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Ask HN: Do you promote your personal blog? How?
19 points by bovem on March 22, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments


# First, write what nobody else can.

Take your experiences and your knowledge your distinct flavor and distill it into a potent package.

For an example, check out my essay currently on the front-page:

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35259588

It also helps to "Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere" (POSSE). This gives you a nice balance of freedom and control over your online identity.

[2] https://indieweb.org/POSSE

This essay provides great advice on finding things to write about:

[3] https://www.benkuhn.net/writing

# Second, be helpful (and opportunistic).

In order to be helpful, you must (1) know stuff and (2) share it.

To learn stuff, read voraciously and write obsessively.

To share things, be everywhere first. I have a bunch of keyword notifications to help people in my fields of expertise.

If you can't be there first, be there better. Hone skills that are difficult to ignore.

[4] https://hnrss.github.io

# Third, don't be annoying.

This takes finesse, and I'm personally still trying to find the balance.

People will signal to you when you're not wanted. Listen to those messages and cool down. Other people are generally not your problem.

Here's an example of how to be annoying:

[5] https://taylor.town


I used to promote https://confessionsoftheprofessions.com in the beginning by paying for posts and encouraging those writers to share with their social media to finding forums that were dedicated to accepting blog posts from others and having them share it.

Eventually, freelancers and marketing agencies liked my website and called it their home.. and I don't do any marketing for it anymore. They do all the work for me and I have the platform they need. Never paid for advertising or marketing for it. It's been an amazing 10 years... at least a dozen projects spawned from it. I have spoken to so many people from all over the world who have an article on there. Approaching 5,000 articles and counting. I'll probably keep it going until my last breath.

My website became my passion for what I was studying in college... didn't get a chance to pursue my psychology degree beyond a bachelors in science because I got into programming and web design and never left... so this kept me at least pursuing the interest of it.


Whatever you do, try to add value that is relevant to the conversation, so that it is not just plain marketing or selling (people can smell it).

There is already so much misinformation masqueraded as content today, offer your audience some value they can take away.

I try to share insights wherever I see it: philosophy, economics, movies, corporations, etc. Helps me train observation, writing and analysis skills: https://trendguardian.medium.com/


I usually post articles from my blog[0] in relevant sub reddits and here on HN.

I also try to write high quality content, and about things I worked with or encountered-thus hitting relevant Google terms, which in turn brings me a little bit of organic traffic.

[0] https://yieldcode.blog


Usually I share new articles on Linkedin and sometimes post here. Then I link my posts to colleagues and friends when it can be of help.

My blog: https://marcolabarile.me


https://jonpauluritis.com

I don't know if I would say "promote" but I post articles here (HN), twitter, and email my friends and family some times.


I usually promote it on Reddit or Quora, I invite you to check it out: https://www.ratherlabs.com/blog


Is this your personal blog? Rather Labs seems like a rather large firm. No knocks on anything though the website is great


I share links to my blog about React on forums/twitter if it helps the person asking a question (my hack for this is that if I see a common enough question, I write an article for next time I see it)


That is both helpful to people and good marketing.

Good work.


nope. i opted myself out of the wayback machine and have obliterated my online precedence as much as possible.

for those of us who began forming memories as the berlin wall fell, it's been quite a ride -- it seemed, for this brief moment that we'd all kind of live in arcologies with solar powered desalination or something and instead... [tabs over to Al Jazeera] yikes!! russia are JERKs.

strive to be the ghost in the machine if you want to be a hacker.


I tweet from my personal account and post blogs here.


I link to something I've written in a conversation if it's relevant (like this - my blog is https://muxup.com/), and post articles to HN, lobste.rs, or an appropriate subreddit if no-one else does and I think it's relevant to people there.




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