Last night on Twitter I asked if anybody had questions about starting to blog. Answers on Twitter tend to get lost, so I thought this was a good op...
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Thanks for this!
I did see the tweet but I'm still kind of shy, especially on social media 🙈
I recently started writing to practise my writing skills and keep track of the stuff I learn at the same time. But recently I've started to feel the desire to just explorer threejs in combination with WebGL and write about that. In the back of my mind I know I shouldn't care about this but I'm afraid that the topic may be way too niche for several posts. What are your opinions on writing on something niche vs writing something for a broader audience?
For sure!
I think that's a super cool blog post, I would read it! Even if it is niche, you're still establishing yourself as an expert on those topics which can be helpful careerwise! And sometimes more advanced content like that can really take off!
Thanks you so much for your reply! I think I'm just gonna give it a go 😊
Chiming in here as a niche blogger. Niche blog posting is something I do and I've found great success in doing it! Niche things may not grow as quickly, but it's really helpful for people to find you.
That's a very good point. The main reason I want to write about is because I have trouble finding beginner friendly resources myself. Thanks for your help 😊
Question: How did you figure out what to put on your privacy policy? At first I didn't think I'd need one, until I looked under the hood of my Jekyll setup. Also, there's just so much text there. Did you write it out yourself or you got a tool?
And thank you for inspiring me to start writing. 😊
Normally it doesn't matter that much. Most of the time we tend to do it because Google Ranking algorithm treats websites with Privacy Policy and Terms and conditions better. (Also helps if you have SiteMap)
Most policies i see, on individual bloggers sites are just copy/paste with few alterations.
Couple of Policies generators.
termsandconditionsgenerator.com/
gdprprivacypolicy.net/
Just fill in some basic details and you are done :). copy and paste it on your blog / website.
Thank you very much. It's this, a sitemap, site manifest and I'll be SEO ready
Yup that's what I used too!
Ah awesome! I used a generator for it!
I made a New Year's resolution to start blogging - mainly to get better at writing technical stuff (so far, I've been writing mostly proposals of conference talks and it was always taking me ages to write them). I'm also taking some time off from work and I will try to start consulting later this year, so first - I have more time now for the blog and second - I (hopefully ;P ) will be able to find clients through my writing.
So I wrote my first blog post in January and my resolution was to publish one post every week. So far, it's working well (yet, it takes me around 2 full days to write a 1000-1500 words post that is not even so technically advanced).
Some posts are boring, some get more traction. I wrote two posts about git .dotfiles and some interesting aliases that I'm using and they got quite popular on reddit's r/git - that was a very motivating feeling. Today, one of my posts on Medium (I'm crossposting from my blog to dev.to, Medium, HN, LinkedIn and reddit) got included in the "programming" topic and I finally got some readers there - around 30, but still (before, it was almost always 0 views). I wasn't really expecting many people to read my blog (ok, I was hoping for it, but not expecting too much traffic - meanwhile, I got 1,8k views in January).
Now, the best part of this whole story - when I was starting to write my first blog post, I found this very nice post called "My Blog Post Workflow: from Topic to Publication" on a blog called "The Zen of Programming". I've never heard about the author before (I don't follow the CSS and JS world too much), but I really enjoyed the read. It contained so much useful information and the style of writing was very nice to read, that I think it was the most useful blog that I found that day. Now, that I remember the author's name, I'm glad to see you here on dev.to (amazing community!) still giving great advices to people and thank you for helping me to start! ;)
Woah, that's so cool! Congrats on starting and gaining traction!
I love your post Ali, thank you! I really appreciated hearing about you not being afraid to retweet your post. I've feared so much that I'm going to annoy people if I repost. But really, you're right, if one person get help, then it's totally worth it.
Also the part of the haters/trolls. That is really hard. On here I had a post blow up big, then I was told it make hacker news and reddit too... well I was not prepared to go from the kind feedback on here to the rude and mean comments on the other platforms. I'll be using your "list of favorite comments" advice.
I am curious, what do you get for an average view on your post, do you find that matters?
Do you try and space our post or just post as you feel it.
Do you see your personal post (ones where you speak about something that has to do with you personally) or you tech post getting more traffic?
Awesome!
Agreed, it's so tough to get used to the negativity, there are usually so many "silent upvoters" that will upvote your content but won't leave a positive comment, and factoring them in is important!
I am all over the place, if I don't get on HN/Reddit usually around 15k-ish, but if they do well there I've gotten around the 70k mark, though when I was doing crazy high numbers, I usually was posting here, my own blog, and Medium so those numbers are all of those combined!
My tech posts definitely get a lot more traffic than anything personal, but I still like writing the personal ones!
Any suggestions for a markdown editor? I thought you mentioned one before in a post of yours but couldn't find it. Am trying to go for a post a week (if I get the inspiration for it 😂) a decent editor that manages my WIP posts would be a great improvement compared to making them in the DEV editor.
Preferable a free one, even if the features are limited. A native macOS app would be a benefit compared to an electron one but that is just an extra bonus.
I use VS Code with some plugins for markdown and spelling! It’s where I write my other code. Shorter posts I’ll write directly in the editor though!
Thanks for the quick reply!
I use JetBrains IDEs for most of my development (Android Studio, PHPStorm, ...) so installing an other IDE seems overkill to me.
I read a couple of times about MacDown, an open source markdown editor for macOS. And my favorite theme also supports it! draculatheme.com/macdown/
So going to give that a try for now but might switch in the future.
Yeah, that's a great question. I, unfortunately, can't keep on top of all my tweets/DMs/emails at this point, and have to selectively respond. Sometimes I'll have more time and will be able to answer more, but I think I have more reach and can help more people if I allocate my time to writing longer posts instead. I am always changing how I filter notifications -- sometimes I get all of them, sometimes only mentions, other times only stuff from people I follow back.
I'm looking to start a tech blog myself, so this is a very informative post, thanks :)
do you have tips on choosing visual stuff? basically, a blog post on this would be useful
Awesome!
I make my own diagrams for my posts -- just things that I think could do with a more visual explanation. Not sure if I have much more advice unfortunately!
Thank you very much for the post! It was so helpful! Also, thank you for answering my question (:
Hi, I am also finding a lot of the platforms not that engaging - like LinkedIn, receiving only recruiter messages. Unfortunately I am not so good at others either. Here is my current list of platforms I try to make time for dev.to/tomavelev/social-networks--...
I personally find a motivation realizing that most of the stuff out there will still exist in the future - so it is a legacy.
In a post of mine you could find my opinion about the emails and not only: tomavelev.com/blog/Do%20you%20have... . Also, putting something on a place you (truly) control will less likely get banned in a long run. And, while all this social media is free - it will be missed opportunity to not express yourself.
You mention Grammarly but have you ever tried Hemingway Editor? I'm liking it a lot more lately since it breaks down the types of infractions and is online or desktop (and desktop is a one-time payment rather than a subscription service like Grammarly)
I really like your post it's always a joy to read awesome posts from you.
Thank you so much!
Hi Ali! Do you use any tools to help you publish across different platforms or do you simply copy and paste between platforms?
I copied and pasted! But you can set up RSS pull in for both Medium and DEV!
Thank you very much for this article. This is so helpful for starters like us.
Thank you. There's a ton of valuable and useful information in this post.
Thanks for the answer.