The Content Framework That Worked In 2019 Is Now Working Against You

Taylor Borden, an editor at LinkedIn, emailed me last week about a question he posed to a number of writers for a special edition of his newsletter, Work Shift. The premise was supported by data showing that LinkedIn business has increased by nearly 70% year over year, more than six out of 10 of those entrepreneurs also identify as content creators, and people who post weekly see up to 4x more profile views, and commenting drives 2.5x more.

His question was simple: What course has changed the way you approach content creation? And if you were starting your LinkedIn journey from scratch, how would you view your first 10 posts?

I almost replied with an outline. Then I remembered why frames are a problem.

4 Sections Sounds Perfect. The data did not agree

Back around 2009, Guy Kawasaki asked me for a few pages of his book “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions.” I’ve outlined four ways companies can create YouTube videos that really engage an audience: inspire viewers with touching stories, teach with useful information, enlighten they are also documentaries, or have fun by making fun of them.

Four felt perfect. It was clean, instructive, and easy to remember. I used it. Some people use it. I even developed it into a Search Engine Journal article years later, “What is the Content Marketing Matrix & Do We Need It?”

Then the data kept coming. In 2023, I was writing a separate SEJ article with not four, but 39 emotions – count ’em.

I had never connected those two pieces until Borden’s email forced me to do so. The gap between them, 14 years and 35 emotions, is the most useful thing I’ve learned in 24 years of writing about this industry. The four-section outline was not a mistake when I wrote it. It was just the size of the dataset I had access to at the time. The error would have considered it as completed.

Stuck Workers Are The Ones Who Love Their Bosses

This is the part of my response to Borden that applies specifically to anyone doing SEO, content marketing, or social media marketing work right now, not just LinkedIn posting.

Every frame you build, every system of categories, every “four types of X” or “five categories of Y,” is a summary of what the evidence showed you on the day you created it. An overview of AI did not exist when most of our content frameworks were written. With AI Mode, embedded search by Gemini, or AI Overview from 2.5 billion user results. The frameworks created for the 10-blue-link world were incorrect for that world. They are just the size of the dataset that was available at that time.

Practical practitioners are those who continue to use the 2019 framework for the 2026 data because the framework is standard and the new data is not disruptive. Those who keep growing are those who are always curious to ask, “What would this structure look like if I could rebuild it today, with everything I know that I didn’t know then?”

This is the very trap most AI overview content strategy falls into right now. The “answer the question in 40 words at the top of the page” framework was created in a world where the goal was to win the featured caption. That frame was not a mistake in that world. But the AI ​​Overview doesn’t leave a page that says it all; they reward the page the user clicks on after View All, and they reward it for being above the summary that sent them there. A page designed to overcome the old framework, by design, is a blank page that will be served to that user. The four-stage model and the 40-response model failed for the same reason; both were finished products built for a data set that continued to grow after the deadline.

What I Can Tell Anyone When Starting Their First 10 Posts

This is the answer I gave Borden directly, and it’s the same advice I would give to anyone in SEO, content marketing, or social media marketing from scratch, on LinkedIn or anywhere else.

Find something you believe in with confidence. Then you find research that contradicts you. Write about the gap, honestly, including the part where you were wrong or incomplete.

This one move does three things at once. It gives you a topic (your existing belief), it gives you a hook (the data that challenges it), and it gives you credibility that a polished, unchallenged draft never can, because readers can tell the difference between someone defending a position and someone honestly reviewing it.

2 Steps to Implement This Week

First, pull out the oldest draft, list, or “types of X of Y” piece you’ve published, one you’re proud of, still quoted or linked to. Search for publications on that exact topic in the last 12 months. If the four-stage draft from 2009 quietly calls for 39 by 2023, whatever you wrote in 2019 or 2021 probably has the same gap waiting for 2026 data. Do not protect the old version. Write an update piece, and clearly state what has changed and why.

Second, before you publish anything framed as “X ways to do Y,” ask whether you’re presenting a summary or a conclusion. The summary says, “Here’s what the evidence shows right now, and I would expect this number to grow.” The conclusion is, “This is a complete list.” The first draft is pretty good. The second draft is the one you will have to go back to in front of an audience, as I recently did with my 2009 draft, publicly, 14 years later.

The business data shared by Borden, 70% growth, 4x profile views on weekly posters, is not really about LinkedIn specifically. It’s proof that many people are now doing what writers and SEO practitioners have always done, which is to put a belief out in public and find, often quickly, that the evidence supports it. The lesson is the same either way. Always want to know what the data says next, especially if it doesn’t agree with the outline you’ve already published.

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Featured image: Roman Samborskii/Shutterstock