Comment by mcrittenden | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcrittenden | Hacker News Reader

Oh hey, I'm the person mentioned in the first sentence of this post. I was wondering why my stats went up today!

I've published a blog post every weekday for over a year now (today's was #280). It's been life changing for me. It's now my go-to method for figuring out what I think about something and for crystallizing those thoughts and finding links between them.

- I figured out that I wanted a new job while writing a blog post (and I started that new job 9 months ago).

- I learned that I'm not an introvert, but rather a shy extrovert, while writing a blog post.

- That led into me realizing I have social anxiety while writing a blog post.

There are lots more examples of that. I'm often surprised to find that I don't actually believe what I thought I believed when I started writing that blog post.

Journaling never stuck for me because it felt like work, but making it public made it exciting and fulfilling enough to become a habit that I look forward to each day.

Since the author mentioned Zettelkasten, I'll add this: https://critter.blog/2021/02/10/blogging-as-a-zettelkasten/

Congratulations on your consistency!

I've lately been contemplating whether writing shorter content regularly is better than writing long thoughtful content once in a while. Your work gives some motivation.

I have some questions,

1. How do you differentiating writing short content on social media vs your blog, Because If I have anything short to communicate I do so HN, Twitter, Reddit and so If I have to write about it again on my blog it feels bit disingenuous.

I saw your twitter handle and it looks like you're using just for broadcasting your content? Aren't you worried that you'd be caught in a bubble? Social media for what it's worth are good source for counter thought, Though often it's in the form of harsh criticisms.

2. SEO: How are the Search Engines treating your blogs for the small content length? I see that my long writes have been favored by the search engines. Did you see having images/videos in your content making difference?

3. Would you like to reveal your opening rates of your newsletter email? I'm curious whether shorter content results in decent open rates(While the average industry rate for newsletter is abysmal, Yet I do recommend everyone to have their own newsletter as it's the only thing which can save your blog if the Search Engine gods decides to shadow ban. Federated email for the win again!)

Hey thanks! Seems like your questions are based around building a following, and that's not something I've been concerned with, but here are some answers regardless.

1. I don't really use social media. My blog posts auto-post to Twitter and LinkedIn, and that's the extent of my social media engagement. I don't follow anyone on Twitter, for example. Sometimes people will email me if they feel strongly about a post. But for the most part, I solve for being "caught in a bubble" using a small Slack community I'm a part of, where some friends and former coworkers pick apart my blog posts and point out how stupid they are :)

2. I'm not really sure. I don't pay much attention to SEO since the traffic doesn't matter much to me. Don't get me wrong, I get a thrill when something I write makes the rounds and people seem to like it, but not enough to worry about optimizing for it.

3. I just use the built in Wordpress email subscription feature, which doesn't provide any open rates. I only have ~150 email subscribers anyway, and my blog itself only gets 100-150 views a day. In general, I've done basically no marketing for it outside of that I used to post a lot of them to HN until the domain got shadow banned.

Thanks for the honest answers, I appreciate it.

> I used to post a lot of them to HN until the domain got shadow banned.

This is interesting, Did you come to this conclusion because your articles didn't come to front page or did you measure through analytics immediately after posting?

Because when I post an article, and then visit the new page in incognito, my article isn't there, although articles posted after it appear fine. And if I post things from other domains using that same account, they show up on the new page immediately.

It makes sense - I spammed only my blog daily for months. I'm not complaining!

I see! Anyways, I feel you should mail to dang and perhaps make a deal that you wouldn't submit daily and perhaps if someone else submits a good content from your site occasionally then it's a win-win.

> I learned that I'm not an introvert, but rather a shy extrovert

Fun, I recently had the same revelation while driving. I realized that making new social connections or talking in public was frightening, but that I had no problem anymore overcoming those fears, and that they were fears, not something that defines me as an introvert.

Fascinating! It was a really big realization for me in terms of how day to day choices of how to spend my time. Here's the post that I was referring to, if you're bored: https://critter.blog/2020/10/27/am-i-an-extrovert-or-an-intr...

So how do you combine learning by writing and the more conventional learning by reading?

There's no such thing as learning by reading. It's always learning by acting (as opposed to passive reception, that just doesn't stick).

[1] https://giansegato.com/essays/edutainment-is-not-learning/

What I meant is that you can't produce all source material from your head, you have to consume some data before you synthesize your own conclusions.

I read a good bit too. I highlight the interesting bits (https://critter.blog/2021/04/01/the-evolution-of-my-ebook-hi...) and if something really stands out then I base a blog post on that thought. Here's a small example of that: https://critter.blog/2021/06/28/ignoring-the-reactionaries/

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