Ask HN: How did you start writing?

I'm relatively new to social media publishing and monitoring (late to the party) but I'm trying to learn. I published one article that got up to 3k views, but that was about it. Now I'm reaching out to the Hacker News community.

Why do you write? Personal or business? Or was it just fun on SM that turned serious? Where is the line?

How do you write? Personal Website or blogging site? What about LinkedIn publishing? Or Medium?

How do you choose topics? I'm trying to put out information that is useful to a target audience, but I'm not sure how. Not a lot of people write comments for the volume of readers I'm reaching.

How do you promote? I use LinkedIn and Buffer for Twitter and Facebook, but without a lot of success. Very few retweets and/or even clicks.

How do you change? I'm using Buffer for analytics, but it's hard to analyze nothing. In the limited feedback I do receive, I don't know what to look for. What does a favorited tweet mean? Nothing? Something? Do I use a 5-1-1 approach to original vs. shared content or another?

Help! I need some direction. I don't want to become one of the people who posts once, then says, "Social media is hard" and gives up.