Ask HN: Bloggers, what are your tips? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Bloggers, what are your tips?

16 pointslnalx6 comments

I'd like to start a technical blog but I'm afraid to get started. What about frequency of new articles ? Topics ? Internationalization (for non-English) ?

This is not for money and popularity, just for passion.

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This is a topic I suspect many people are interested in, and thinking about. There is also a lot of information out there. In terms of frequency, there seems to be no upper limit to what is good, but there is a diminishing return curve:

http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchma...

And best time of day and day of week:

http://coschedule.com/blog/best-time-to-publish-a-blog-post/

Note that you can still tweet or facebook the blog after it is posted, and the tweet and facebook schedule may be more relevant since that is likely how people will find it.

The thing that I really wonder about: how do you find the time to produce something good. To write even once a week you have to find a topic, think about it, write about it and then edit it.

Note that those are the best day/time they've found to post. Everyone's audiences are different, even within the same industry. Start with the average and tweak it to be optimized with your specific use case.

Lots of people start blogs, publish a ton of articles, don't get the traction off the bat that they are expecting, and it slowly/quickly dies. Start small. Consistently publish (whatever you can handle in terms of pace, but 1-2 articles a week published at 9am is a good start). Specializing in a niche is huge; it keeps your blog focused, and if you do a good job, people will look to you as an influencer in that space.

Getting out there on Twitter/Reddit and building a following go without saying.

This is from my experience (I run a successful sports blog, and currently launching two other ones with the same model).

Good luck!

Edit: added 'Good luck!'

Frequency: You should probably shoot for at least twice a week.

Topics: Things you know well or have a keen interest in.

Internationalization: Try to learn how to avoid being implicitly exclusive and you should be okay. This will take some time, but is well worth learning about.

Passion: Figure out what you are getting out of it and if you aren't getting enough out of it, figure out what you want to get out of it and set some goals. It helps to get some feedback from somewhere. What kind and how much you need for this to be functional will depend on a lot of factors.

Be wary of overvaluing the feedback from "loud minorities." In other words, the biggest critics you have may not be representative. There may be a largely silent majority that likes what you do just fine. You need to figure out how to connect to them as best you can and get some kind of feedback that is meaningful and useful for you personally.

I tech blog on my site -

https://glenware.wordpress.com/

The main reason i do it is to record and share my understanding of things, and it acts as my engineers notebook

I'm quite happy when it gets even one visitor, but if you want traffic then write articles on problems that have required a bit of work. Also new technologies can drive traffic

Share excitement about products/technologies/vendors you love. This will bring you traffic, links, connections and possibly money.

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