategy actually come into fruition.

That brings us to the Current state.

I think there are a lot of lessons that even experienced creators could learn from this series. Although new creators will get a huge step up in understanding. Please don’t forget to sign up for future editions!