Ask HN: Getting started with my technical blog. What to write? How to start? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Getting started with my technical blog. What to write? How to start?

6 points2bor-2n16 comments

I am thinking of starting my blog solely for advancing my career and putting myself out there on the internet. I am a frontend dev and will mostly write posts on JavaScript.

I am not a native English speaker nor have I ever done any serious writing before. Looking for some suggestions on how to get started. What sort of process do I have for making post, should I start posting about basic JavaScript stuff or go with explaining deeper concepts of JS.

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If you learn something, just write about it. Don't overthink it. Likely no-one will be reading your blog unless you have something super unique/interesting. If you have something really compelling (eg, solved some problem other people are hitting) it doesn't matter too much how good the English/blog structure is; as long as it has useful information, you are winning.

I decided to make my personal website just that: personal. It's a public notebook with no narrative. There's a bit of everything from motorbike repair instructions to recipes.

Nobody reads that stuff. Those who do won't advance my career. I either write to help people with the same problem, or to organise my thoughts. My blog is more popular than most, and it had no impact on my career whatsoever.

Not everything you do has to be the means to an end. Save some space to just be yourself.

Completely agree with this. I have a semi-successful blog and what I would consider to be a successful career. My blog has never helped my career, but I enjoy the process of writing and putting my thoughts/opinions/learnings out there.

Just do it for yourself. If anything else comes of it, that’s a bonus.

Nonetheless I'm surprised by who reads my blog. I do have a tiny following, it seems. At the very least some people reach out and are weirdly familiar with what I'm working on. It's a bit like learning that some people actually run your open source code against all expectations.

Still, no job came out of it all. Not even a career opportunity. It's just a place to put thoughts and showcase projects.

Write to advance your career, but not for the reasons or how you might think. You’re not going to be a tech celebrity. You’re probably barely gonna get noticed.

But you can get noticed by the people in your immediate orbit.

Need to communicate an idea to a colleague? Write a blog article instead of an email.

This helps you in a couple of ways:

It polishes your English.

It polishes your thinking, and ensures you filled in the gaps in your thinking.

It creates a (more) durable asset than email/slack.

It impresses your colleagues and boss who may begin to perceive you as more valuable for having a public presence.

Honestly, write about what interests you. Don’t try to over optimize

Write about whatever interests you. What article would the past you like to read? Some suggestions:

- you could write a low-effort "today I learned" posts, where you would share tips and tricks about something that you've learned during your day job (e.g. https://shime.sh/til/)

- you could write a high-effort "deep dive" posts, where you would explore how a certain library works under the hood (e.g. https://shime.sh/deep-dive/)

Although deep dive posts take more effort, it's worth it, since you'll learn a lot about something just by explaining how it works.

I like the overall concept of you blog, design is also neat and lean. What platform are you using for it?

Thank you. It's using Jekyll for generating HTML and Tailwind for styling.

There are far too many topics out there. Don't write about obvious things. The world doesn't need another "how to get started with React" article.

Write about things you find interesting and want to explore. You can also write about your experience debugging things as it happens. I love SO because it's full of people who hit bumps, then try something else, but these days that no longer happens.

One thing you can try is just to respond to questions - Quora, SO, HN, with an article. If the question is out there, the solution isn't obviously Googleable.

Hi,

I write on https://timdaub.github.io and I've collected about 150k impressions over the last year or two (check my plausible.io profile).

I suggest that you just start writing. If you look at my early posts, you can see that their variance was super high. I explored lots of weird ideas, styles and topics.

Recently, I've seen my writing "stabilize" - but in fact, in the background I've now also started to explore other mediums for creating essays (audio).

I always wanted to be this genious tech blogger like Slatestarcodex or julian.com etc., but I've realized that my today's work is elsewhere. I'm OK with that and it's amusing to see where I'm steering myself. Feels like a journey.

I now enjoy the process of writing. It contributes to my mental health, career and it has become even a hobby of mine.

Just start and keep at it.

I like the design of the website. What the stack you build this on? Or are you using a platform instead?

I'm using hexo and the theme is called "cactus" I believe.

I got a website with more than 10000 article and it did not help at all.

Your career is coupled to what you can bring to a company.

Check where you want to add value and you will get your answer over what you need to write.

>I got a website with more than 10000 article and it did not help at all

Really? Do you mind sharing you blog?

I get no notification / email from hn. Sorry for the delay.

https://datacadamia.com

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