I've found that writing a blog post is one of the best ways to learn something deeply. So I write stuff, not for marketing but own my personal development. Of course marketing is nice sub result, but I never focus too much on title like the OP.<p>My process looks like folowing<p>- Choose the subject (usually a very small topic or algorithm)<p>- Study it deeply for at least a weak, sometime months.<p>- Start writing the post, learning is still happening.<p>- Finish the post. At that point I usually have a very good understanding of the topic.<p>Never think that you can't write about a subject because you are not an expert. You may not be an expert but there are more people who know less than you and they will find the post worthwhile.<p><a href="https://blog.chamoda.com" rel="nofollow">https://blog.chamoda.com</a>
Good read. I used to blog very regularly years ago, but since the end of Google Reader and the growing popularity of Facebook and Twitter, I’ve been blogging less and less. Always wanted to pick it up again.<p>Anyway, this caught my attention:<p>> Since starting a normal job (haha) it’s gotten harder to write on Sunday evenings, since that’s when the work email starts<p>Don’t do this to yourself.
I've been blogging for about 2 years (120ish articles posted) and a lot of what he says makes sense.<p>Especially finding your voice. I still don't feel like I've figured that one out. My problem is I started blogging after working as a developer for 20 years so I want to talk about a billion different topics.<p>But the quickest way to become successful in this field is to write a ton about 1 specific thing and then suddenly you're "that guy" about the topic you're writing about.
A few counterpoints on benefits of using Medium over of your own blog:<p>- Submitting your articles to publications is a very easy way to get a lot of free exposure. For example, my most successful post [1] generated 36k views and 1.5k medium subscribers in the first couple of weeks just by being accepted to HackerNoon.<p>- Collecting email addresses is extremely easy. Design a pretty CTA image that links to your email sign up form. Bonus points if you'll create a free guide or some other giveaway. This makes Medium about 95-99% as effective at building an audience on a custom blog. The post mentioned above generated about 200 email signups over time, which is pretty good for free exposure I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.<p>- If you're interested in growing your own publication, you can easily request good stories written by other authors(one click on a menu under each post). That gives you free content and audience, if you want.<p>- For me personally, Medium's editor <i>significantly</i> lowers the barrier of entry. Something about the well designed WYSIWYG format takes away the pressure and makes writing more engaging. Besides it's easier to publish short-form content. Many of my posts start out as tweets that ended up being too long, or as HN/Reddit comments I'd like to share in a better format. 100-200 word Seth-Godin-style posts are easy to write regularly and medium's format encourages you to do that.<p>- You can always export your posts from medium into your personal blog. That's what I do for mine[2]. Write on medium to gain free audience and exposure, repost to your website, then promote posts from your site on twitter/reddit, thus still keeping all the benefits. You can even cherry pick your best articles - use medium to generate a ton of posts without any pressure to be good, and publish the ones you're most proud of on your site.<p>[1] <a href="https://hackernoon.com/full-stack-web-development-the-complete-roadmap-9fe43ec0ba32" rel="nofollow">https://hackernoon.com/full-stack-web-development-the-comple...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://startuplab.io/blog" rel="nofollow">https://startuplab.io/blog</a>
Somewhat relevant is a question I asked here several months ago. There were 181 comments, so there's enough to be able to extract some knowledge from them.<p>Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966190" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13966190</a>
I've been blogging for 14 years. The hardest thing for me is to dive deep into a particular topic. My blog reflects what interests me at a given time, and that can vary wildly.<p>This keeps the blog interesting to me, but means that the vast majority of my traffic is search engine based, rather than folks who are coming to my blog to find out what Dan thinks.<p>It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make, and have even blogged about: <a href="http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188" rel="nofollow">http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/2188</a>
> Titles are 80% of the work<p>If you writing fluff sure, but if your writing great content the title is less important. Good work sells itself. 90% content 10% title just my 0.02.
I'm curious about the point of running your own blog instead of hosting on Medium et al. I get that you want to avoid being locked in to a platform that could belly up, but isn't there a big benefit in network effect? Is he just counting on external channels like Twitter to promote his site?
Not blogging professionally, only for "personal use", but recently wrote up my experience of blogging for 6 years: <a href="https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-programming/" rel="nofollow">https://henrikwarne.com/2017/11/26/6-years-of-thoughts-on-pr...</a>
"Titles are 80% of the work" That's called click-bait.<p>If you want good advice, follow Jeff Atwood's post on the subject: <a href="https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-achieve-ultimate-blog-success-in-one-easy-step/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-to-achieve-ultimate-blog-s...</a>
I'm happy he wrote this, and I'll read it again at home tonight.<p>But what's the deal with "write the title last" and his examples all start with the title?
How to achieve money blogging in three easy steps:<p>1. Attract people with titles like this one<p>2. Make your blog popular (???)<p>3. Put advertising<p>Thanks for reading this post!<p>PS: How I made $100,000 a day with one weird trick<p>(Long sales copy follows)<p>"I used to not make money and now I made $20K! This system is great!"<p>(Keep<p>Scrolling)<p>If you act now it will be only $10!! And we chare you $300 a month later.<p>PPS: Does anyone know why they always use the word <i>weird</i> trick? The author comes across as super unbiased that way? LOL
I appreciate you taking the time to summarize all this; I've only begun writing in earnest this past year and I'm glad to know that the habits I'm working on developing now are sustainable for the long term.
My biggest issue with blogging is that my writing isn't that great, and that while I'd rather write on a wordpress platform, medium is just easier to write with (WYISWYG). Or even posting on a discourse forum is easier. That, and blogging is technically not productive so I can never find a happy mix between the 2.
I often find that writing blogposts is essential to help my learn. I find that understanding formuale and understanding how things work is often better for my academic learning than memorising formulae<p><a href="https://medium.com/@brandonskerritt51" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@brandonskerritt51</a>
<i>That’s why I refuse to write on Medium or Quora.</i><p>Quora is also remarkably corrupt and has a habit of banning people who speak out against bad practices in venture capital.
Tweet # 6 in her 'Tweet Storm'<p>> So I flipped to his feed, and sure enough, there'd been a post in November about him being in the hospital. I was never shown this post.<p>How does she know that she was NEVER shown this post?<p>Isn't it possible that she didn't scroll all the way past a few 100 status updates, and the friend's hospitalization post was #101 in that scroll list, and she just didn't make it that far with her limited attention span?