Our current endeavors are all about content creation. Alyse is building rapport with her followers and narrating our life journey. Calvin is making videos and Instagram posts of cool Lego builds. I’m writing stories and journaling it all here.

Content has to be consumed to be of any value to anyone. Otherwise, it is nothing more than words on a page deep in the recesses of a notebook or hard drive. In order to be consumed, content has to be distributed. This is obvious and, yet, how to do so is not always obvious. The problem used to be a lack of options. Now, its the opposite. There are so many options for so many different purposes that it can be more than a little bit overwhelming.

Focus is key – what are my goals? How do I reach my goals? What tools assist that journey?

My goals are twofold. One is to distribute our content as broadly as possible. Two is to experiment and to find what works, what does not, and record the whole endeavor so anyone following after does not have to experiment so much.

The second goal feeds into the first. There are so many options the only problem (as usual) is time to work through them all. How then does the first affect the second? That’s simple – aim for the largest swaths of users. While this is obvious, the flip side to this is anticipating where those users will flock next. You do not want to put a lot of time and effort into setting up on one platform only to have it turn into a ghost town in 6 months to a year. That being said, it appears that platform usage is relatively steady even as it changes. As opposed to a site like MySpace that went nearly completely dark. Current platforms retains users, especially by age and other demographics. So then, what users are you aiming for? Different demographics use very different tools and hang out in very different places.

Everyone has their favorite or preferred method for consuming content. The internet is rife with options and everyone has their own configuration for receiving content, whether its intentional or not. What I mean is that even those people who shrug it off and say they just get their news and updates from Facebook or Reddit have chosen their feed. Many people who think they get their news offline are definitely swayed by “news’ they consume online. I wish I had more data on this but anecdotally we know its true. Its basically impossible to avoid “news” online whether you are seeking it or not. This can be a benefit for those who are creating the content.

Alright, enough theory.

EntreBurnor’s home of operations is EntreBurnor.com The website is built with WordPress which is a beautiful tool for building websites and blogs and comes with a massive array of options. All of the social media platforms and publishing platforms and videos etc come and go and have their own agendas and incentives. That is fine and most of the time they align with mine but I wanted a home where I can control the narrative. I will be working to make it so that all original content can be found on this site (barring, perhaps, random Tweets, Insta Posts, Tik Toks, etc).

Posts from EntreBurnor are also reposted on to Medium. If you do not know about Medium, I do highly recommend checking it out. It was founded by Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter, for longer form writing. Its a great source of first person, experiential writing. I enjoy Medium as a user and I also appreciate its subscription services as a content creator. A Medium reader gets posts by people the follow shared directly to them so I need to worry less about getting content to readers so much as simply getting it out. They also have a very generous value share with writers. Once a writer has over 100 followers on the platform, they get paid for how long people spend reading their content. Then, if someone wishes to subscribe to Medium ($5/month), you can subscribe through someone you follow and they will receive a portion of your subscription fee for as long as you subscribe to Medium. If sustainable, and I assume they’ve done the math, Medium has a great system for compensating writers and encouraging more content. My goal is to meet readers where they are, so if you’re on Medium, please give me a follow! If not, I’ll meet you somewhere else.

You can subscribe to receive EntreBurnor posts in your email via Substack. This is a relatively young company that’s created a very powerful publishing platform. While looking at email newsletter tools, I decided to use Substack for the simple reason that many of the newsletters I subscribe to use the platform as well. What I realized is that it is much more than just email newsletters. I’ll need to explore it much more. The EntreBurnor post updates are free, but Substack provides a simple mechanism for paid newsletters and there is a lot of content on that site. I’m exploring it for an avenue to monetize publishing MirthnCo stories. More to come on that later.

Then, we’ll put out notes on content on more standard social media like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. We’d love to have you follow us on those platforms! The tool behind all of that is Buffer which allows scheduling and management of content across social media platforms. I’ve been using Buffer for years for various projects and it, seriously, has only become better over time.

Then, we’ll be experimenting with Tik Tok, Snap, and any other platform that strikes our fancy. Those updates will be a bit different but so are we.

Finally, video. I’m looking at posting videos to potentially round up a week or deep dive a tool, idea, or concept. Calvin has also been pushing for me to do a gaming channel. Its been ages since I gamed too seriously and I’m rusty but I have some ideas for how to make an entertaining (in my mind at least) channel, so keep an eye out.

There’s the run down. I’ll deep dive into each over time. Plenty of places to consume our content. As always, we’d love feedback. Let us know where to expand, how to do it better, and what you’d like to see!