What is Successful Blogging to Me?

I have recently been trying to write more by participating in the Hashnode Technical Writing Bootcamp. As part of one of our sessions, we were asked to think about what successful blogging means to each of us & write about it.

Before I start going into some of my reasoning for blogging, let me tell a bit about myself. In the past, I have written an odd article or two even getting picked up as a tutorial. I enjoyed writing the articles. However, I always felt that I needed something which was not commonly explored to write about. Meeting this requirement is not easy with hundreds of different blog posts coming out every day. Only recently did I recognise that this was the imposter syndrome in me.

At the same time, I was seeing tweets from a lot of Indie creators like the one below from David Perell on learning in public.

The Internet rewards people who learn in public.

— David Perell (@david_perell) May 10, 2020

Being inspired by similar tweets & articles, I am trying to get back to writing. This time my goals are quite simple.

• Write about anything that might help me in the future. There have been many instances where I have looked up the same thing multiple times. My writings would be a good source for me to refer to recurring problems. I started with one here on Hashnode.
• Another advantage of writing for yourself is that during this process of explaining the concept, you learn the topic better. I have seen this while giving talks on different topics. I learn much better when I try to explain something to someone else.
• At the same time, if the writing helps someone facing a similar situation, it is a bonus. There would be people who know more than you in any given topic. Similarly, there would be people who might learn from your experience. The only way to find out is by sharing my experiences.
• I want to try to keep all the vanity metrics like views, reactions, etc out of the process. These things should not be what I care about while sharing my experiences. It is not easy with all the dopamine hits that you get from these metrics on social media.
• At some point in the future, I would also like to share my articles a bit more on social media but it is not a priority at the moment.
• Above all, I want to enjoy the process of writing, sharing experiences. At the end that is the only way, I can keep sharing my experiences.

I want to finish this article with an aspirational goal from one of the modern writers.

Make your failings public; keep your virtues secret.

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) May 9, 2020

I would be happy to know about your experiences with learning in public.

Cover Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash