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Ask HN: Tech Bloggers – what's more important – consistency or quality?
Hey Tech bloggers of HN!
I'm trying to focus more on my technical blog about software engineering, and I was wondering, what is more important - consistency or quality?
Based on my observations, if I produce quality content, this necessarily means that consistency suffers. On the other hand, I've heard that consistency is rewarded regardless of quality (assuming quality is not trash and occasional high quality content is published).
What is your experience? And what are some other ways to reach a wider audience?
Thanks!
[Edit] - Just to clarify 2 things:
1. I'm primarily interested in opinions of people who own their content (i.e. publish on their own website) and not trying to beat some platform algorithm.
and
2. When I say consistency - I still mean quality, but obviously when you post once a week, the quality will suffer as opposed to posting once a month for example.
- nicbou 4y agoQuality by far. There are a few domain names that I blindly trust. There are a few authors whose articles I blindly queue in my reading list. I don't care how often they post. When they do, I'm reading it. I can't say as much of consistent content creators with inconsistent quality.
- suramya_tomar 4y agoQuality is a must. It doesn't matter how frequently/consistently you post if the posts are not of good quality. There are a few blogs I follow where the author don't post very frequently but when they do the posts are extremely high quality so I keep checking them frequently even when they don't update regularly. The quote you are talking about about consistency being awarded is more geared towards appeasing the algorithms to get more followers/visibility etc
- skwee357 4y agoThanks! A side note, when you say you follow some blogs - how do you follow them? RSS? Newsletter? Manual checking?
- suramya_tomar 4y agoAt the moment I check them manually. I have all the blogs bookmarked under 1 folder and use the "Open All in Tabs" option in Firefox to open all of them together first thing in the morning.
- dimmke 4y agoI have been blogging for 5 years. Like, 2-3 posts a year. I personally prefer to only write a post when I really feel like I have something to say. Very few people read my blog posts until last week when two of them frontpage'd here. Then tens of thousands of people read them. Life is weird.
- dev_0 4y ago
- sourcecodeplz 4y agoConsistency is more about the algorithms, as someone else mentioned already. But when you think about, algorithms were built around human behavior/expectations. In my opinion you should aim for quality of course. A quality article/blogpost will most likely gather backlinks naturally and thus give you more credibility in the eyes of Google et al.
- otras 4y agoWhat are your goals for writing? You say both that you don't want to beat a platform algorithm, but you mention consistency being rewarded and wanting to reach a wider audience. You can absolutely make up for infrequency with consistently high quality posts. The best example there is Bartosz Ciechanowski's blog: https://ciechanow.ski/archives https://ciechanow.ski/archives
- skwee357 4y agoI write for multiple reasons: (a) to share what I know; (b) to learn something new; and (c) to hopefully recommend myself as a knowledgeable expert in a specific field, thus helping me generate income. The reasons I don't want to beat the algorithm - is that I own my content and publish it on my blog. I don't, yet, create content for algorithm based platforms, except for reposting my posts (with the correct canonical link) to Medium.