For a long time, I was reluctant to set up a personal blog. The usual doubts that you see online crept in: what if no one read it, or what if I didn’t know what to write about.
Then, in February, I felt lost; all my startup efforts went nowhere, my career hit a dead end. I didn’t know what to do. So, I decided to give it a go; and I’m glad I did! It led to many conversations about things that matter to me.
So now I want to push back against these doubts, and share what worked for me.
Write about personal experiences
Developers are often encouraged to write on technical topics - I can already envision a post titled “How to deploy a Python Lambda using Docker Containers and Terraform” . The reality is that we rarely work on something special, and someone else would’ve already covered our technical knowledge, in more depth.
Plenty of other posts on this further down!
On the other hand, each of us intereprets the world in a different way. It could be massively, it could be just slightly, but it’s always going to be novel. Take advantage of that! It’s going to be reflected in your writing.
Keep a list of content ideas
It’s hard coming up with good topics on the fly. So, I have a Notion page where I put down all my ideas, as soon as they come up in my head.
Top section of the Notion page, as of today
When I finally gather up the motivation to write a post, I go to the list, and I ask myself: “What’s the one thing I feel like writing about today”?
Share in the right places
No way in hell is my silly little post going to stand out in the sea of SEO-optimised content factories. I have to do the SE in POSSE, and share it in whatever online spaces that would prefer its contents.
I start off by replicating the post as a LinkedIn article:
Followed by a share of the link to the post on Hacker News:
And finally, Reddit. I find the most appropriate subs for it, and share either the post contents, or a link, depending on the house rules:
Write about what you actually talk to people about
Think of the times you gave advice, shared your experience, or explained something - whether it’s in person, or online. There’s always someone else who’d benefit from that, too.
I guarantee you’ll end up pointing someone to the blog post afterwards.
En fin
Hopefully I managed to convince you that it’s not that hard to start a blog that people bother commenting on. It probably won’t blow up; but, you might find someone that helps you in some shape or manner - I know I have!