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> If you don’t promote your work, no one else will. This has not been my experience. If you do interesting things then there are plenty of people who are willi

> If you don’t promote your work, no one else will. This has not been my experience. If you do interesting things then there are plenty of people who are willing to bring attention to it. I've been cold-emailed by journalists wanting to interview me without ever doing anything other than a) make my work publicly accessible and b) collaborate with like-minded people. Perhaps I'm lucky (probably). Perhaps my work would've gotten more attention if I spent more effort promoting it (probably). The things I do because I find them interesting are not things I feel the need to promote, because I'm not doing them for attention. If your goal is to grab a lot of attention, you will inexorably have to do things that are not interesting because the only way to achieve broad appeal is to not offend anyone's tastes and the only way to do that is to be bland.

gffrd 2y ago
> the only way to achieve broad appeal is to not offend anyone's tastes and the only way to do that is to be bland Careful. While I agree with the premise, you make it sound binary. You can have broad-er appeal while still being individual.
- meiraleal 2y ago
  One can have even broader appeal by offending everyone
  - gffrd 2y ago
    True! On that … - It's generally easier for people to know what they _don't_ like than what they _do_. Preferences are defined by process of elimination. - The commonality is: get lots of people on the same page about you, and you've got a big audience / broad appeal. But the most engaged audience is the one who has strong emotions attached, so being an offender guarantees a ravenous audience … and is generally easier.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  > Careful. I witnessed a memorable moment at work when an engineer responded to a VP and started by saying “careful.” Had it been another engineer, it would have been ignored as authoritative-sounding filler. But the VP did not take it well.
  - gffrd 2y ago
    I would have loved to seen their expression … That's like an actor breaking character during a play and it pops the bubble of reality the audience has been living in.
  - Bjartr 2y ago
    Do you mind explaining why this was problematic? I'm working to track down things that I say that might be interpreted in ways other than I intend, and this sounds like a mistake I would make. What's the problematic message that's being sent here from the engineer to the VP?
    - websterisk 2y ago
      I suspect that the issue here is that either the VP was insecure or that the engineer said it in an accusatory way (or both). In all likelihood, the engineer meant "that approach/idea/decision has risks we should consider." The VP likely heard "you are suggesting something wrong/dangerous/ignorant." A nuance here is that the engineer probably implied that "(We should be) careful (in our consideration)" and the VP perceived "(You need to be) careful (and you don't seem to be)"
    - hermannj314 2y ago
      You say careful, and their ego probably hears you calling them careless. Careless is typically an avoided behavior so this hurts them. They view themselves as careful and wise. You think they're dumb. (Not necessarily a syllogism, but the ego is weird) I'm possibly paraphrasing and simplifying too much but "How to Win Friends and influence People" mentions being very cautious about correcting people, more so correcting them publically, even when you are correct.
0xEF 2y ago
When people give advice to content creators in the form of "when you do interesting things" my brain immediately jumps to one question; how do you know what other people consider interesting? Honest question, because I am just starting out, myself. I have a small blog where I share my opinions and projects related to technology I enjoy. However, if I were to do a thought experiment and assume my audience is HN readers, I'd hesitate to say anyone here would find my posts very interesting. I like them, but I am not sure who else would. I genuinely do not understand how to evaluate an audience, so I just write what I like to write and hope for the best.
- moehm 2y ago
  I know people here don't like site analytics, but for this one it's pretty good. Setup Matomo or similar analytics software, write about a bunch of topics and review after a year which topics your readers are most interested in, for which they search on your site etc.
- rednafi 2y ago
  Don’t evaluate your audience; it’s a losing game. Write things so you can find them later, and leave the rest to chance. Worked quite well for me.
- econ 2y ago
  It primarily refers to what you consider interesting. When you have a decent number of posts and some visitors you can see which sub set they find the most interesting. You can also make a blog about things that don't interest you at all. This is the shortest route to success and you will hate your new job :)
saelthavron 2y ago
>> If you don’t promote your work, no one else will. > This has not been my experience. If you do interesting things then there are plenty of people who are willing to bring attention to it. I've been cold-emailed by journalists wanting to interview me without ever doing anything other than a) make my work publicly accessible and b) collaborate with like-minded people. Both of those are promoting your work so it is your experience. Your experience just has been that you haven't had to put much work into promoting your work so it doesn't feel like promoting your work to you.

gffrd 2y ago

> the only way to achieve broad appeal is to not offend anyone's tastes and the only way to do that is to be bland Careful. While I agree with the premise, you make it sound binary. You can have broad-er appeal while still being individual.

meiraleal 2y ago
One can have even broader appeal by offending everyone
- gffrd 2y ago
  True! On that … - It's generally easier for people to know what they _don't_ like than what they _do_. Preferences are defined by process of elimination. - The commonality is: get lots of people on the same page about you, and you've got a big audience / broad appeal. But the most engaged audience is the one who has strong emotions attached, so being an offender guarantees a ravenous audience … and is generally easier.
shermantanktop 2y ago
> Careful. I witnessed a memorable moment at work when an engineer responded to a VP and started by saying “careful.” Had it been another engineer, it would have been ignored as authoritative-sounding filler. But the VP did not take it well.
- gffrd 2y ago
  I would have loved to seen their expression … That's like an actor breaking character during a play and it pops the bubble of reality the audience has been living in.
- Bjartr 2y ago
  Do you mind explaining why this was problematic? I'm working to track down things that I say that might be interpreted in ways other than I intend, and this sounds like a mistake I would make. What's the problematic message that's being sent here from the engineer to the VP?
  - websterisk 2y ago
    I suspect that the issue here is that either the VP was insecure or that the engineer said it in an accusatory way (or both). In all likelihood, the engineer meant "that approach/idea/decision has risks we should consider." The VP likely heard "you are suggesting something wrong/dangerous/ignorant." A nuance here is that the engineer probably implied that "(We should be) careful (in our consideration)" and the VP perceived "(You need to be) careful (and you don't seem to be)"
  - hermannj314 2y ago
    You say careful, and their ego probably hears you calling them careless. Careless is typically an avoided behavior so this hurts them. They view themselves as careful and wise. You think they're dumb. (Not necessarily a syllogism, but the ego is weird) I'm possibly paraphrasing and simplifying too much but "How to Win Friends and influence People" mentions being very cautious about correcting people, more so correcting them publically, even when you are correct.

0xEF 2y ago

When people give advice to content creators in the form of "when you do interesting things" my brain immediately jumps to one question; how do you know what other people consider interesting? Honest question, because I am just starting out, myself. I have a small blog where I share my opinions and projects related to technology I enjoy. However, if I were to do a thought experiment and assume my audience is HN readers, I'd hesitate to say anyone here would find my posts very interesting. I like them, but I am not sure who else would. I genuinely do not understand how to evaluate an audience, so I just write what I like to write and hope for the best.

moehm 2y ago
I know people here don't like site analytics, but for this one it's pretty good. Setup Matomo or similar analytics software, write about a bunch of topics and review after a year which topics your readers are most interested in, for which they search on your site etc.
rednafi 2y ago
Don’t evaluate your audience; it’s a losing game. Write things so you can find them later, and leave the rest to chance. Worked quite well for me.
econ 2y ago
It primarily refers to what you consider interesting. When you have a decent number of posts and some visitors you can see which sub set they find the most interesting. You can also make a blog about things that don't interest you at all. This is the shortest route to success and you will hate your new job :)

saelthavron 2y ago

>> If you don’t promote your work, no one else will. > This has not been my experience. If you do interesting things then there are plenty of people who are willing to bring attention to it. I've been cold-emailed by journalists wanting to interview me without ever doing anything other than a) make my work publicly accessible and b) collaborate with like-minded people. Both of those are promoting your work so it is your experience. Your experience just has been that you haven't had to put much work into promoting your work so it doesn't feel like promoting your work to you.