I have been to over 20 calls.
Many people asked me: What platform should I post on?
I think that’s a valid question but the wrong question to ask.
The real question is: What platform should I launch on?
Your blog 📄
If you are in tech and want to grow your product, you need a blog that can be good for:
Motivated developers who wish to learn more about you.
Developers who are doing research about a problem and want to find a solution (SEO).
I don’t like to discuss other benefits, such as credibility and education, that can be for another post.
Now that we have established the importance of a blog, why would you want to use an external blog for your content?
Your external blog 📜
What if:
- People are not aware that they have a problem. (Product without market dominator, such as Novu).
- SEO has a meager amount of traffic, and the competition is stiff.
- You don’t have enough time to wait for long-term channels.
You can use external blogs. They have a lot of mixed visitors who scour their platform daily and might be interested in what you offer.
Those platforms work in the “marketplace” mode, where they promote interesting and trending articles.
Nothing stops you from posting your article on your website blog and then posting your articles to all the other platforms with a canonical link back to your website. I used a freelancer on Upwork for a few dollars to post my articles on DEV, Hashnode, Hacknoon, and Medium whenever I have a new article.
And for the question, “What platform should I post on?” The answer is: all of them.
Traffic to launch 🚀
As I mentioned, the biggest question is, “What platform should I launch on?”
When you launch something, you send every possible traffic you currently have: Social Media, Newsletter, etc. to the platform of your choice. Your main goal is that the platform will reward you with the traffic you send. Here are my thoughts about the different platforms:
Medium
Medium is a generalized platform, and it has the most significant amount of audience for developers. If you managed to trend on Medium, you might get tens of thousands of developers reading your content. But it’s hard.
If you are starting, here is what I would do:
I would not put my launch on Medium. I will post my articles there regularly, and after a while, some publications will contact you and give you the ability to publish the post on their feed. Use it, and always post on their feed. I play with my publications between Javascript in plain English, Bits and Pieces, and Dev Genius. After a while, your audience on Medium will grow, you will get more followers exposed to your new articles, and your initial traffic can significantly increase.
Here is a trick I really liked from Ariel Weinberger, founder of Pezzo.
Ariel has the most extensive Udemy course about NestJS. When he has a NestJS-related article, he sends people to the article on Medium and gets thousands of likes. And you can do the same with different traffic sources you have.
Once you have a vast audience, you can feel comfortable to launch on Medium.
DEV
DEV is my favorite platform to launch; getting your article trending there requires meager traffic. Their algorithm is still young, so you can quickly bring enough traffic and likes to the platform to be on the top feed.
I had articles there reaching 100k views with a minimal amount of marketing.
The platform consists mainly of juniors and Javascript developers. You acquire an audience fast there; I have more than 11k followers in one year.
I feel like the platform has started getting less traffic than in the past.
It’s good enough for now, but let’s see what happens next year.
I am a big advocate for DEV, and my blog contains many tricks to get your articles trending there.
Hashnode
Hashnode is an interesting platform. It’s a blog that consists of many blogs. And on the main, there is a “Featured” section for trending articles.
I think DEV made a better approach since when I go to somebody's article on DEV, I stay on the DEV website so that I might be exposed to other people's articles. On Hashnode, you remain in the personal blog, so the traffic is not circulating. As a result, I feel that Hashnode has much less traffic than DEV.
I was featured on Hashnode multiple times and got little traffic.
What I do feel is that
They get new features rapidly outside compared to DEV
The owner of the platforms is very active daily there and helps articles out.
I think there will be a significant change there in the coming years.
Hackernoon
Hackernoon it’s the weirdest platform of all of them in terms of design. You can post articles. You have to “Submit” them. They also charge companies to post. I had one piece there, and the results were “meh” compared to posting on DEV. The platform itself is super complicated, and the UX is awful. I don’t even post there regularly.
I might lack information about this platform as I am not motivated to explore it deeply. Do you think you know better what to do with it? Let me know.
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- You are considering open-sourcing your product (or building a new one).
- You are considering opening a by-product and open-source it (to reflect on your main product).
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Latest comments (66)
I feel so much better for still trying to figure out how HackerNoon works! Antonija/ShiftMag
Dev.to becomes a platform “for developers” with content which is not actually related to development - politics, sexual preferences, etc. And there is no ability to downvote an irrelevant or low-quality post. If you want to see a good example of strong professional community - you can check Habr
PS - I’m not against LGBT topics, but dev.to isn’t a right place for similar posts
Same experience with DEV here.. i was actively blogging in 2021. Got some articles trending and bring much traffics to my blog
Great✌
Choosing the right platform depends on your specific goals as a developer, especially if you're looking to hire offshore developer :
Medium: Medium is a versatile platform with a broad audience, making it suitable for sharing a wide range of content. It's excellent for reaching a general readership and exploring diverse topics.
DEV: DEV is a developer-centric platform with a strong community. It's ideal for in-depth technical articles, discussions, and networking within the developer community.
Hashnode: Hashnode offers customizable tech-focused blogs, making it a good choice for developers who want more control over their blog's appearance and functionality.
Hackernoon: Hackernoon specializes in tech stories and caters to tech enthusiasts. It can be a great platform for sharing unique experiences, insights, and stories related to the tech industry.
Your choice should align with your content focus, target audience, and personal preferences. Many developers also cross-publish their content on multiple platforms to reach a wider audience.
Great article @nevodavid!
I published articles on dev.to, hashnode, medium. It is very easy to publish an article on the platforms, which cannot be said about Hackernoon, where editors have to review the material. However, these sites don’t provide any opportunities for indexing in search engines. In the hashnode, due to the fact that you essentially have your own domain, you can influence this. But dev.to and medium are more complicated. My articles are not shown in Google search. I wish my useful material was visible not only to dev.to people, but to everyone from search engines.
I like DEV, because it doesn't paywall my content behind "memberships", like some other blog hosts.
The community is also pretty nice here. Even when people disagree, they're respectful about it.
reddit no?
Great article👍
Dev.to is my favorite and has been for a long time, ever since I grew tired of Medium and its "clickbait" article headers (for articles behind their "pay wall") :-D
What I noticed though lately is that Dev.to does have something of a little "spam" problem, to put it like that ...
Nothing serious - it's just that there's a large number of "bogus" accounts popping up, unrelated to development or developers - betting sites, airconditioning services, bathroom suppliers, etc - but it's only a very very minor nuisance, you can simply ignore those accounts (everybody does) and that's it.
Not a big deal, and does not turn me away from dev.to.
I mean really the best option is none of them.
Self-host and crosspost.
DEV the best. Just give it time, it will be the Tweeter of computer scientist/coders.
This article succinctly summarized my findings after trying out multiple platforms, here my proofs:
• Medium
• DevTo
• Hashnode
• Publish0x
• Steemit
• Sigle
And few more others, the most views I've got are indeed from DevTo. That alone speaks volume of its product-market-fit as a blogging platform. Hope to see better numbers with few more implementation such as enabling subdomain for DevTo users i.e. username .dev.to
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