How pizza saved my content strategy (and what it taught me about personal branding)

Hey {{first_name}},

There was a point in my content journey where I had nothing left to say.

My content pipeline was completely empty. I had covered all the topics I had planned. I sat down to write and nothing came. Day after day, the blank screen just stared back at me.

I tried forcing it. I tried scrolling for inspiration. I tried copying what other people were doing. None of it felt right and none of it was working.

And then I had a thought that changed everything for me.

What if I stopped separating my passions from my personal brand?

So I started a Friday series. Personal branding lessons you can learn from TV and movie characters. How celebrities use media power to build their authority. And yes, at one point, what pizza can teach you about personal branding.

It sounds silly. It was not. That Friday series broke my content block completely. It brought a completely different energy to my feed, my audience loved it, and it reminded me that a personal brand should actually feel personal.

That is what this edition is about. Not just what to post, but how to build a content strategy that is sustainable, specific to you, and never runs completely dry.

Let's get into it.

Why Most Content Strategies Fail

Most people approach content strategy like a task list. Pick some topics, set a posting schedule, execute. And for a while it works. Until it does not.

The problem is that a content strategy built only around topics has no soul. When you run out of planned topics, you have nothing to fall back on. When your energy dips, there is no natural fuel to keep you going. When you get bored, your audience can feel it.

A content strategy that lasts is built around three things: your perspective, your audience's real problems, and your genuine interests. When all three overlap, content does not feel like a chore. It feels like a conversation you actually want to be having.

Start With Content Pillars

Content pillars are the three to five core themes your content consistently lives inside. They are the buckets everything you create fits into.

For a personal brand focused on marketing and personal branding, your pillars might look something like:

Pillars do two things. First, they give you a structure so you are never staring at a blank screen wondering what to post. Second, they train your audience to know what to expect from you, which builds the consistency of message that earns trust over time.

Pick your pillars. Write them down. Every piece of content you create should live inside one of them.

Which Content Formats Are Actually Working in 2026

Not all formats are equal and not all formats suit every creator. Here is what is performing right now and who each format works best for:

Short text posts. Still the highest-engagement format on LinkedIn for most creators. Three to eight lines, one strong idea, a hook that earns the scroll stop. Fast to write, easy to consume, high share potential when the idea is sharp.

Carousels. Swipeable slide posts that break down a framework, a list, or a step-by-step process. These get saved more than almost any other format because people want to come back to them. If you have a framework or a checklist worth sharing, a carousel is the right format.

Personal story posts. Longer form, narrative-driven, built around a real moment and the lesson it taught you. These consistently outperform purely tactical content because they are human and specific. Your Friday series was a version of this done with a twist.

Short-form video. Raw, direct, one idea per video. The production bar is low. The authenticity bar is high. If you are comfortable on camera even occasionally, video builds trust faster than any other format.

Newsletters. Your owned channel. The place where you go deep, build real relationships with your audience, and say the things that would not fit in a post. If you are reading this, you already know how powerful newsletters are as a trust-building tool.

You do not need to use every format. Pick two or three that feel natural and rotate between them.

How to Batch a Month of Content in One Sitting

Batching is the single biggest lever most personal brand creators are not using. Instead of deciding what to post every day, you sit down once and create everything in one focused session.

Here is a simple batching framework that works:

Step 1: Brain dump. Set a timer for 20 minutes and write down every idea you have, no matter how rough. Do not judge anything. Just get it all out. You are looking for 20 to 30 raw ideas.

Step 2: Sort by pillar. Go through your brain dump and assign each idea to one of your content pillars. Throw out anything that does not fit. You should have a handful of strong ideas per pillar.

Step 3: Pick your month. Choose 12 to 16 ideas to develop into full posts. That is roughly three to four posts per week.

Step 4: Write in batches, not one at a time. Write all your story posts together. Write all your tips posts together. Write all your fun angle posts together. Your brain stays in the same gear and the writing goes much faster.

Step 5: Schedule. Load everything into a scheduling tool and set it. Then close the tab and go live your life until next month's batch session.

One focused session per month. That is all it takes to remove the daily "what do I post today" anxiety completely.

The Passion Angle Is Not a Gimmick

I want to come back to the Friday series because I think the lesson from it is bigger than just "post fun content."

When I connected my hobbies and interests to my personal branding content, something shifted. The content became more me. And when content is more you, it attracts more of the right people because the right people are looking for someone they genuinely connect with, not just someone who is technically correct.

Your interests are not separate from your brand. They are part of what makes your brand distinct.

Think about what you are genuinely passionate about outside of work. Books, travel, sport, cooking, film, music. Now ask yourself: is there a connection between that thing and the work you do or the topics you cover? There almost always is.

A content pillar built around an unexpected connection between your passion and your expertise is one of the most powerful and differentiated things you can put into your strategy. Nobody else has the exact same combination of expertise and interests that you do. That combination is content gold.

How to Stay Consistent Without Burning Out

Burnout is not caused by posting too much. It is caused by posting without a system.

When every post requires starting from scratch, deciding the topic, finding the angle, writing, editing, and publishing all in one session, it is exhausting. When you have a system, each session has one job and the cognitive load drops dramatically.

A few principles that keep consistency sustainable:

Lower the bar for drafts. Your first draft does not need to be good. It needs to exist. Write badly and edit later. The perfectionism that makes you stare at the screen for an hour is the same thing that burns you out.

Repurpose ruthlessly. A newsletter section becomes a LinkedIn post. A LinkedIn post becomes a carousel. A carousel becomes a short video script. One idea, four formats. You are not creating more content, you are getting more mileage from the content you already created.

Build in recovery. Plan one week per month where you post less. Use that week to batch the next month. The dip in posting frequency is worth it for the consistency it buys you over the following four weeks.

Know your minimum viable post. On a hard week, what is the simplest thing you can post that still delivers value? Have a template or a format ready so that even when life gets in the way, you can show up with something real in ten minutes.

Three Things to Do This Week

Content strategy is not about posting more. It is about posting smarter, from a place that is genuinely you, with a system behind it that does not require willpower every single day.

The Friday series did not save my content strategy because pizza is secretly a marketing framework. It saved it because it reminded me that the best content comes from a place of real interest, real energy, and a genuine desire to share something worth reading.

Build that kind of strategy and consistency stops being a discipline problem. It becomes a natural habit.

Until next time,
Jerry

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