

The three I's of startup blogging - sgrove
http://blog.chuwe.com/the-three-is-of-startup-bloggi

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swombat
_I was struck by the relevancy to writing startup and business blogs.
Immediacy is everything - a hindsight view offers a lot of well-selected,
edited, abstracted lessons, but it's boring._

Geez, really? I better stop writing blog posts then.

 _I suffer from always trying to appear rational in my actions, so I spend too
much time trying to analyze the underlying motivations about why I did
something when I should simply write about what I did and the short, simple
thoughts that brought me there._

Good point. Why analyze where we went right or wrong? What's the point of
that? It's not like other people, or even ourselves, can learn from our
mistakes.

 _... Amazon is amazing about this ..._

Amazon's blog is a start-up blog? Ok, then obviously we have a different
definition of what a "start-up blog" is. I thought it was a blog about start-
ups, written by an entrepreneur. Apparently tech blogs written by industry
behemoths count as start-up blogs, according to this article.

I'm not quite sure what this article was talking about. Perhaps the author
should have defined what he meant by "start-up blogs" before writing the
article. Not at all sure where the "Indecipherable" part came from either..
who reads indecipherable blogs?? Does anyone intentionally write
indecipherable blogs?

~~~
sgrove
Hey swombat, I definitely respect your opinion, so let me see if I can explain
myself a bit more - and hopefully improve myself in the process.

By hindsight view, I meant retroactively analyzing everything after the
adrenalin of the moment has worn off. It's pretty much what we always read.
It's a bit cooler, more sterile, and methodical. And you're right, writing
that down, careful and well-thought analysis is crucial. But for interesting
writing (perhaps entertaining is a better word), immediacy offers a lot of
emotional nuances that are lost with time.

And I simply chose Amazon because the way they openly run their AWS is a great
example for startups. I was comparing their style to an article I read from
box.net (an actual startup), and the difference was striking.

Finally, the indecipherable bit was simply from the original podcast on how to
write a successful political diary. I don't think it's useful or really
relevant for startups, and that's why I crossed it out. Perhaps I should have
simply omitted it.

I'll make notes of all of this for the next time I write. Thanks!

~~~
swombat
I see what you mean. However, there's more than one purpose for a blog, and
more than one approach to getting visitors - even from a start-up perspective.

To give you a very immediate example, my latest article on danieltenner.com is
exactly as you describe - hindsight, cool, methodical (I like to think it's
not overly sterile, but that's just me). Yet it gathered about 45k visitors so
far (with more to come, no doubt.. even today it still got about 2000
visitors) and sent about 700 click-throughs to woobius.com through the front
page on the day of publication.

I'd call it a very successful blog post in terms of promoting my business,
even though it was not about my business and it was not even on my business
blog (<http://www.woobius.com/scribbles>).

Other articles on Scribbles itself got thousands of visits and also sent
hundreds of hits to Woobius.

Moreover, because those posts provide lasting value (precisely because they
are not immediate), they tend to get linked by others, gain pagerank, and
appear in google searches (an article I wrote about document control is
getting a handful of hits from people looking for document control tools every
day).

So, while I don't disagree that the "immediate" style can work very well,
because it can be quite entertaining to many people and so they'll follow it.
However, I don't think it's right to discard the "slow hindsight" style,
because it can also work extremely well.

I think that would be my main disagreement with your article.

Btw, I agree that you should have left out the bit about political diaries..
it was more a distraction than anything else.

Keep it up, though, looking forward to more articles :-)

~~~
sgrove
Thanks swombat. I think we agree - it was simply my implication that this was
"The one way". I'll be careful about that.

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scorxn
I believe you mean indiscreet, not indiscrete.

~~~
sgrove
Fixed. Thanks.

------
rokhayakebe
Ok, sometimes I feel authors think of a title first, then write a story around
it. That being said, I don't have anything against the article.

~~~
sgrove
Sorry if it felt a bit vapid. I actually thought of writing it when I heard
the interview on political diaries, and felt it matched very well with what I
found was interesting for startup and business blogs as well.

I had been procrastinating writing about our "launch experience" on hn from
Sunday because of coding to account for all the feedback we received. I tend
to write in a very sanitary, evasive, and long-winded manner. The interview
just jumped out at me with the "four i's". Out of those, I thought three were
really relevant to startups/business blogs.

Thanks for your feedback.

