
Ask HN:  Please help a virgin blogger. - edw519
After repeated requests, I finally started a blog, but I have no idea what I'm doing.  For me, commenting here at hn comes naturally but blogging doesn't.  I'm so busy I don't have time, so I did the next best thing; I am "recycling" my old Hacker News comments.  It only takes about 5 minutes each morning.<p>I don't have the most important thing I advise my customers: a goal.  I'm not looking to drive traffic, make money, or get business.  I do want to paint a picture of myself and my work and provide whatever value I can.  I have included a link to my blog both here on my profile and as the last line of every email I send.<p>http://ShleppingData.com<p>After a few months, I'm wondering if I should continue.  Is this a waste of time, or does it provide value and can it lead to something else?<p>1. No one has ever commented, so I just turned comments off.  Does this make sense or just seem lame?  Maybe they don't comment because it's recycled material.<p>2. Posterous allows up to 100 entries per screen, so I just set mine at the max.  It's only text and almost everyone should have broadband by now, so it loads fast.  Why would anyone set this lower?<p>3. Posterous allows tags, presumably to group similar posts, but I can't find any facility for an index or Table of Contents.  So I just tag every post with it's own title.  Again, does this make sense or does it just seem lame?<p>4. I named my blog "Shlepping Data", because the simplest explanation of what I do is "Shlepp Ones and Zeroes from Point A to Point B".  (Of course there are a lot of details and I'm spending a lifetime mastering them.)  I wanted to leave a touch of lightheartedness along with all the technical talk.  Cool or lame?<p>5. Any other suggestions from seasoned bloggers are greatly appreciated.  What else could provide value without investing too much time?
======
RBerenguel
1\. This is lame. When the traffic/readers start coming, they will
comment/want to comment.

2\. To keep the window to have a scroll bar the size of a chickpea

3\. I don't know Posterous enough. Usually, you read Post A tagged with tag
A', click on A' and you can read more posts tagged with A'

4\. It's ok. Cool, even

5\. Even with broadband, it took a while to open the blog. Cut down the number
of entries. If you want someone to know who you are, you need to get visits,
somehow. If you offer interesting content but noone reads it, you have failed!

Once you realise that, the rest does not require that much time. For example,
if you use to read other people's blogs, just drop a comment in interesting
posts, with a link back to your latest post (your comment - greetings - who
you are and a link to your latest post, labeled as such). This way, you spread
the word of what you talk about without requiring any more time than starting
a conversation in some topic that did interest you. Maybe you even had a post
(HN comment) related to the post you read, fine, link to it, saying so.

Your blog looks too disorganized. Untagged posts make for "non index stuff".
If I want to read more about your ideas on startups I have no real way to do
that. You could also add some 'personal' information in your posterous
profile: who you are and what you do are fundamental.

Cheers,

Ruben Latest at my blog: 4 Reasons Why Pacman Is a Metaphor for Blogging
([http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/09/4-reasons-why-pacman-
is-m...](http://www.mostlymaths.net/2010/09/4-reasons-why-pacman-is-metaphor-
for.html))

Just as a sample ;)

~~~
bdfh42
Good points all. You need to show respect for your audience by ensuring that a
visit to your blog is a pleasant one.

------
mikedanko
I always tend to think that in the blogging world there are those that are
journalists and those that are diary writers. The diary writers only ever
succeed if they're writing about things you'd read in Penthouse Forum circa
1978.

Try not to involve yourself or your feelings too much. Offer less opinion and
more substance and things based on the concrete. Use the words "I" and "You"
less and consider it more of a group activity -- even though people may have
not shown up yet.

Instead of lines like "Do not allow anyone to read your code out of context.",
you need to put the parts together and make the reader actually understand how
you got to the thought process without being demanding. Instead consider
something like "From practical experience I find that often, reading code out
of context can obscure the meaning, context, blah." Zed is the only person who
is allowed to be this opinionated, and only because he is charming at the same
time.

If you want people to read, they have to feel engaged and part of the
conversation. This is key.

Find your 10 favorite blogs, or ones of people you closely identify yourself
as being close to professionally speaking, and do your best to gauge the voice
of the ones that are extremely readable. Find your likes and dislikes, about a
particular blogger or series of posts and gauge other media sources by the
same methods.

I find my best writing comes after a lot of reading, pause to think, a mental
break then coming back to the subject. Give it a try.

~~~
mikedanko
And WOW, this just hit me after posting. Your question to HN is by far and
large more blog worthy than most of the things on your blog.

------
lt
I think the main issue is the content. Not that it's bad (it isn't), but it's
recycled. It's out of context, doesn't feel you are communicating to me when I
read it (and you're not, since you wrote it replying to someone else). Why
would I go there instead of skimming your comments page?

The concept is not bad, though, but I think it would work better if comments
served as inspiration for a post. What advice/opinion were you trying to
convey through it. If it helps, I tend to structure my writing in
motivation/introduction, content, then conclusion. Topic tends to flow better.

For specifics:

1\. Keep them on. First, do you have any readers for there to be comments? I
never heard about your blog before. Second, write something asking for
experiences, feedback, opinions. Give them a hook to write something back to
you. If this askhn was posted in your blog there definitely would be replies.

2\. The main point that jumps out to me here is the "only text" part. It's a
bit dull if you are trying to engage an audience. Design to convert surfers to
subscribers. When I write I like to put headers and subheaders. Some graphs,
images or screenshots. Liven it up.

3\. I don't know posterous, but I tend to like looking at categories to find
similar posts.

4\. I like clever names.

5\. Write first for yourself, then for your audience. Writing is a great way
to put your thoughts in order and realizing what you really know about that
subject. You'll learn, and that's good in itself even if no one reads it. It
seems to me that by recycling comments you're not gaining anything personaly
and not getting motivated enough to make it better.

------
bdfh42
I quick review of your "blog" makes it pretty clear that (as you yourself
admit) you are just posting stuff. Why would anyone re-visit when they would
have no idea if anything of interest to them will ever be posted?

I think you need to decide upon an audience and "talk" to them - they may not
come but I think that is how all successful bloggers get started.

How about taking another look at the guy you met on your second working gig?
You were impressed with what he was doing and felt inspired. I am certain
there would be an audience for anyone writing for others aspiring to being
just that guy. There is philosophy, technique and a way of looking at the
world to be explored in detail aplenty. Links from HN will bring the traffic
to reward your efforts.

~~~
RBerenguel
Yours are also very good points. You don't need to talk to a particular
audience... but keep in mind there is an audience. It may be just "you" or
someone with your same tastes. Some day they will come (and hanging in HN
brings a lot of traffic, interactions, good comments and all this, the
community here loves part of what I write, but it is the part I may be more
proud of).

------
PaulJoslin
I think your posts have good content, the key issue here currently is delivery
and audience.

Normally creating good content would be the first challenge, but you seem to
have good content already. Perhaps you should look to change it to fit the
blog audience / open it up further for discussion.

They key problem is that currently your audience is 0 (or very close to 0). It
is unlikely that your audience will go from 0 to big numbers over night. So it
is something you will have to work on and grow over time.

Firstly, think about what streams you can use to gain new audience members per
post (submission to content aggregators / forums / guest posts on other
blogs).

Then think about building a consistent schedule for releasing new content.
Currently you are doing this daily, but I would suggest weekly (to spread the
content further). Make this known to the audience so they know when to check
back for new content.

Finally once you start having an audience, you'll want to keep it. Use
platforms such as twitter and email lists to help inform that audience when
new content is released so they keep coming back.

Slowly over time this should start making your blog a success.

------
garret
I'd been reading your site for a few weeks before I realized they were
recycled comments. I like the idea of culling the ones that read like little
essays. I just assumed that was your goal.

Plus, having a blog on its own domain is easier than giving everyone a link to
<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=edw519>, which is awkward, and which
includes the clutter of shorter comments, other people's comments, up/down
arrows, etc.

1\. When I read, I'm interested in an author, not an author's readers. (But
the links back to HN are good in case I want that.) As in the last paragraph
of this article: <http://daringfireball.net/2010/06/whats_fair>

2+3. I prefer reading one post at a time, with a straightforward ToC. Tags are
distracting. If I'm looking for a post on a certain topic, I use a search
engine.

4\. Even if the title's lame at first, it can become cool if comes to stand
for something good.

------
kwellman
To be honest, it seems like you just wrote a script that scrapes all your
comments from hacker news and then posts them to your blog.

Unless you add something to your posts like images, and some context, I'm not
going to be revisiting your blog. I'd just stay at the source (Hacker News)
where I can find lots of great comments that are all presented in their
context. The voting system does a great job of picking out the best.

I think you do have interesting things to write about, I just think you need
to do more than copying and pasting your comments.

------
ankeshk
Thanks for starting a blog.

As you correctly identified - you need a goal. And a thesis - a topic you can
center your blog around. What can you offer that helps others? What are you an
expert at?

1\. Thats fine.

2\. Not a good idea. A long scroll bar will overwhelm people and turn them
off. Unless you want to follow the cult strategy: have barriers in place to
retain fewer people but the most loyal people - you should limit the posts to
10 or 20.

3\. Tags = subtopics. People can click on a tag and read all the posts that
share the same tag. So if you use the post title as the tag too - no 2 posts
will share the same tag. And tags end up being meaningless on your blog.

4\. I didn't know what Shlepp means. Had to Google it. And Google says that
Shlep is a word. Shlepp is not. Shlepp will also lead to a lot of spelling
errors. Ideally, your blog name should be something simple, memorable, and
something that people search for / identify with. If you can't come up with a
good name for the blog, or have a lot of topics to talk about - then do what
Seth Godin did. Start your blog with your own name.

5\. Keep a schedule of writing. Buddy up with someone. Because most bloggers
don't last more than 3 months. Especially when they are not clear with their
goals.

Spend as much time you do on writing on promoting the blog too. Without
readers, writing is not much fun.

Make your posts easy on the eye. Use images. If thats not your thing, at least
use subheads or strong tags. So that people don't tire their eyes out.

------
gaustin
I'm not sure you're going to get anywhere with blogging if you're only willing
to expend minimal effort on it. It's like anything else.

Some bloggers say that everyone should blog, and exhort them to do so. The
truth is not everyone needs to blog, just like not everyone needs to run
marathons or excel at cooking.

I do find having a "best of" collection of your HN contributions valuable. But
that's not blogging.

------
mattmaroon
Are you sure you don't have a goal? Even just improving yourself as a writer
counts as a goal, and in that case you can't beat forcing yourself to blog
once a day. Writing something publicly is sort of like launching your startup,
the fact that it's out there where everyone can see it makes you work on
quality.

As for specifics: 1\. Why? Eventually readership may increase. Comments are
what makes blogging worth it, until you get enough users that the comment
section turns to shit. 2\. Because a lot of people read on mobile devices over
a 3g connection, not to mention it just looks much better. 3\. Lame. Use them
as categories. Helps readers when they're looking through your archives 2
years from now. 4\. Perfectly fine. Name's essentially irrelevant, and campy
humor isn't bad by any stretch. 5\. Blog a lot. Don't stop. I did it every day
for about 4 years, sometimes twice. Didn't turn me into Dickens, but I now am
comfortable at least. I attribute most of my success in life to the
communication skills I gained from it.

------
mattyfo
It sounds like you don't have a clear voice.

To find that you might want to try defining clear goals for your blog and
limiting it to a certain topic area and then begin to write.

By reposting comments there's no overarching thread that pulls your blog
together into a coherent narrative. A good blog does that.

It seems like you're able to write well and have the time to do it so go for
it.

PS It might help to find a comment you liked and then re-write it into a blog
post, IE explain to your audience the context and then your opinion/thoughts.

------
joshuacc
1\. I would leave them open for now. Unless you are being overwhelmed by the
chore of dealing with comments, they provide a good way for your readers to
offer feedback.

2\. Having 100 entries per screen seems like a bad idea to me. I would set it
to 10, maybe 15 max. The issue isn't so much the load time, but the sheer
intimidation that this much visible content provokes.

3\. Most blogging platforms don't have a "Table of Contents" by default. Just
treat the tags as categories for the convenience of browsing users. For
example, business, ruby, python, life-lessons.

4\. The title is fine.

5\. More value:

(a) Posting original content rather than comments from elsewhere. There are
exceptions, but generally the comments require further context to be really
understood.

(b) Occasionally writing more substantial posts. For myself, I find that an
outline really helps pull these together. It also has the benefit of breaking
the post up into subsections for easy reading.

(c) Use thematic images. Dosh Dosh is a master of this:
<http://www.doshdosh.com/twitter-marketing-mass-follow-users/>

(d) Take a notebook with you everywhere. If you have an idea for a post, jot
it down, perhaps with a quick outline so you don't lose the details. I often
find that my best ideas come during a jog.

(e) Respond to other interesting blog posts. A good argument is a great way to
create compelling content and grow a blog.

(f) Study both popular blogs, as well as blogs you admire, and figure out what
makes them compelling to you and their audience. Then go forth and do
likewise.

------
mdoyle
Ever seen <http://iampaddy.com>? I like this site because: there are very few
posts; all of them are quality; the design is engaging; it is very easy to
follow the author on twitter; reading each article takes little time.

Looking at your blog then you have experiences, observations and advice to
offer which could be valuable. Why not write one topic bi-weekly or monthly
which focuses on a single theme, re-using your existing comments
appropriately. Personally I found your posts light-hearted, interesting and
engaging (with some refinement) but too random. As it stands, its not a blog
but a collection of comments. I would get rid of all of it and start again. In
answer to your questions:

1 - keep comments on. Why not? 2 - I prefer to see a list of articles rather
than everything thrown at me in one page 3 - I think posterous will let you do
what you want, having read other posterous blogs. Not sure how exactly 4 - I'm
not sure all of the name works, although I like shlepp as a word. 5 - I'm not
a seasoned blogger but like reading the occasional blog.

------
hugh3
If you don't have time to actually write blog posts, why are you attempting to
write a blog?

------
tjr
Many of the entries struck me as kind of odd, because I felt like I was
jumping into an existing conversation but without the context. In fact, that
is exactly what's going on here. Rather than just copy-and-paste your HN
comments exactly as originally written, modifying the first few sentences or
adding a whole new introductory paragraph to explain the question you are
answering might make these posts flow better standalone.

Likewise, some other remarks made in a few posts really don't make sense in a
blog entry existing outside of the context of the HN conversation. I would
suggest reading your posts with an eye for, "does this flow well by itself?"

Tagging ought to be used to group similar posts, but I've not figured out how
to get Posterous to do this either.

I had no idea this blog existed until, oh, about ten minutes ago. You might
not have had any comments yet because it's still on the obscure side?

------
joshklein
My suggestions:

\- There's nothing describing your site that explains to me why your
theoretical perfect reader would be interested in what you have to say. Your
description is a clever few words about programming in general, but that's not
too helpful. Judging from the content I skimmed, something more like "a
startup blog for data specialists from a guy who has been there" is more
compelling. Think of a person, preferably a real person, who you are writing
for, and phrase everything like he's the only one you care about.

\- You need to lock down your goal, but your goal can be to increase the
visibility of your personal brand ("paint a picture of myself"). I don't think
it can only be to help people, because if you just want to help people, a blog
is a terrible place to do it; more people are on HN, so just comment here
instead.

\- Comments are overrated. Who has the time to comment on an individuals blog?
Wouldn't you rather they responded on their own blog and linked to you? Or
sent you a personal note? I think comments are a weird way of having a one-to-
one discussion, but publicly viewable. Unless you have dozens of commenters,
and they talk to each other, in a well managed threaded discussion forum-style
comment section, you're fine to turn them off.

\- Posterous is nice and all, but it immediately marks your blog as "personal
thoughts from Joe Shmoe". That's fine if you're writing for your co-workers
and your mom, or just to practice your writing. But if your goal is to build
that personal brand, you need to show more personality than the default
blogging template.

\- Tags, search, categories... these things only matter in so much as they
make it easy to understand the things you talk about on your blog. If you
haven't figured that out, you don't need to worry about tagging.

But here's my real thinking to share with you:

\- Blogging "without investing too much time" is worthless unless your goal is
cathartic. Assuming you want readers, there is a dramatic J-shaped curve to
blogging, where the X axis is attention and the Y axis is effort/time. You'll
have a few people pay attention because it's new and they like you. Then
they'll go away because you're boring. Then you'll slowly get better, and
better, and somebody somewhere will pay attention, then somebody else... and
in 2-years, you'll have a few hundred people who anonymously look forward to
the things you have to say. Then in another year or two, assuming you continue
to get better and learn more and be more valuable, you might just get a lot of
attention.

Might.

------
swombat
Blogging, much like commenting, is a form of communication. For that to work,
it needs two parties: the one communicating, and the one being communicated to
(more advanced viewpoint: blogging is a dialogue... but let's skip that bit
for now).

Who are you writing for? Figure that out, and then the rest will make more
sense. Everything you do on your blog you should do for that ideal (or
concrete) reader. Your own desires should generally come a distant second.
It's all about the readers.

Another tip: Just as making a product "for anyone" is a deadly mistake, making
a blog "for anyone" is also fatal. If your blog isn't written for anyone in
particular, it isn't interesting to anyone in particular.

------
ibagrak
I've done the recycled comment thing once, and it worked pretty well. However,
I did introduce it as such and restructured it into a standalone piece of
writing for the benefit of the reader.

I haven't been able to figure out the difference between commented and
uncommented blogs. There are some great blogs in each category. I think it's
easier for people to comment when they see other comments (even for other
posts). Otherwise, they assume it's not the thing to do on this blog and move
on. At least that's my theory.

Not a Posterous user so can't say much about those features.

------
brudgers
Recycling comments is a sound strategy for Version 1.0. People clearly
appreciate your thoughts. Activating comments will just require more of your
time and make the project more painful.

Commenting in threads is like counterpunching, Blog posts don't have the
context or constraining framework and can be harder to write. So long as
you're getting something out of it, keep going because the writing doesn't
disappoint and the motivation behind the blog is sustainable. 11points wasn't
built in a day.

------
robryan
I kind of have the same problem you do, adding a comment into a discussion
feels natural to me, I can give a couple of points in the part of the
discussion I feel most comfortable in and leave it at that.

With a blog I always feel like I want to do a well researched comprehensive
piece spanning an entire issue. This is where I decide I don't have time to
become the master of the area I'm thinking about and don't write it. It's that
perfectionism that prevents me from really getting started.

------
roberts_vc
Hey, don't sweat it man, I'm in the same boat with a lack of "apparent"
readers, due to nearly zero comments.

Great name, that's fine! Just keep blogging, on a predictably regular basis
(this is very important, because your readers want fresh, _original_ content),
leave comments open, watch your logs to really see who's coming around, drop
your URL here and there as you see fit, and wait.

The result may be that nothing changes, or you finally gain some traction and
comments take off. If having readers matters to you, you also have to promo
the thing, so people will actually become aware of it.

Here're a couple of issues. One, the amount of blogs I can read is practically
doubling every month. It's insane, because it's never been easier for every
single person alive to do it.

And two, you have to provide some kind of real value, however you do it, so
that I'll read your blog and maybe comment on it, out of the 10-gazillion I
have to choose from.

------
sublemonic
You are an extremely valuable contributor to HN. Reposting your HN comments is
great way to start blogging. I think you will eventually feel the urge to post
original content once you see how rewarding blogging can be.

1-I would leave comments on. You never know when someone might have an
extremely valuable tidbit to share.

2-up to you. 20 is as acceptable as 100.

3-Not lame

4-cool

------
jimbokun
As you searched your old comments to find ones worth bloggifying, did you find
any over riding themes? Anything that cried out for elaboration? Trigger
related ideas you would like to explore?

Your comment history should give you a good window into who you are and what
is important to you, and thus good topics to write about.

------
kbob
Your page took 35 seconds to load here. (Here being the rural US where
broadband is not available.)

------
almost
Clickable link: <http://ShleppingData.com>

------
DotSauce
Quick a dirty suggestions from an experienced blogger:

\- Migrate to WordPress.org and/or get a nice looking theme + logo design

\- Add a photo to compliment each post

\- Add sub-headers and bold important thoughts

\- Start a Twitter profile to promote posts and additionally submit posts to
Stumble, Mixx, Sphinn, HN, Digg, Facebook, etc.

\- Prominently feature email newsletter and RSS subscription options

\- Add a short biography of yourself below each post + create an About page
and Contact page

\- Implement links to related posts to increase stickiness (Wibiya.com blog
toolbar can help here as well)

\- Utilize your blog footer to feature additional content

~~~
lovskogen
No.

He wants his own personal blog, on par with his comments here at HN, but with
some active readers.

Most of this tips will turn his blog into a neon whore house of a blog.

Just write good stuff, and let people comment. Make friends with people and
share your writings with like-minded people.

~~~
DotSauce
I totally mis-read the second paragraph of his question. So yea... If you're
NOT looking to gain business and drive traffic, then by all means don't listen
to my advice. Sorry!

------
maxklein
Don't write to get things off your chest, write to entertain the people you
want reading your stuff. It's like a book - you write to entertain or educate
others, not yourself.

------
BornInTheUSSR
How about blogging about starting a blog and how you go about discovering your
goal. Some artists have a vision in mind before they start, but I don't think
this is a requirement. You chose a medium to play with, sometimes the lump of
clay reveals its potential after some experimentation.

------
dinkumthinkum
Don't take this the wrong way but your blog confuzzles me. What are you
talking about and what's going on?

