5 Tech Blogging Tips for Reaching Over 150k Devs

This post is for all the #softwareengineers and #softwaredevelopers who are looking to start a blog. Maybe you're looking to start a blog for #career reasons, maybe you're just looking to have a little fun.

I’ve been #tech #blogging for just over a year now. In the last year, I’ve gotten over 200k views and reached over 150k devs. Here are my top tips for software and tech bloggers to increase their impact and reach more developers.?

1. Value, value, value. Think about what is most valuable to you as a programmer or software engineer or whatever other position in tech. Then, write about those topics.
2. Determine your audiences. Who are you writing for? Are you writing for the tech exec? The junior software dev? The mid-senior software dev? The data scientist? The engineer looking to become an entrepreneur? All of the above? Think about the people you want to help with your writing and then write with that in mind.
3. Aim High, Expect Low. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re gonna fail. You’re gonna be ignored. Sometimes, you’ll even be criticized. The few people who reach out and say you’ve really helped them make it all worth it though. Aim high, but don’t expect too much. 90% of people will ignore you, just keep chugging. Also the people who criticize you? Don’t worry, 99% of the time they’re just jealous.
4. Plan for the ripple, not the splash. When you first start writing, you’re not going to get a huge audience right away. When you publish, you won’t immediately get 1000 views on your posts. However, if you do it right, you’ll accumulate an audience over time. Be patient, have faith.
5. Launch once, market multiple times. This is one of my favorite marketing tips. Make sure you tell the world when you launch each of your posts. Make sure you also tell them again later. Don’t be afraid to repost. You feel the spotlight effect on your life, but your audience does too. When you repost, you are reminding them of the value you’re providing.

That’s the TL;DR. More in depth commentary to follow.

My Personal Blog — PythonAlgos

Lesson to take away: intensity is good, but consistency is better.

First, let’s take a look at my highest performing channel — my personal blog. I started the educational software blog, PythonAlgos, last year. On my blog I focus on creating content around Python and Machine Learning. Why? Those are my areas of interest and my areas of expertise.

My personal blog has garnered just over 196k views last year and just over 147k devs have read my posts. I have a total of 159 posts, with 60 of them in 2022. I only started blogging in November of 2021 — that means I wrote 99 posts between November 2021 and January 2022. I distilled most of what I knew like the back of my hand in those posts.

Was that a good idea? Maybe. I did learn something from that experience though — burnout is real. Consistency beats intensity! I ran out of ideas quickly and I had to take a break. If I were to do it over again, I would space those posts out a bit more.?

You can barely see my post schedule in the bottom part of the image, but you can notice that I was not consistent at all for part of the year. Personally, I think that hurt my impact. I bet if I had kept up my publishing schedule better I could have reached more people.?

You can also see I haven’t been terribly consistent lately ????. I have been busy with my business — I have capitalized on my ability to write and market. I now help different companies grow their developer products through a group I founded, AI Educators.

My Medium?Blog

Lesson to take away: less technical jargon = wider audience appeal.

PythonAlgos is very technically focused. Most of my posts include code in Python. One thing of interest to note from my most successful Medium posts is that they are not very technical. The less technical and more intuitive your posts are, the wider the appeal. This all goes back to point two though - determine your audience.

A wider appeal does not always equal better results for you. The easiest statistic to measure yourself on is views and reads. Sometimes it's also good to step back make sure that you're getting the right people to view or read your posts. It's always surprising to me that my most read and most viewed article is my opinion piece on the difference between software engineering and programming. They are different, and many people don't realize that. Perhaps that's why this piece provides so much value for people.

Plain Simple Software Medium Publication

Lesson to take away: help others help you!

Plain Simple Software is a Medium publication that I started earlier this year. I don't think it's full been around for a year yet. You can see from the stats on it that the top piece is actually not by me. I don't have any pieces that have performed that well yet. It's by Roman Ceresnak ! The other 2 articles that are in the top 6 performing pieces in this publication that aren't by me are by James Hizon ???? and Michelangiolo Mazzeschi . If I didn't have their help, Plain Simple Software wouldn't be as successful (only at 92 followers, but still not bad) as it is. Remember, life is a team game.

Social?Media

Remember what I said in point 5? Launch once, market multiple times. When it comes to marketing your blog posts, social media is one of your best friends. SEO is great for bubbling content up over time, but social media releases let you quickly get eyes on your content. My two main social media platforms? Reddit and LinkedIn. I'm also on Twitter, but my Twitter isn't that big yet. I just recently reached 150 followers.

Meanwhile on Reddit, I am now one of the top 100 posters of all time in r/Python. On LinkedIn, I went from having just over 500 followers last year to over 2000 this year! Remember point 3? Aim high and expect little. You can see the effect of posting consistently over time from my LinkedIn Impressions. Most times, I get no impressions. One meme went viral and launched me to over 700k impressions.

I also want to take a moment to shout out to the person who has helped me grow my LinkedIn more than anyone else in the last year, the amazing: Kristen Kehrer ! I also want to shout out some of the amazing people I've met through being annoying on LinkedIn - Bob Belderbos , Megan Lieu , Ravit Jain , Harpreet Sahota ?? , and Mariya Davydova !

Bonus — Enjoy yourself!

This post was inspired by the whole Spotify wrapped trend. Remember to enjoy yourself! Who was your most listened to artist this year? Mine was Taylor Swift ... as it has been for every year before :p