How to write a technical blog?

Question

I have a blog that I would like to increase traffic on.

I've read lots of technical blogs, but it's a lot different writing a blog versus reading a blog.

There seems to be several ways to write a post.

1. General article: I like this tool. This is how I do it.
2. Specific technical issue: Programming solutions.

I do get some traffic, but they don't leave any comments.

Should I use HN and Reddit. What are some of the other places I can promote my blog?

How to respond to negative comments (trolls)?

Another thing is you might want to have some link-thrus. comment on other peoples blog posts.

BTW my blog is: (defun ugly-lisp-code () ())

New Blog ugly web development

Answer 1

A blog is about what you want it to be about. Write stuff, link things you like. Probably the best way to drive traffic to start is to comment on other blogs. And if you're enjoying writing, consider contributing some articles to other tech blogs; your bio can contain a link back to yours.

The big thing is to write what you're interested in, passionate about. That's what attracts readers.

Update: Oh, and don't forget to flog your own blog when the chance comes up. Duh.

Answer 2

Ask yourself this: how is your blog going to be different from all the blogs out there? I'm not saying that you shouldn't create a blog unless you can come up with something quite unique, but you do have to think about what you bring to the table and you have to offer something a little out of the ordinary to attract readers.

I've seen way too many blogs that are basically a fancy collection of links to other people's work. Unless you're high profile, I don't really find that useful. I can probably find the links easier using a dedicated search engine. So think about what your message and your approach will be.

Answer 3

I just checked out your blog, and here are some comments:

1. I try to make my blog posts be the kind of blog post that I'd like to read.
2. People reading my blog don't know who I am. Maybe my friends know I'm an expert on X or Y, but that authority doesn't carry on to my blog.
3. Therefore, I try to write humbly and carry my points simply.
4. If someone ever finds one of my blog posts useful, it makes my day.

Answer 4

A few thoughts off the top of my head:

• Negative comments aren't necessarily trolls. People will disagree with you - that's to be expected. If they are trolls, and clearly abusive, just deal with them like spam.
• You can have a variety of styles within a single blog. Mine contains anything from "here's an interesting optimisation" to "here's what I'd like to see in C#" to "I'm talking at X in three weeks, please come along" to "I hear that the next version of C# will have Y, this is what I think of it."
• As ever, put effort into spelling, grammar, punctuation etc - as well as the writing itself. It has to be technically accurate, but also compelling in itself if you want people to read it. Having said that...
• ... why are you writing it in the first place? If it's mostly so you can keep track of things you've found interesting in the past, does it matter whether or not other people read it?
• Code is very important (for suitable posts, of course). Ideally, it should be complete code so that readers (including yourself in a year's time) can try your idea for themselves. Even if it's only a snippet, make it a snippet of working code rather than "it looks something like this..."

Answer 5

Personally I like blog posts that address a single specific issue, that I can Google and find when having trouble with that issue. These are the most helpful to me.

On the other hand, discussion pieces and tutorial-type posts are occasionally nice as well, but as these tend to be longer I only read them when I have extra time and when the topic is of real interest to me, so traffic speaking I would stick to the former primarily.

Of course as the others said, it's your blog so you're the boss. ;)

Edit: Also, I should mention, although it's rather obvious, that the posts that will get the most traffic are novel posts--things that you have solved that no one else has. Avoid posts that just pingback to some other blog, unless you add your own take on them as well.

Answer 6

If you want to drive traffic, write from the heart about things you truly care about. It's very easy for educated readers to discern those that are writing passionately about something versus those that just write.

Also, whenever you create a new post, tweet it, you're guaranteed to get at least some traffic from your twitter followers.

Answer 7

Titles are extremely important, both to your readers and to search engines. Include specific keywords. Telegraph what I'll get out of reading your post. I see that a couple of your recent titles are "Read it later" and "Abstraction." That's not going to grab me when I see those headlines in my RSS reader. And it's not going to excite Google either.

I doubt there are many Lisp blogs, so I imagine Google would send a lot of people your way who are searching on Lisp questions if they (Google) can understand what you're writing about, and they place a lot of importance on titles.

Answer 8

Here are some options for promoting your blog:

Reddit: People are very selective, if it is not news or opinions or a very good tutorial for something that has some buzz you'll get down-modded and eventually banned for spamming. If they like it you'll be flooded though, so it is worth trying if you think you have valid material.

HN: Again - opinions or news - very easy to be completely ignored if the content is not interesting enough. It's a bit of a niche community and if people don't know the poster it is very dificult to get noticed.

Dzone: this is the right place for solutions to common problems - tutorials - opinions - people are less aggressive but it's going to take you ages to inrease traffic through this. If one of your posts becomes popular though people will click on it for days.

Digg Used to be quite good but now it's a bit of a placeholder. It's a mafia-like social network and you'll get your stuff dugg only if you digg people's shouts. It gives you very good indexing on Google though.

Google SearchWiki: not a lot of buzz yet but I for one always check other people notes when I do a search (I guess I am not the only one) - so search for your stuff and put notes on it. UPDATE: this has been shut-down by Google!

Once you have enough content you'll pop-up on Google searches and you'll also get traffic like that.

As a general advice you need to:

1. post often and short (obviously make exceptions) otherwise the occasional reader will skip you.
2. try to be entertaining - if someone is googling around and your blog got the answer they're looking for they'll be happy but they forget soon enough about you - if they are also amused they'll come back
3. follow other similar blogs (focused on the same content) and comment other people blogs. They always look at your URL and if they like they'll come back.
4. Use Twitter to build a network and promote your posts (it'll take time to get people retweeting your stuff - they need to know you, trust you and obviously like your stuff).

If you stuff is good it is only a matter of time. Traffic will come (forget about making money though - you need 100k hits a day to get 'something' out of AdSense).

Answer 9

If you're going to be posting code on your website, you can use a web app I wrote:

http://www.blogtrog.com

It's free. It gives you some code you can easily embed in your blog to get fancy highlighted code with Copy to Clipboard functionality and all that.

Answer 10

You need to have an "about" page.

People always want to know who you are. It helps with personalizing. It is a small thing, but very important.