Blogging

Marketing for developers space

Blogging is usually mentioned prominently in the “Marketing for Developers” space — so I feel I must address it here, despite it being only one part of the general mindset I want you to have.

A blog should be focused on the domain

I will always encourage you to blog, but don’t fool yourself that merely pushing a new post every month will do anything for you by itself. That’s just motivational shit people say to get you started. There’s a lot of generic, scattershot advice about how you should blog more. These are usually people trying to sell you a course on blogging. (Except Steve Yegge!)

The fact is blogs gain extra power when they are focused on a domain. CSS Tricks is a well-known blog in the frontend dev space. As you might guess, for a long time, its domain was entirely CSS tricks (It’s expanded since then.). Like everything else you follow, it’s all about signal vs. noise.

Update it with fresh content

Blogs help you get more juice out of the domain name you own by constantly updating it with fresh content. You can also use it to feed your other valuable online business asset: your email list! Overall, it is just a good general principle to own your own distribution.

Twitter

Twitter is a form of microblogging. It lets you export data easily, and your content shows up on Google without an auth wall. All good things, but you’re still subject to an algorithmic feed. Social media followings are definitely not a distribution that you own — but it can be worth it to make the Faustian bargain of growing faster on a platform (like Twitter) first, then pivoting that to your blog/mailing list once you have some reach. Growing a blog/mailing list from zero with no other presence is hard.