5 ms·

"If you write it they will come" (paraphrased.) This used to work and it CAN work but it is incredibly rare. An amazing article that isn't shared can languish n

"If you write it they will come" (paraphrased.) This used to work and it CAN work but it is incredibly rare. An amazing article that isn't shared can languish no matter how good it is. At least a bit of marketing - eg. at least post it to a few social networks, can go a long way. I always look at it as: the better the quality of the article the less hard you have to work at marketing.

ForRealsies 9y ago
The wider your talent stack (writing, marketing, webdev, etc.), the luckier you'll be.
- abrie 9y ago
  In other words, you need to write more than just words. This has certainly been my experience over the last decade or more of chasing the thing. At this point I've written some fairly solid web code and a decent narrative, but as for the marketing... well, let me just post a link[0]. [0] https://goeiebook.ca/story/bussing https://goeiebook.ca/story/bussing
- nils-m-holm 9y ago
  More specific: your luck is any talent X times your marketing skills. Corollary: with marketing skills going toward zero, no amount of talent for X will help. Yes, talking from experience. :/
Huhty 9y ago
A colleague of mine recently wrote about exactly this. Here's a few excerpts: If your goal is to be heard, you need to fucking scream! We spend so much time crafting our thoughts into these prefect morsels of information, yet so little time finding an audience to read and acknowledge our work. The average blogger spends roughly 3.5 hours creating a blog post, yet only about 15 – 20 minutes promoting it. It’s published! My work is over, it’s time to celebrate. Ugh, nope. It’s what you do after you hit that publish button that will set you apart from the rest. Don’t believe the “if you build it, they will come” fallacy. It’s the single biggest reason most bloggers fail to secure an audience for their content and ignore the 80/20 principle. Having said that, finding an audience is no easy feat. In fact, most successful bloggers will argue it takes considerably more effort than the blog post itself. It’s a slow and steady process as each little plug here, a share there, a mention or a comment compounds the next until you start seeing serious results. Source: http://blogenhancement.com/blog/2017/09/13/if-crafting-your-blog-post-is-a-journey-what-happens-when-you-arrive-at-your-destination/ http://blogenhancement.com/blog/2017/09/13/if-crafting-your-...
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  seek out relevant forums, communities, social media groups, and join them, be active, and share! Anywhere your blog posts will be on-topic and appreciated is where you want to be. There are hundreds, even thousands of communities and resources built around the very things you’re likely blogging about, so seek them out and get your hands dirty. A lot of online spaces have rules against self promotion. I have not found much success by trying to promote my own writing myself. I have to wonder what pieces of information are missing from such advice. I often feel like the monkey in some story I heard that learned the wrong word for some animal and this was reinforced by weird coincidence. The other issue I run into is that I get the wrong kind of attention for the wrong things. This seems very resistant to being translated into anything desirable.
  - user5994461 9y ago
    Shameless self promotion for HN: https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-page-how-much-traffic-do-you-get/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-p... Being on the front page for a few hours will bring you more visits than google search for 10 years.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - Huhty 9y ago
    Of course a lot of communities have strict rules against blatant self-promotion. Otherwise they would be overrun by spam and ruined. But if you are there, as a professional/expert in a specific subject, and provide "value" and stay on topic, it's usually OK to drop a link once in a while (sometimes for needed context). I simply try and follow the Reddit famous "10% self-promo" rule everywhere, not just on Reddit.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
vonnik 9y ago
[Disclosure: I used to write for a living.] You definitely need marketing to close the loop and get your writing to the readers, and it's a totally different skill set. I'd there's another stage between writing and distribution, which is the editing/rewriting loop. The only kind of writing is rewriting, as a great (re)writer once said.[0] That means writing will probably take much longer than you expect, if you want it to strike the right tone and be true. Another probably important point for aspiring writers is that in order to have something worth saying, you have to live something big, or learn something valuable, and generally observe things keenly if you want to have something new. (And if you don't plan to write something new, why are you writing at all?) So there's work to do before writing happens. You need to read and learn and ask questions of people who know more than you, so that you can distill everything you've read and bring it to the reader. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1025221-the-only-kind-of-writing-is-rewriting https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1025221-the-only-kind-of-wr...
simonebrunozzi 9y ago
And viceversa is unfortunately also quite true.

ForRealsies 9y ago

The wider your talent stack (writing, marketing, webdev, etc.), the luckier you'll be.

abrie 9y ago
In other words, you need to write more than just words. This has certainly been my experience over the last decade or more of chasing the thing. At this point I've written some fairly solid web code and a decent narrative, but as for the marketing... well, let me just post a link[0]. [0] https://goeiebook.ca/story/bussing https://goeiebook.ca/story/bussing
nils-m-holm 9y ago
More specific: your luck is any talent X times your marketing skills. Corollary: with marketing skills going toward zero, no amount of talent for X will help. Yes, talking from experience. :/

Huhty 9y ago

A colleague of mine recently wrote about exactly this. Here's a few excerpts: If your goal is to be heard, you need to fucking scream! We spend so much time crafting our thoughts into these prefect morsels of information, yet so little time finding an audience to read and acknowledge our work. The average blogger spends roughly 3.5 hours creating a blog post, yet only about 15 – 20 minutes promoting it. It’s published! My work is over, it’s time to celebrate. Ugh, nope. It’s what you do after you hit that publish button that will set you apart from the rest. Don’t believe the “if you build it, they will come” fallacy. It’s the single biggest reason most bloggers fail to secure an audience for their content and ignore the 80/20 principle. Having said that, finding an audience is no easy feat. In fact, most successful bloggers will argue it takes considerably more effort than the blog post itself. It’s a slow and steady process as each little plug here, a share there, a mention or a comment compounds the next until you start seeing serious results. Source: http://blogenhancement.com/blog/2017/09/13/if-crafting-your-blog-post-is-a-journey-what-happens-when-you-arrive-at-your-destination/ http://blogenhancement.com/blog/2017/09/13/if-crafting-your-...

DoreenMichele 9y ago
seek out relevant forums, communities, social media groups, and join them, be active, and share! Anywhere your blog posts will be on-topic and appreciated is where you want to be. There are hundreds, even thousands of communities and resources built around the very things you’re likely blogging about, so seek them out and get your hands dirty. A lot of online spaces have rules against self promotion. I have not found much success by trying to promote my own writing myself. I have to wonder what pieces of information are missing from such advice. I often feel like the monkey in some story I heard that learned the wrong word for some animal and this was reinforced by weird coincidence. The other issue I run into is that I get the wrong kind of attention for the wrong things. This seems very resistant to being translated into anything desirable.
- user5994461 9y ago
  Shameless self promotion for HN: https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-page-how-much-traffic-do-you-get/ https://thehftguy.com/2017/09/26/hitting-hacker-news-front-p... Being on the front page for a few hours will bring you more visits than google search for 10 years.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- Huhty 9y ago
  Of course a lot of communities have strict rules against blatant self-promotion. Otherwise they would be overrun by spam and ruined. But if you are there, as a professional/expert in a specific subject, and provide "value" and stay on topic, it's usually OK to drop a link once in a while (sometimes for needed context). I simply try and follow the Reddit famous "10% self-promo" rule everywhere, not just on Reddit.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

vonnik 9y ago

[Disclosure: I used to write for a living.] You definitely need marketing to close the loop and get your writing to the readers, and it's a totally different skill set. I'd there's another stage between writing and distribution, which is the editing/rewriting loop. The only kind of writing is rewriting, as a great (re)writer once said.[0] That means writing will probably take much longer than you expect, if you want it to strike the right tone and be true. Another probably important point for aspiring writers is that in order to have something worth saying, you have to live something big, or learn something valuable, and generally observe things keenly if you want to have something new. (And if you don't plan to write something new, why are you writing at all?) So there's work to do before writing happens. You need to read and learn and ask questions of people who know more than you, so that you can distill everything you've read and bring it to the reader. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1025221-the-only-kind-of-writing-is-rewriting https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1025221-the-only-kind-of-wr...

simonebrunozzi 9y ago

And viceversa is unfortunately also quite true.