I agree with you that is possible to grow, but I don't think is because of the same reasons. From my point of view, the main problem I noticed with the posts I see is that more often than not post are:
Self-promotions without nothing useful on them (like dev process, code examples, challenges and so on).
Things that everyone already wrote about (what is this in JS, introduction to TypeScript, getting started with JavaScript, etc.).
Biased top 10!
X of N days of code challenge!
Hi, my name is X, please hire me!
10 tips to be a better developer (aka 10 terrible tips).
How to pass an interview (aka a terrible interview 😅).
People saying that is hard to grow in the platform generally are just trying to grow instead of actually post content that might be useful or interesting for the people reading. I've seen folks "strategically" using famous people in the cover just to attract more clicks, like this was Facebook and they wanted to just be another click-bait. From my personal experience, following your list of tips:
Consistency is key: I'm not consistent at all, I just post when I want to post. The only thing that I try to do consistently is do it at a time of the day where somebody might read it.
Know what your goals are and write accordingly: I agree with this one, mainly because I post about certain topics that I want to cover, and that seems to be interesting for other folks. I don't try to write about everything, just about WebDev in general. My only difference in opinion with you is that I always write about things that are interesting for me, no for "the readers". So I always write what I want to write. Sometimes somebody makes a suggestion of a future post, and I do it only when I like the suggestion.
Quantity first: I'm more on the boat of "quality first", that's why I only have 13 post published and 5 on draft, and I take my sweet time writing them, and polishing them (and I still screw up some times). I've seen folks with more than double that amount of posts, and are all topics covered in better detail by other authors in the site. Heck, I even follow you because I love the quality of your posts, not because of your frequency.
Engage with a community: This I agree 100%. Some of the examples I gave on the first part of my comment are folks that not only write stuff like that, but they hide comments or block the comment section, or they never reply to comments. One has to connect with the audience if they expect to have any kind of engagement. Besides the comments might have some great insights that are being missed. After all we are all developers, and as such, we are constantly learning new stuff.
Quick fire round: tips and tricks
Learn to structure articles: I generally structure articles in blocks of the topics I want to talk about, and then put as much code snippets as possible because we are devs and we want to read some code after all.
Build a social media following: I don't have a huge "social media follow up" at all (~550 followers on twitter), but I still every time I publish I announce it on Twitter, just to let anyone there know about the article.
Make an engaging cover: My covers generally are just the title to make it look fancier, with an image in the background kinda related to the title. The cover is only visible when you're the article on the top and when folks actually go into the article ... and sometimes I prefer no cover at all instead of seeing that one that everyone uses.
Write in conversational style: My format is kinda conversational, but not completely. I try to "start a conversation", thats for sure.
Ask for follows and shares: I'm not on the boat of "please follow and subscribe" because that never had an effect on me as an audience, so I don't expect others to do it.
Recycle content: Same for the recycling. If folks weren't interested in my posts in the past, I doubt they'll be later on. One thing I actually do is if there is a topic that I'm debating and I wrote about it, I mention my article there just to avoid repeating myself.
Put time into promotion: I mentioned this already, but my only "strat" is publishing at lunch time, so people actually read the article. Publishing at 3AM is not a great idea.
A dirty little secret: Self reacting can be useful if your article didn't receive any reactions in a few minutes, so yeah, this "hack" might work. What I don't do is self commenting. If I want to add something to the article, I just add something to the article 🤣
Develop your "tone of voice": This I agree again, and I would add: Keep that tone of voice friendly/playful. Our industry is already filled with assholes, so don't be one yourself (and also don't expect folks to react positively to you if you do it).
Tags matter...a lot: YAS! And tags need to actually reflect the content of the post, not just be there for "engagement". Adding #javascript to your article introducing yourself doesn't help engaging.
Sorry for the long comment, as usual great post!
Cheers!
PS: My stats aren't as great as yours, but here:
1.9k reactions.
90k views.
3.5k followers.
13 posts.
~400 comments.
And pretty much everyone here knows that I comment a lot of posts, because I spend a lot of time here (my two most active sites in the last few months are Twitter and DEV).
Hard agree on not being grumpy as a voice. Sure, it works if you're smart about it, but so many people find it easier to be mean then humorously grumpy and we don't need more snark.
Got to say I agree with this and would say that you do have a very specific tone of voice which is recognisable and generally speaking very clear and descriptive. I think we'd disagree on a few things (Typescript lol) but I think your comments and posts are great.
I also don't want to write here because I want an audience, when I have something to say or that interests me then I'll write it, I hope that this is generally useful or interesting and definitely not something someone else has recently said.
I have to admit that my Dev browsing habits include checking what you've commented on and reading that.
@inhuofficial also has a very particular and enjoyable style and very unique content.
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
Aww Mike I am blushing. A money filled envelope is on it's way to you 😉
I 100% agree on writing when you feel like it, if that is what suits you. These guidelines are certainly geared towards someone who wants to "get serious" about content creation (probably geared towards content creators who want to make a living out of it) and I perhaps have not expressed that perfectly!
As for disagreeing on typescript, possibly, but I am always open to being persuaded! 😁
And I can confirm that when you do decide to post I always find it interesting, well written and useful!
I have to admit that my Dev browsing habits include checking what you've commented on and reading that.
haha, well it is either going to be really good or really bad if I have commented, I do live on the extremes when it comes to my content reading 😂
Honestly this comment really warmed my heart, thanks so much for it and I hope you are well as we haven't interacted in ages (it is practically March...what is happening to the year?)!
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
Never apologise for a long comment, you know they are more than welcomed on my posts (good or bad) and yours are always really interesting and engaging so they are especially welcomed.
The thing that perhaps got lost in my post was the "sometimes you have to get mucky and do things you do not like for the greater good" aspect.
I don't want a feed full with rubbish and self promotion, but I also have changed my view that writing some articles purely for growth is OK and even something I encourage.
I think I agree with every one of your (counter? Agreeing?) points! The real gem in there is "I generally structure articles in blocks of the topics I want to talk about", this is a great tip for people who want to write about varied subjects but still make it easy for people to engage. Damn, I missed a real good one there! 🤣
In fact the only point that I possibly do "disagree" with (would question is more accurate) is:
I'm not on the boat of "please follow and subscribe" because that never had an effect on me as an audience, so I don't expect others to do it.
There is a ton of research and case studies that show that asking for likes, asking for follows etc. all result in higher follows / likes, but it very rarely puts people off (as long as it is subtle and you don't repeat it over and over again in the same piece of content). It is probably the one thing I would say "do it, it could help, it certainly won't hurt!"
As always your comment is better than my original article...you should really just start a blog with all your comments on 🤣
p.s. as for the "my stats aren't as good", I would say you are wrong there.
You have a higher view rate and reaction rate per article than me! Those are the real statistics that matter for someone who writes out of passion and enjoyment and show what I already know, you write consistently high quality and engaging content!
Oh yeah, I'm not saying asking for likes/follows doesn't work, that's definitely a personal opinion. I avoid it because I don't like it. I might try adding something like "you can follow me to know when the next post on this series is published" or something like that, to check if that helps with engagement.
Accessibility First DevRel. I focus on ensuring content created, events held and company assets are as accessible as possible, for as many people as possible.
Ah, get you now! 100% do it in a style that fits your personality and do what works for you! (unless your personality is like mine and really enjoy swearing, roasts and articled written with "venom", in which case maybe let just 50% of your personality out on somewhere like DEV...or get a ban like I did 🤣)
I agree with you that is possible to grow, but I don't think is because of the same reasons. From my point of view, the main problem I noticed with the posts I see is that more often than not post are:
thisin JS, introduction to TypeScript, getting started with JavaScript, etc.).People saying that is hard to grow in the platform generally are just trying to grow instead of actually post content that might be useful or interesting for the people reading. I've seen folks "strategically" using famous people in the cover just to attract more clicks, like this was Facebook and they wanted to just be another click-bait. From my personal experience, following your list of tips:
Sorry for the long comment, as usual great post!
Cheers!
PS: My stats aren't as great as yours, but here:
And pretty much everyone here knows that I comment a lot of posts, because I spend a lot of time here (my two most active sites in the last few months are Twitter and DEV).
Hard agree on not being grumpy as a voice. Sure, it works if you're smart about it, but so many people find it easier to be mean then humorously grumpy and we don't need more snark.
Got to say I agree with this and would say that you do have a very specific tone of voice which is recognisable and generally speaking very clear and descriptive. I think we'd disagree on a few things (Typescript lol) but I think your comments and posts are great.
I also don't want to write here because I want an audience, when I have something to say or that interests me then I'll write it, I hope that this is generally useful or interesting and definitely not something someone else has recently said.
I have to admit that my Dev browsing habits include checking what you've commented on and reading that.
@inhuofficial also has a very particular and enjoyable style and very unique content.
Aww Mike I am blushing. A money filled envelope is on it's way to you 😉
I 100% agree on writing when you feel like it, if that is what suits you. These guidelines are certainly geared towards someone who wants to "get serious" about content creation (probably geared towards content creators who want to make a living out of it) and I perhaps have not expressed that perfectly!
As for disagreeing on typescript, possibly, but I am always open to being persuaded! 😁
And I can confirm that when you do decide to post I always find it interesting, well written and useful!
haha, well it is either going to be really good or really bad if I have commented, I do live on the extremes when it comes to my content reading 😂
Honestly this comment really warmed my heart, thanks so much for it and I hope you are well as we haven't interacted in ages (it is practically March...what is happening to the year?)!
Never apologise for a long comment, you know they are more than welcomed on my posts (good or bad) and yours are always really interesting and engaging so they are especially welcomed.
The thing that perhaps got lost in my post was the "sometimes you have to get mucky and do things you do not like for the greater good" aspect.
I don't want a feed full with rubbish and self promotion, but I also have changed my view that writing some articles purely for growth is OK and even something I encourage.
I think I agree with every one of your (counter? Agreeing?) points! The real gem in there is "I generally structure articles in blocks of the topics I want to talk about", this is a great tip for people who want to write about varied subjects but still make it easy for people to engage. Damn, I missed a real good one there! 🤣
In fact the only point that I possibly do "disagree" with (would question is more accurate) is:
There is a ton of research and case studies that show that asking for likes, asking for follows etc. all result in higher follows / likes, but it very rarely puts people off (as long as it is subtle and you don't repeat it over and over again in the same piece of content). It is probably the one thing I would say "do it, it could help, it certainly won't hurt!"
As always your comment is better than my original article...you should really just start a blog with all your comments on 🤣
p.s. as for the "my stats aren't as good", I would say you are wrong there.
You have a higher view rate and reaction rate per article than me! Those are the real statistics that matter for someone who writes out of passion and enjoyment and show what I already know, you write consistently high quality and engaging content!
Oh yeah, I'm not saying asking for likes/follows doesn't work, that's definitely a personal opinion. I avoid it because I don't like it. I might try adding something like "you can follow me to know when the next post on this series is published" or something like that, to check if that helps with engagement.
Ah, get you now! 100% do it in a style that fits your personality and do what works for you! (unless your personality is like mine and really enjoy swearing, roasts and articled written with "venom", in which case maybe let just 50% of your personality out on somewhere like DEV...or get a ban like I did 🤣)
Sometimes I get a low-quality flag, I get you.
Didn't even know that existed on DEV. I rarely report posts (only obvious spam with no dev aspect at all).
Some of my posts have a few, but generally are folks being confrontational/hateful, or commenting something completely unrelated.
example