Deciding where to publish starts with a reader task and a way to evaluate the result. Instead of assuming that every public feed is declining or that a private community will work better, use the following proposed process to compare a small set of channels against your own purpose.
Define the outcome before choosing a channel
Write down whom the content should help and what a useful interaction would look like. For an explanatory article, that might mean readers reaching the full guide, asking a relevant question or returning to a related resource. Choose an outcome you can describe without treating every impression as attention or every reaction as trust.
Identify the resources needed to maintain each option: writing, editing, responding, moderation and access support. Include an owner for these tasks. If a channel requires work you cannot maintain, record that constraint before starting a trial.
Read the metric definitions
LinkedIn's member-post analytics documentation separates impressions, members reached, reactions, comments and reshares. Members reached is described as a unique-reach measure. These are different observations; preserve the metric name and its reporting window when comparing results.
Create a short measurement dictionary for the channels under consideration. Record what is counted, whether repeated events are included and which content or audience is covered. Do not combine a count of displays on one platform with a count of distinct readers elsewhere under a single label such as “engagement.”
If a desired observation is unavailable, state that limitation. A missing metric does not show that a channel failed, and a dashboard total does not by itself explain why someone read or responded.
Separate distribution from access and moderation
For each option, ask who may read, contribute, moderate, export or remove content. Check these capabilities in that service's current documentation and settings. Keep access requirements separate from assumptions about whether a community feels private or trustworthy.
W3C's ActivityPub specification describes a client-to-server publishing protocol and a server-to-server federation protocol for distributing activities. Treat those as architectural capabilities. Before choosing a particular implementation, examine its own access controls, moderation processes and portability options rather than assuming that federation answers those questions.
Run a trial with a declared scope
Pick a small content set and record the reader task, format, publication date and channel. Decide in advance which results you will inspect and how much editorial effort you are prepared to spend. This is a planning exercise, not a prescribed percentage allocation.
Where practical, compare content that addresses similar reader needs. Record differences in audience, timing, promotion and format. Avoid calling a comparison a controlled experiment if those conditions were not controlled. Keep examples of substantive questions or useful feedback alongside counts, with permission where needed.
Make a decision you can revisit
Review whether the trial reached the intended readers, produced useful responses and fit the available maintenance effort. Record what to continue, what to change and what remains uncertain.
Set a date to reconsider the choice and retain the definitions used in the evaluation. You do not need a prediction about the death of a platform to decide that a particular channel deserves more or less effort for a specific reader task. Keep that local decision separate from unsupported claims about industry-wide migration or the proportion of AI-written posts.