I would say posting and getting upvoted on HN should be like a litmus test for the blog posts, write good blogposts, put your effort into it and post it on HN to see if people like it or upvote it. If they don't, get back to work and improve your writing or style enough to get upvoted by itself (not by rigging). By asking your friends to upvote your posts (which I am assuming are not good because if they were, you wouldn't need your friends) you might be able to get couple of thousand views to your website, make couple of dollars in advertising money and then maybe some discussion too, but you wouldn't learn failure and improvement. So all I can say is, treat your posts like litmus test and improve enough that they can't ignore you.

Be so Good, They can't Ignore you - Steve Martin