The idea of starting my own blog has been on my mind for quite some time. Nevertheless, the idea always got lost until Hari motivated me to have one a few months ago. It was discussed how writing a blog about a book read or a technology learned recently will help me document my experiences. The whole thing started as an experiment.

Writing Cadence

For me, one blog per month gives me enough time to think about the topic and the content. Depending on the ideas you get, you can choose between a week or a month.

In the book Atomic Habits (highly recommend reading it), there is a concept that says, "Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.". Exactly what I have been doing. My writing has been linked to my monthly catchup with Hari. Before we catch up, I plan to publish a blog & post it on Linkedin every month. Similarly, you can find an activity that has a set schedule and link your writing to it.

Since I started my first blog, I have tried to post at least one article every month. Here is a screenshot of my tracker. Keeping track is extremely crucial. You'll be motivated not to break the chain.

The topic for Writing

As of now, the topics I have written about do not fall into one specific category. I usually write about things that happen in my daily life. It's a combination of technology, books read, and various terms learned. You can follow that, too, as a starting point. Start with a recent topic since it will help you organize your thoughts easily.

Make sure to write down any ideas you have for writing so that you can come back to them later. My usual method of creating a list of topics when they come to mind is to write them down in a notebook.

Where to write

Since I had heard the most about Medium, I used it when I first started writing. Furthermore, it has a very good community and is very easy to use. Additionally, Medium provides a number of publications where your article can be published to increase traffic. One issue I had was with the domain. Since I already owned shlokashah.com (my website), I wanted a domain that was more customizable (blog.shlokashah.com).

As a result, I decided to switch to Hashnode since you can create free custom domains and also become a member of the community. Your Medium posts can be easily imported into Hashnode if you previously published them there.

Both platforms are user-friendly when it comes to creating articles. Depending on your preference, you can choose one.

Getting Reach on your articles

Once you've selected your platform & published your first article, the next step is to reach your audience. In order to get some visibility on my posts, I usually post on LinkedIn and Twitter. In addition, you can use timely trending hashtags in your posts to increase reach.

If you have original content (not yet published elsewhere), HackerNoon is a great place to submit and get more views. Furthermore, if you have a blog on a personal domain you can try submitting it to HackerNoon. They accept reposts and give canonical links to your personal domain!

When your article gets selected, it is published on HackerNoon, and they help you to expand your audience. The following is an example of one of my articles that got accepted by HackerNoon.

I hope this article helps you begin your blogging journey.