Ask HN: Growing a Blog? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Growing a Blog?

7 pointsextasia6 comments

How does one build an engaged audience?

Ive done 4 blog posts so far and really enjoy writing, but don't seem to get much engagement. I think ~100 people read each blog but I get max 1 comment and one or two (free) subs. Am I doing something wrong?

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Growing a blog is not an easy task, especially if you don't have an existing audience.

I'm blogging[1] actively for about an year, and my main channels of getting audience are HN and Reddit. I also believe in producing high quality content, so I get organic traffic from Google as well.

- Make sure to have your blog indexed by Google and Bing (use their search console to submit the blog for their crawlers to index). Make sure your blog is not punished (slow page loads, invalid HTML, missing meta attributes etc).

- Make sure to produce high quality content.

- Make sure to share you content through distribution channels like Twitter, HN, Reddit (where appropriate).

- Experiment with newsletter to collect subscribers to whom you can send your content.

I'm also experimenting with reposting my articles to Medium and dev.to, but I can't say whether is has a big impact as of right now. Obviously if you do repost, make sure to maintain correct canonical link back to your blog.

[1] https://www.yieldcode.blog/

As every desperate youtuber knows, the best way to get engagement is to ask for it, and to ask specifically. If you want more comments, try adding a question for users to answer into each post (and then, once you get some cash, integrate a challenge or drawing for a prize). If you want subscriptions, you need to integrate an advertisement for yourself in somewhere. If you want more clicks, you need to do this in other places on the internet that people traffic frequently, but without breaking spam rules. Etc. It's all about the slight psychological push it takes to move the lazy brain from observing to action.

1. Regularity/frequency

2. Depth

I will check a site if I know that it is more likely than not to have interesting new material on it (e.g. Derek Lowe's 'In the pipeline')

I will actively go hunt down a site if I know that it may have exceptional material on it (e.g. Steve Yegge's sporadic postings)

Build up a track record on either (or both) of these points and you'll pick up followers. Neither is easy of course. I refer to my own blog as "write only" because I lack on both fronts ;)

Edit:

After stalking your profile and reading what I presume to be your blog (well, it does have 4 posts on it), I would suggest that you're still finding your voice.

One thing I notice is that the posts are a bit hand-wavy high-level. On the "todo" post, for example, why not give a few concrete examples of the good and bad (in your opinion) types of todo comment? The code blocks will visually break up the page a bit, and hopefully you'll nerd snipe the reader too.

If you're feeling brave, try giving the draft you would otherwise publish to a friend with overlapping interests and get their feedback on what is and isn't interesting in your posts.

I'd reconsider the motives. Why do you want to grow your blog? What will you gain from the effort?

I’m also trying to do this and haven’t got very far yet.

The thing I’m trying to do is write things I would have liked to read myself, because it would have saved me time in my day to day work, or because it’s interesting to me.

4 tips to grow your blog's audience 1. Listen to your audience 2. Focus on branding 3. Keep new readers coming back 4. Promote your blog online

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