Apr

9

Some lessons learned after 1000 posts

April 9, 2008 |

Now that I have updated the blog to Wordpress 2.5, the number of published posts stares right at me when I log into the dashboard. Right now, that number stands at 1046. I never realized how much I must have written here since October 2005. I can’t even really figure out what the first post was about anymore.

I really didn’t take the blog to serious back in the days - I just had a domain that I had never used and decided to get into that whole blogging thing just to see how it went. 1000 posts later, I’m still around and still enjoying it even more than I did in the early days.

So what did I learn after those 1000 posts (in no particular order and without any claim to completeness)?

  1. Networking: the single most important reason for the blog slowly getting some traction in 2007 was that I started connecting and striking up friendships with fellow bloggers like MG Siegler, Louis Gray, Steven Hodson and others outside of the blog itself on Twitter, Facebook, etc. We all write alone, but having a network of friends to swap ideas with makes it a lot easier and has, at the same time, pushed me to write better posts.
    Participating in the l33t reddit and the Elite Tech Podcast was the direct result of this, as was joining the Grand Effects blog network. 
  2. Links are the lifeline of the blogging world. Not only because they bring you new readers, but because they create social links between bloggers. My social network, in many ways, is encapsulated in those links. That’s why I rather link more often than necessary then forgetting to link to somebody.
    When Mathew Ingram first linked to me, and then later Robert Scoble, I saw it as validation that at least some people cared about what I wrote here enough to make their own readers look at it. That’s powerful stuff when you have 10 hits a day.
    Sadly, links are also often political, but that is for another story.
  3. The posts I am the least proud of are my me-too posts. When I just started out, trying to get noticed, I wrote a lot of posts just based on what the Techmeme headline of the day was. And it got me noticed by some people, so it worked.
    But the posts I am proud of are those that were original; the ones that weren’t so much about news, but about ideas. Your blog is not just defined by what you write about, but also by what you decide to leave out.
  4. It’s not about ‘traffic,’ it’s about the conversation. - you never know where your most loyal readers will come from. Chances are, they will not be coming from Digg or StumbelUpon. Any random post might bring you a thousand stumblers streaming by, but those almost never stick around. Out of 10000 diggers, maybe two or three will subscribe to your RSS feed. A good post to me is one that starts a discussion - either in the comments, on other blogs, or an aggregation sites like FriendFeed. Readers who are engaged are the ones who will come back to discuss other posts as well.
  5. Always re-read your writing before posting.
  6. It’s easy to get sucked into the tech blog echo-chamber. Some of my best writing usually comes after I have been away from it all for a little bit and gotten some new perspective on things. I also make a point to read lots of blogs outside of the Techmeme echo-chamber.
  7. You can’t keep up with the news anymore - and that’s ok. There is too much to read and too much to write about. It’s okay to hit “Mark all as read” and move on.
  8. For better or worse, Techmeme represents the canon of the blogging world (in the literary sense, not the ballistic sense). It’s the one place where pretty much everybody in the tech blogosphere hangs out - it’s the central focal point of our community. Even if you don’t like it, it’s still the best way to get an overview of the day’s conversation.
  9. You posts will be copied, stolen, and used as spam - and there is little you can do about it.
  10. At the end of the day, blogging is about expressing yourself, community, and having fun. If you’re not having fun doing it, stop right now.
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2 Comments so far

  1. bhc3 on April 9, 2008 5:07 pm

    Great, great post. I’m only at 26 posts, but what you write rings very true even to a n00bie. Particularly the echo chamber thing - we write in isolation and read other blogs as a way of connecting. One thing to watch is too much me-too that can result.

    I’m now one of your subscribers. ;-)

  2. ThePete on April 10, 2008 1:42 pm

    Great points, man! In particular, that last one–that’s what’s been keeping me going all these years.

    Also, it has taken me years to work out that point #1 is the most important thing to know. Not understanding that first point has allowed me to make a LOT of mistakes. Of course, the point of mistakes is to give you something to learn from, right?

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