How to write stuff that gets on the front page of Hacker News

[lpolovets]

http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-to-write-stuff-that-gets-on-the-front-page-of-hacker-news/

[majewsky]

Was hoping the post would be a single sentence like "Do cool shit and tell us about it."

[gumby → majewsky]

I think her point is that's not sufficient, and perhaps not even necessary.

But (like you I guess) those are the ones that typically get my clicks. But see: both of us clicked on her link!

[majewsky → gumby]

Only to be able to write a snarky comment about it, but yeah, I admit that proves her point.

[ngrilly]

How meta: the advice of getting a bit drunk to be able to write great stuff is controversial in itself ;-)

[thorwasdfasdf]

Thank you for posting this! This definitely goes under the category of "helpful", especially for any content writers/marketer.

It's interesting, This writer states that drinking wine helps her write, and she makes a great case for it. She's not the only one: Stevie Yeggie's infamous blog is titled/subtitled "Drunken blog rants"

[mooreds]

Tldr:

Be controversial with data or be helpful (with or without data).

I have submitted a lot to hn and based on my own posts, I have to agree with this. Not that I have anywhere near her success rate.

I might also add "be interesting in a niche off the wall way" as a third path, but these are much more like lightning strikes. Things like a list of the moons or a pointer to composting info (both of which I did).

But if you are content marketing for a tech business, the tips from the article are solid. It also probably helps to post about something intensely interesting to many people in the community (like jobs). Would be interested to see analysis of other less general topics and see if the same rules hold.

[dewyatt]

Just put Bayesian and Rust in the title. :)

[yitchelle → dewyatt]

What about blockchain? Oops, this is not reddit.

[HNLurker2 → yitchelle]

That's /g/ jargon

[eccbits]

Great stuff!