2019 Edition
Here we are at the end of 2019 and in the past few months the blog and visibility has gone from nothing to nearly 50 postings. The money made from writing has gone from nothing to $0.43. There are now posts on Medium and Twitter about the articles from the blog. Basically, looking back, the past couple of months have served as a launching off point for an online presence and it has been more successful that I ever dared to hope way back in August when I finally got off my butt and started doing something about all of these ideas in my head.
So both for posterity sake and as a primer showing how I work, this post is focused on describing the writing method that is being used currently here at the end of 2019. This method is always being tweaked, but has settled down enough that it can be written up and documented. The methods here are of my own making, but hopefully there are suggestions and tidbits here that can help you to improve your own methodology. If nothing else, please let this serve as a wake up call that in order to make an impact you need to first recognize and then define your own methodology. In 2019 my methodology is not geared towards maximum monetization. I am definitely closer to the ‘passion project’ size of the spectrum as opposed to the ‘make a living’ end of the spectrum. The methodology reflects this conscious choice. Your goals may differ – but you will have a process that you follow. Even if that process is as wildly crazy as ‘do something different every time I post’, that is still a process and a methodology. However, achieving success in writing in this medium requires a methodology with a little more planning and thought behind it.
The Idea Pipeline
One key element that helps me to stay engaged and excited about writing posts for the blog is to have a large writing pipeline. I achieve this through the creation of what I call “Post Ideas”. A Post Idea is the initial stub of an article or post. This could be as simple as a title, although it usually contains a few thoughts or ideas geared towards the overall topic of the post. Occasionally, the reason for the post comes from there here and now and reflects an experience or idea that I am having in the moment. In these cases the Post Idea may contain one to many paragraphs that will form the basis of the overall post. Whenever I have an idea that would make a good post I simply go to the ‘Add New’ option in WordPress and start typing. While writing this post I currently have 179 Post Ideas in the queue.
Sometimes the Post Idea will come from another article, website, or other internet source. There are also times that real world topics generate Post Ideas and this leads to some light research around the topic. In both of these instances I try really hard to document the articles and links found through the research on the post itself for future reference. It can be incredibly frustrating to come up with a great idea or find a killer quote for an article only to come back later and review the topic but not have that reference point available.
There is absolutely no filtering on these post topics. These topics are whatever interests me in the moment. Glancing through I currently have Post Ideas about Dilbert comics, hiring entry level engineers, office politics, email haiku, thoughts on LinkedIn, a Luminaries post about Grace Hopper, cursing at work, and re-engineering airplane boarding processes. And that is just the first page. The goal is that every time I sit down to write I want to write about something that I feel passionate about in that moment. That may be an angry passion or a contemplative dissertation, but the main goal is to have fun doing it. When this happens then the post and the blog are fun and exciting.
Creating Posts For the Blog
Once I actually get moving on a post topic and start fleshing out the main story and objective of the post things move in jumps and starts. I may sit down for 5 minutes or 50 minutes and work on the post. I may get distracted researching this post and end up creating 3 more Post Ideas. I may start another Post Idea and end up working on that for the next 90 minutes. There is no rhyme or reason for the flow here, and I like it like that. Things that feel fun and interesting today may not feel that way tomorrow. Things that I am blocked on may just flow onto the screen very quickly and easily tomorrow. I have learned to just roll with it.
Because of this constant starting and stopping, when I get back to a half-written post hours or days later, unless I have a specific section or thought to immediately write I usually start by re-reading and editing the previous work. Most of the posts that make it through this process usually receive well over a dozen editing sessions. I always look for typos and wordsmithing. I usually have a thesaurus open and is accompanied by a rough count of the number of “I”s in each paragraph. I know at least a few of my bad tendencies!
One of my favorite elements of post creation is the research elements that go into it. I love to read and the thought of just sitting here reading and researching a topic and going down any rabbit holes that pop up is immensely satisfying. I am very lucky in this regard, mainly because researching topics on the internet is one of my favorite things to do. While recently buying a new tv there were very few reviews that did not get at least one glance during my research The specifications page on the manufacturer website almost make it to my most frequently visited sites list for a few weeks in a row. It is always interesting to finally go look at the target tv and be able to explain some of the features to the salesperson that they didn’t know about.
However, this process is dangerous. It can turn into an enormous time suck that when I glance up and it is 12:30AM and I started working on a post about being a superhero manager and ended up writing about how I gained my love of bourbon through business trips and business dinners… yeah distraction can be a killer. This is how I know that trying to turn writing into a fulltime career is probably not in my future.
One the test is in pretty good shape for a post then I go back a re-work it at least once more for visual effect. This is usually where the title gets rewritten multiple times and the formatting of the post is reviewed and pictures are added. This is also where quotes are italicized and section topics are centered and highlighted in bold font. The cleanup process is not complete without going through a quick posting checklist where the post URL is reviewed, categories are selected, tags are added, and an excerpt is generated. Then the fun part – clicking the publish button. A new post is born.
Limit Interaction Via The Blog
This is one topic that I am greatly looking forward to seeing where the blog ends up in the future. At this time the interactive elements of this blog have been locked down. Comments have been disabled. Email addresses are not posted and there is no contact me form. This is deliberate. I decided up front to create space for my thoughts and my words and to attempt to avoid the distractions that might come from comment approvals and random people surfing the internet. There are tons of advice columns out there on building a blog presence that all state that this is a no-no. Ok, but this is a great time to remind myself that I am doing this for me because I am enjoying it and right now I don’t really care what opportunities might be missed because this is a building phase for the blog. If that phase changes in the future, great, otherwise right now I am happy with the results.
This doesn’t mean that I am avoiding interaction altogether. In the past month I have gotten things moving on Medium.com and on Twitter. These have led to some modest success on those platforms and currently scratch any itch for feedback and interaction that comes up.
Re-Posting to Medium
Speaking of interaction, now for Medium. My intent as of 2019 is that the blog is the primary location for posts. Therefore, I have set a few rules cross posting articles to Medium. First of all, the post needs to season a bit on the blog. Therefore, post must be up for at least 30 days and also have been pushed off of the main page of the blog before I will consider them for posting elsewhere. This keeps the focus on the blog and allows future work to focus on where I think the primary effort will go – into the blog.
There is also an awesome side effect from this delay. Re-posting my own work is making me a better writer. The first handful of articles that went up on Medium went up as-is and didn’t get much traffic and I just plodded along. Then I started doing some more editing and re-writes on the pieces and lo and behold: magic happened. 3 posts in a row were both curated and picked up by one of the bigger publications on Medium, The Startup. This blew me away. There are now 700 views of my work on that site. That is just too cool.
Setting aside the excitement from view counts, it does feel very rewarding to feel like my writing is getting better. I am starting to see more rough sections in initial creation that can be smoothed out and re-worked to provide a smooth and clean reading experience. This editing does bring up some concerns. Am I trying to hard to write in a style that isn’t my own? Am I trying to tailor the cadence and tone to be like other bloggers or authors on Medium? Or am I actually starting to learn to write good? (intentional grammar miscue for effect).
While I do have these questions and am overtly critical of my own work, the fact that I am writing a post like this makes me feel better. These are my words in my article on my blog. And they might not make my own editing cut to make it over to Medium. And that is perfectly fine with me.
Building Metrics
This is a blog about Engineering, so why wouldn’t it have some sort of metrics involved? Metrics are important for understanding how and when other people look at the site as well as what topics get attention. This allows for tailoring future content towards topics that other people are interested in and is a key component to building an online following. Therefore, each week I attempt to compile metrics for the site to make sure that I am staying on track against my own goals and targets as well as understanding how other people view the site.
Creating metrics also allows for the creation of feedback loops with viewers. This is important for growing readership. Ideally, the feedback loops should be tighter than once a week – this would allow for experimentation and faster growth, but as the main focus right now is not on exponential growth but instead on simply building what I want when I want I am ok with a more laid back metric evaluation that only occurs once a week. It also gives me something fun to look forward to on Sundays!
Tweeting Every Day
Twitter is just another channel for interaction with people around the world. It also gives a way to tackle much more bite-sized chunks and random thought dumps than would be possible in full on blog posts. Therefore, I have started working on tweeting every day. These include #workplacehaiku and also #EngineeringHistory. I am also using twitter to post links to blog posts and to medium articles.
That is pretty much it for here at the end of 2019. I hope to make another of these posts a year from now and I am excited to see what changes and enhancements are made to the process over the next year. Thanks for reading!
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