Hey everyone!
​
Before we get started with this week's edition, I have an announcement. Starting next week, we're rebranding the newsletter. No longer will you see "Insights With Era." From now on, I'll be going with a brand that makes sense. They say that in order to grow, you need to own a word. Well, there's a phrase and style of writing I've loved for a long-time and I intend to make it mine: "Atomic Writing."

So, let me welcome you to the new-and-improved newsletter... The Atomic Writer Files.

To celebrate, I want to introduce you to atomic writing and show you how you can use it to improve your writing and use it as the foundation for your entire content ecosystem.

Enjoy,

Era.

If you want to grow your personal brand in 2025, writing is the most important skill to learn.

Like you, I’m on a mission to grow and monetize my personal brand in 2025, requiring dozens of content pieces. Newsletters, social media, YouTube, TikTok—it’s a lot to master and there are only so many hours in the day.

But, for most people, their writing experience is limited to what they learned in school. School taught us writing principles; grammar, research, and vocabulary, but didn’t cover everything.

If you’re new to writing, there’s one format that will teach you more in 30 days than 30 books: atomic writing.

I’ve been writing for a long time—short stories, ghostwriting, YouTube scripts, you name it. This has given me a head start, but I have two weaknesses:

1. Unlimited word counts confuse me.
2. The 280 character limit on social media paralyzes me.

I’ve tackled this problem through atomic essays, my favorite way to write.

But what is an atomic essay?

There are only two rules.

1. 500 words or less.
2. Follow the STOP framework: single page, one topic.

Today, I’ll help you master atomic essays and use them to create content that grows your personal brand fast.

My system has three components:

1. Write an atomic essay every day.
2. Use your atomic essays as outlines for your articles or YouTube scripts.
3. Use your atomic essays as inspiration for a week’s social media content in 2 hours or less.

Let’s jump in.

Writing Atomic Essays

If you haven’t heard of atomic writing, here’s a crash course.

1. An atomic essay is under 500 words.
2. An atomic essay followings the STOP framework: Single topic, one page.

But, what’s the point?

Internet writing has been synonymous with long-articles and 280 character tweets for a long time. The problem is, writing a long article in a single session is difficult, and generating ideas for 20-30 social media posts can take a day.

Most people don’t discuss atomic essays as a content form, but if you’ve used Notion, Obsidian, or Kortex, you’ve heard of atomic notes.

There are three benefits of writing atomic essays:

1. They can be written, edited, and posted in 30 minutes or less.
2. They help us learn faster.
3. If you’re a content creator, they’re the best way to build your creative system.

If you’re new to writing, you might find long-form content challenging, or if you’re like me, you struggle with bite-sized posts. This makes it tough to build a daily writing habit because staring at a blank page for hours is discouraging.

With atomic essays, you can finish a piece in under an hour. The feeling of accomplishment from hitting post boosts your confidence and allows for consistent feedback to improve.

Another benefit is the requirement to focus on what matters to the reader. When you have a blank canvas and an uncapped word count, it’s easy to get lost and ramble.

Limiting your word count to one topic forces you to articulate your thoughts and ideas concisely, which is one of the biggest challenges for new writers.

And if you’re a content creator, let’s talk about how I use atomic essays to get things done.

How To Turn Atomic Essays Into Your Superpower

I use atomic essays as the foundation for every piece of content I create.

For long-form content like my newsletter or YouTube scripts, my atomic essays serve as the outline.

For short-form content, I use atomic essays to find bite-sized insights for posts using my homemade templates.

I write a new essay every morning for two reasons:

First, it’s fun.

Even if you love writing, it can be frustrating when it’s for growing your personal brand. One of my favorite productivity quotes comes from Ali Abdaal: “What would this look like if it were fun?”

Starting my day by finishing an essay gives me a sense of accomplishment, and that feeling of accomplishment serves as my motivation for the entire day.

Secondly, I believe that in order to consistently create valuable content, you need a library.

To grow a following you need to:

1. Post daily video content on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok.
2. Post on social media multiple times a day to maximize your reach.
3. Create a weekly newsletter to turn the borrowed social media audience into owned data.

To keep up, you can’t just come up with ideas on the fly; you need a catalog of ready-to-go thoughts.

When an idea pops into my head, I save it in Kortex for later. Every morning, I pick one and turn it into a short atomic essay. This helps me flush out ideas ahead of time, so when I sit down to create content, I can pull from one of my essays and get to work.

To convert my essays into newsletters, I find opportunities to add more value to the existing foundation.

There are two more benefits to atomic essays.

1. They work well on LinkedIn.
2. There’s a platform new creators overlook: Medium.

Medium is the YouTube of writing. You can post articles and grow a following if you post quality content regularly. Medium pays partners per view, and anyone can join the program after creating an account. I wouldn’t depend on the income as your primary source, but I’ve had several $200 months with a tiny following.

A bonus is that Medium followers are more loyal than followers on X or other platforms. Medium allows users to receive your posts in their inbox, creating a mini-newsletter and removing the need for followers to open the app. Email subscribers are your most dedicated fans.

I abandoned Medium when I left the gaming space and my following dwindled. Recently, I deleted my backlog of gaming articles and set a challenge: post one atomic essay daily. Within a week, a single essay got more impressions than a week’s worth of LinkedIn content.

Atomic essays are the social media hack, let’s talk about that.

Atomic essays are your social media growth hack.

I have over a decade of experience writing long-form articles, but social media platforms like X, Threads, and LinkedIn are new to me.

For the first 60 days, I was throwing tweets at the wall, hoping something would stick. I didn’t have a refined system and trying to create individual pieces of content made my posts repetitive and vague.

I’ve changed my strategy in the last two weeks, and my profile engagements have tripled.

My new strategy is using my library of atomic essays to create 20-30 niche-specific content pieces with different topics to keep my feed fresh.

Here’s how I do it:

First, I visit my library. I’ve written 7 unique atomic essays this week, giving me 7 sources for inspiration. A hack for staying under the 500-word cap is using each section title as the hook.

I usually have 3-4 subheadings in each essay, followed by 4-5 short sentences. I’ll use the subheadings as the hooks for my social media posts, then shorten my sentences into bullet points using my templates. I’ll also find a few sentences that are powerful enough to stand on their own.

Following this formula, I create roughly 20 posts in under an hour.

Second, I pick two or three atomic essays to use as threads. With a small following, asking someone to click “see more” to read your entire thread is a big ask, but threads are the best way to present big ideas and build authority. I’ll format my atomic essay into bullet points, then add a few lines of context under each to create a concise and value-packed thread or LinkedIn post.

I publish daily on LinkedIn, so having a backlog of atomic essays saves me at least 30 minutes daily.

This approach eliminates my blank page problem. Instead of staring at an empty screen with no idea what to say, I’m transforming existing ideas. It’s faster, less stressful, and produces more coherent content that resonates with my existing audience and gives new viewers a reason to click the follow button.

Atomic essays are versatile. They’re short enough to finish in 30 minutes, but pack enough value to make them worth reading.

If you’re struggling with your content process, try writing an atomic essay every day for the next 7 days and see how much easier content creation becomes.

Writing can be easy. It’s about building the right system.

​