19 has been the year where developers flawed. But why should you blogged? How do you get started? What are our work? Clothes. And do you even wanna block? Blogging has been pivotal in a lot of our careers. And we wanted to talk a bit more about our blogging mindset. Why we block why you want a blood and more. Let's get started.

Welcome to the ladybug podcast. I'm Kelly. I'm Allie. I'm Emma and I'm Lindsay and were debugging the tech industry. Let's jump right in and discuss what each of us like to blogged. Emma, you go first. So I started blogging as a means to kind of take notes on things that I was learning as I was learning them. And that way I had a reference sheet that I could go back to and refer to things like, for example, a rejects Cici. That was one of the things that I made that I could go back and refer to, you know, as time went on. And I also use that kind of is a way to teach myself because I am a huge proponent of the fact If you can relate your thoughts about a topic well enough to create a blood post or create an online video or whatnot. Then you've sufficiently learned you know, the base level knowledge for that skill.

It's a great way to reinforce what you've learned. So I started blogging as a resource for myself. But there are many reasons why you should blogged. You can also start to blogged in order to build yourself a portfolio. This is a great resource for employers to look through if you're applying for jobs and whatnot. So those air three big reasons why I started. But, Lindsay, can you tell us a little more about maybe, like, why you got invested in belonging?

Yeah, sure. So my block is very focused on accessibility. So the main two reasons why I decided to start blogging was first to establish myself a subject matter inaccessibility. I was already kind of known as that in my local community, but I wanted to expand that to the more global community, and I think it's actually done a pretty good job doing that. The other part was to empower developers something I've learned a lot from. Working with developers about accessibility is a lot of them Think of it more as a checklist and less about solutions and implementing solutions and just being inclusive. And I wanted Thio put that mindset Maurin to developers head. And I wanted that them to just feel empowered and to teach. So those are my main to reason. Charlie, What about you?

Yes, so for me and my biggest reason is for my past self when I'm starting to code as we talked about a little bit on Episode one, I didn't feel confident, and I didn't feel like I belonged. And I didn't feel like I understood the material. So I started writing. Resource is that my past self would have found really helpful was kind of like a form of rehashing that I guess then other people started finding them helpful as well. And for me, teaching is a really big part of what I love doing, and so belonging is another form of that. So I bought for myself first and to write stuff that I would have benefited from in the past, but secondary and a really great part of it now is that it's helping other people learn how to code and making it easier for the people coming after me. So I think we kind of forget that blogging is a form of asynchronous mentorship. In a sense, it's kind of like mass mentor ship. It's not something I ever considered until, you know,

I went on a podcast that someone's guessing they were like, So you're kind of a mentor with through your blogging and I'm like, I guess it kind of is we don't really think about how many people can reach Yeah, in person, you can only teach a certain number of people at a time. Even a big talk is the couple 1000 people. Maybe, whereas I have blood posts that one blogger posted itself has 100,000 reeds, and so that's a huge amount of people compared to the people that use in future in person. So that's a really great part of it. I think that teaching in person has like a bigger impact on those people that are there, but this has a smaller impact on a huge amount of people, which is awesome to

definitely toe piggyback off that I've noticed that my impact has been so much more with blogging. I spoke so much in 2017 and I still don't feel like I was able to teach nearly as many people. Or I wasn't as known to t throughout accessibility as other people.

So on the opposite side of where Allie says that she Boggs for her past self, I've longed for my future self, Um, for two reasons. First, it's because I forget everything that I did yesterday. So I find my own resource is to be a resource for myself when I eventually will forget and two in, you know, in my career, I need to be a subject matter expert, and I can use my own block posts as resource is to send to potential clients and to talk about in our newsletter that we send out for our from agency. So my blood coast conserve not only purpose for potential clients and in the newsletter, but also bye bye showing this. We've actually signed on new clients because they read something in our block that that shows that we know what we're talking about so really quickly on. This is a slight tangent, but I think it's an important one. When I was starting out,

I couldn't find blog's that were useful for me as a beginner because they were maybe missing things like they may be skipped over topics that were relevant to the Post, but they didn't maybe define a room. So it may be like, for example, if I was running a block about, like react for beginners, and they mentioned Redox like if they don't link to retake stocks where they don't like to find what it is, I'm kind of lost, right? So what makes a blogger a good blogged and I'll kick this off really quickly? I find that if you're going to mention like tangential, tangential topics, I can't even say that we're toe linked to the documentation and maybe give, like a high level the definition of what something is. I think that makes it a good block, having a good flow in hierarchy and maybe having some good graphics.

But what are some things that you deem, as you know, good when you're talking about what makes a good block post? So I have a bit of background in scientific writing from my time in grad school, and a really important component to whatever you're writing is having a section for operational definitions, and that's exactly what you're talking about. If you're gonna be discussing certain topics, have a section that defines literally defines what it is you will be talking about so people can refer back to that one section if they're if they're confused on a certain term that you're using.

I think you are doing that. I don't do that.

I don't either. But I think I will. You know, I never I don't really see it much in blog's, and I think it be actually a really great thing to start doing. Yeah, I think it's similar to when you're teaching. So the first thing that you always want to do is tell people what they're going to learn in your post, a sign that they know that they're reading a block post that's gonna help them be so that they already are paying attention and that they know what they're going to get from it to their prep toe, learn that material, then in the middle, try to make it so that the contents multimedia so it appeals to all different types of learning styles. What that means is that all integrate video content if I have it all integrate. Could pens, uh, infographics all the types of media that I can not just words in addition, Try to make it a skim,

a Billa's possible so that people just looking at the post can get Gather something from it and know that it's interesting. If it's just a wall of text, like an essay, it's probably not gonna hook somebody's attention. At first glance at the end, I try to make it so that it sums up what they learned, and then it's also a call to action so that they keep following my writing. Erick you following me online so that they know the next time that I've host. So that's kind of my formula for a block post. That's really cool, because we forget that people learn differently, like I like to read through. I like to read through learning. I like to learn through reading, but that's maybe not everyone's medium. I think we've covered this and,

you know, maybe the last two podcast. If you want to maybe hear more about how we learn and what not go, go listen to our first too. But yeah, that's great. I take that for granted within my post. I kind of just do like graphics and words and leave it at that. But incorporating videos and maybe even audio, right, that might be very useful. Totally. Okay. So, back to the motivators topic. We talked a lot about writing for our former Selves and our future Selves and to establish ourselves experts.

But there are some motivators that we didn't talk about and to stand out for me, our money and getting an obvious. Do we want to talk a little bit more about those things and why we we didn't mention those? Absolutely. I think a lot of people probably have questions about how much money can you make off of blogging. So when I started, I was on medium primarily, and it was kind of trying to figure out their pay wall system before they changed it all. At that time, you could really make certain posts for members only. Any collapse you got from paying members were divided up depended on a ratio. So I think my first check for medium was baby like 30 or $40 which, you know, that's kind of a lot for your first paycheck, right? I would say that now on passive Block Post,

cause I don't post much on medium anymore. I could maybe make like $50 a month just on posts that are just living. They're not doing lunch, but that being said, it does take time to make money. And as you snowball your content as you post more often, you'll you might have more opportunities to work with other blogging sites or companies or whatnot. So, like I was contacted by Todd motto from Ultimate Blog's and he wanted to Sign Me on is someone to write for them. So posting your own content can definitely lead you to make money. It will take time, and there are many ways that you can do it, whether that's through partnerships or, you know, monetizing your post on the site. But you can't right away expected making hundreds and hundreds of more thousands of dollars.

You'll probably make you know 30 at most. Yeah, it's definitely hard to make a lot of money off of blogging in itself. It's a lot easier to make money off of doing partner posts or something along those lines, but I think especially ad money. It's really, really hard to make a lot of money off of that. You can definitely make a couple of dollars, but you have to get millions of views to make decent money off of that. But then again, you can use a block to market other things. And that's I think, where blogging becomes a lot more lucrative.

I with that being said, it's almost ah, the way I think of blocking isn't so much as I directly monetized, but almost like a funnel. Like, if you really like my content, you might eventually I want to work with me or you might eventually want me to teach. I personally haven't monetized any of my content yet. Everything that I've monetized has been like to egghead. And then you know, other parts that came from people reading myself. So for me, it's actually more of a marketing thing like, you know, I'm a subject matter expert and you read my stuff and you're like, I like the way she does things, So I'm gonna talk to her about maybe potential opportunities. I've had opportunities that have actually had to turn down like teaching opportunity just because I did not have the bandwidth, but as a long term strategy, I think it's really cool that that could be an option for me.

I want to also make a note here that you don't need to monetize your post just like you said Lindsay. So what I do is I offer my post generally behind a paywall. But I also offered for freeze. There's no barring entry for people to pay for a subscription to read my stuff. But if they want to go and, you know, give me collapse on medium or what not to additionally, help me out that super nice. But, you know, maybe we can even do a whole episode on, you know, monetizing your work as a content creator. I think it's a hot topic, but, um, there's no shame.

If you are putting your time and effort into something, my opinion news like you should be able to monetize it right. I personally just like to offer those things for free as well. So and it also goes back to our our side projects episode where, you know, one of us mentioned maybe it was me. I don't remember.

I think it was

you okay? It was me that as soon as you start attempting to turn a side project into a side job, it becomes much more stressful. And, you know, monetizing applaud is not necessarily like on the jumping into the deep end of monetizing something. But, you know, once you start making money from something, you want to keep making money from it, and then it can become like overwhelming to try to keep that up. When you know you have other responsibilities, you need to be focusing on. Um, one other motivator I would like to just bring up is that you can gain an audience, which is really neat. It's really cool.

When I started blogging, I didn't have an audience at all. Ah, and one of the pieces of advice that I got from my friend Khalil. He said, if you consistently post like, you'll eventually gain readership and it will take a while, but at some point, you know it'll happen, and it's true, like overtime. You do gain an audience, Um, and many things can come your way. As a result of that, it's also a negative that we'll talk about a little bit later.

But, um, that's one of the motivators behind it is seeing the impact of your words and how they can help people learn, I think is a great motivator. And it's very much a slow and steady thing like you. You really can't rush building an audience because in the you need a bill, that organic audience that sees the value in in what you're creating,

the cool thing about it being slower to start is the people. Once you do got an audience, they are your ride or dies. Yeah, like I cannot like any time I have to take a break from social media for stress reasons or whatever. I have so many people deeming me being like we're here for you. Don't worry, Take care of yourself. You know, it's actually really heartwarming. In a way. There are gonna be, um, jerks. But the people who do truly follow you and like your content are your rider dies. So, um, if you know, this is actually a good segue. Way to talk about how to get started

door. So I actually started blogging a long time ago when I worked at IBM, but I did it like haphazardly s o. I was never consistent with it, right, And they were mostly career oriented. So I think I wrote one internally. About how top 10 tips for being a standout new hire. Um, how you can differentiate yourself. But I post that on the internal blogging site and whatnot. I honestly didn't even really know much about the community at large. I didn't know there were blogging platforms. I didn't know there was Twitter like I was totally disconnected. Um, so it was really only recently Once I joined Logmein. Uh,

look at the end of last year was last September, my coworker image and earlier, Khalil, he's like, Hey, people are starting to share your block post on Twitter. And then, you know, then I got on Twitter and that I kind of like, spiraled into it. But at that point, it was kind of just like haphazardly posting whenever I felt like it was more interest, career based. And once I once I saw people were sharing, it was like, All right,

maybe I need to be older and more consistent. So that's when I I started adding really cool graphics that I created Sketch I started adding those, um and I think that having those kind of graphics and exp planing things quite in depth and linking to these external resource is like we discussed earlier. I think that's when I started gaining interest from the community. That alley. See, you're obviously a big blogger. So how did you get started? So I initially started almost two years ago. Now you're and 1/2 2 years and I had absolutely no online following at that point and didn't really until last year. So I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to learn new things I saw already. Joe. She's basically a Siri's or which was incredible, and I learned so much from it, and I wanted to do something similar.

So I started a challenge for myself. Similar to that serious called on learning new things where I would teach myself a new thing. Every week I would build a nap with it and then write a block post completely unsustainable. That's a huge amount of work and completely unrealistic to Dio. It would take me forever to write these bog posts, but it was pretty fun. I started getting like 30 views per post or something along those lines. So it started really, really small and then occasionally one would take off a little bit. And at that point, taking off was getting maybe 1000 reeds and seeing that build was really incredible. But it got to you way overwhelming because I had taken on ways to much and also because people were reviewing my blood post. I was getting invited to speak about my blood posts. So that started a whole another side situation where that was taking more time than the boggy itself. So that blood kind of died because it was too much work. And then I started ah,

hybrid lifestyle programming blawg because I moved to Connecticut and didn't know anybody and had a lot of extra time on my hands. And so I was reading these posts that were telling youto the former version of myself, and it was very tailored to my interest. The whole block was think and very my style, and so nobody really read the lifestyle post. Some of the programming post, though, just really took off like they were getting to the front of hacker news. They were getting on the front pew to read it and taking off on Twitter and stuff like that. Friends. So since those posts were doing so well, I doubled down on those. And that's kind of my blogging story, I guess. How about you, Lindsay? I think I know this story. Yeah.

So my original idea for starting even some sort of side project inaccessibility came when I was a Panelist last April. So April 2018 and I was a Panelist for inaccessibility front and event, and I kind of side joked about people hiring me to do things for accessibility. And then I had three or four people come up to me and be like, No, you should actually right about this. I would totally share it. I'm like, Okay, cool. Let's do this. So, uh, actually ended up hanging out with a fellow designer and having her create design, special designs and my logo on my color scheme hurting Raquel. She put her information stroh notes because you should totally work with her. She's awesome.

But I When I joked about it, I had all these people coming around and I was okay, you know, I'm gonna do this, and so I started creating my blogged in drooping because at the time that's what I knew. And I ended up having it completely designed by like July. And then I paused because I was thinking about costs and triple Hosting is pretty extensive, like it's at the men well, $50 a month. And I was basically procrastinating because I didn't want to send that money yet, so paused. And then the month later, like Ali and I started talking and, um, she's like, Have you ever thought about building your log and Gatsby because you could host it for free on Amplify?

And I was like, Oh, my gosh, that's folks. That is the only reason why I have not published those. So I quickly rebuilt it, and it was actually pretty fun because I was still playing around with react, so I had some chances to play around with. That said, it drew people learning something new, which made it way more fun. And when I started playing around with that and then I published it, I ended up launching it on my birthday last year. So that way I always remember my blog's birthday and yeah, that was pretty much my story. So let's talk about a little bit about Kelly story, which is a little more in conventional. Unless anybody has questions for

no, I'll just jump right in. So my blogging story started when I was about 10 years old on a website called Live Journal E Don't know any of you use live Journal. Obviously, this is not at all career related. I would just like I just, you know, I blocking for a very long time about my life. You know, my middle school life is a very emotional, just traumatizing, always in terms totally fine. Um, but live journal was kind of like my first floor eins just kind of like getting my thoughts out there. But I tried Thio run multiple blog's over the course of my life, both professionally and for fun. I had a food blogger for a little while at a travel blogger for a little while.

I just had, like, a life in grad school Blawg for a while, and I always gave up on them after, like, two posts. I could never keep up with it, so I just didn't log for a while. And now I kind of have to blogged because you don't running this agency. I have to put myself out. There is a subject matter expert this point. So I don't block regularly in this sense that everybody else does, which I will get a little bit more into later. Um, I just find the entire process a little overwhelming. But because we need the blogger,

I found that writing a newsletter instead is actually the easiest way for me to go about it. So I couldn't write content and then hand it over to our digital marketing strategist. She reform as it into a block, and it's literally the same exact content as what's in the newsletter. Maybe, like button, extra paragraph or something added. But for whatever reason, by calling it a newsletter, it makes it much easier for me to write and were able to put out content every other week that way. So that's kind of how I got started back into blogging. I could say That's awesome.

Yeah, I kind of love that, too, because it's like a newsletter is super helpful for your business, so it's you could probably see the value of doing that a lot easier which probably helps a lot with motivation.

It really does. What I find really interesting is that, um, we all wanted to have blog's for different topics, like lifestyle food whatnot. But it's really hard to run multiple blog's with multiple, you know, subject matters because the people who are there for your tech blog's for example, they don't care about, you know, food necessarily. Or, um, you know what outfit you're wearing today. And I struggle with this because I love to block about career things. Ah, but I do notice that they don't get as much traction.

So I've kind of been struggling myself with Okay, I want to post these career blog's, but where do I post them? Because I oppose primarily on, you know, the deaf community now. But those things aren't necessarily dead focused, and so I kind of have a little bit of an identity crisis. Ah, so I'm not sure how to handle these kind of things. Do you have any tips for that? I would pitch, um, Thio stuff like the woman and Greer say it's something like Refinery 20 Niner. Simply like that. I'd pick him there.

I think that'd be fun. Yeah. I mean, there are There are other other sources online that lets you, you know, contribute to their block instead of trying to maintain your own when you could just, you know, right one article or two of a subject of interest. I was laughing when you said that you had other blog's before Kelly. I started with fashion bug in high school and definitely fizzled after a little bit. You would not have wanted me to run a fashion blogging high school. Probably. We neither. Actually, I kind of wish I had. Just so I can look back on it and be like,

Wow, Kelly, this is really good one. The only one that I can find is one about fake fur. And how you should wear that real fur. And then what fake for you should wear. So if you do find it, please post it because I want to read. Oh, I haven't. I'll definitely posted. I had a live journal accounted dedicated to how much I love the Jonas Brothers. I

don't even I don't remember my livejournal name, so I don't even remember. I think I just posted my feeling So you're probably just if you find it, you'll just super emotional high school.

I don't even know what live General is, to be honest, but I was that weird kid that, like, took notes on like, I found what I would call a block post. But really, it's just me writing on a piece paper. It was like 100 things I think are hot. And it was basically just like Aaron Carter, the Jonas. But like, isn't it just like a list of celebrities at the time? But anyway, to tangent? So we all right? Blog's for the most part. And what's our general workflow look like? I'm gonna let Lindsay kick

this one off. Sure. So I talked about this pretty openly. I have a PhD, so we're finding my blood. Post Workflow was a bit of a work in progress. I really finally got this and actually wrote about it, and I'll link the blogger post post of help plugging in the show notes. But I basically start out by writing in a markdown file. I create headers of what my general sections will be, and then I just start typing. It's a little bit chaotic. It'll go. I'll generally right. My intro first, but after all, the middle is kind of all over the place.

Then once I'm finished with writing that and writing the conclusion as well, I will run it through the Hemingway up. The Hemingway up makes her writing a lot more concise. It tells you how many words you have. What you're what the reading level is. It's really helpful for me because a lot of times I just avoid Writer's block. I just literally brain vomit onto my mark. Don't file. It's all over the place, so this will help me get my ideas to be a lot more concise. And then once I'm done with that and putting everything into my mark done filed, then I will copy and paste it into Graham early as a disclaimer, I actually used the premium version of Graham early. I love it because it has more granularity. It'll learn a little bit more about what your tone is. I learned about this through Alley,

actually, so they have both an extension on chrome, which I don't like as much, and they also have a, um, a nap that you can use. So I pieced it into this, uh, basically just this blank text editor, and then it'll assess your content. So it'll catch things just like small grammar issues like spelling, missing commas and stuff like that. That's more of the free version. But then they'll also go in the process. Is your content technical? What's the tone of your content in?

It'll like finding like passive voice. Yeah, so that's always like a really good second step for me. I kind of like it doesn't do what Hemingway does, and like it says, You know what? You're like, what the reading level is like. Is it 1/4 grade reading level like which, you know there's another Another different reason why I used Hemingway. Graham Early is a lot more about checking like the style of your writing. Is it consistent making sure that you have commas in the right places? I like love, Graham early for that reason so and you have your follow up questions, but

I just want to say this is really cool, especially for those who want to get into blogging. But English is not their first language, and potentially they're nervous about that. So, uh, I think that's great I've used in the past, but I'm gonna definitely look into another premium account because the sun's really cool. Also, just a side note when we talk about like these paid accounts and paid service. Is these air not sponsors? We just We all personally use thes service's and we love them.

Yeah, so yeah, and the other The last thing I do, which I actually got as a suggestion from somebody on Twitter, I think I was complaining about how it takes me so long to edit blood post like, way longer. Thio edit Dun Dun to write them, and they're like, Why don't you run it through a screen reader? And my mind was blown because first of all, that's very on Brand. But also it's super like when I have a DHD. So something that happens to me very frequently is I'll start reading something and then I'll lose my place because I get distracted by something and then I have to start over and it's just, like continues happening. So with a screen reader, what I'll do is I'll put on my headphones to not to not capped external noise to my partner. Um,

so I'll put on my headphones and I'll turn on my screen reader on my Mac, which use command at five, and then just start reading my content. It's really helpful because you will be like, Oh, that did not sound right when it says something wrong because it will read everything with the grammar that you're supposed to have so sometimes a little irritating to read code. So something sometimes that I'll do is I'll comment out the code part if I have code samples in the block post and then have it read after that. But that's pretty much my strategy now, and it's made my editing process so much quicker. Cannot recommend trying a screen reader enough. That's like my favorite addition. Thio my clothes. So I love it. It's also just very on brand for me because some inaccessibility blogger so But my you know, my blogging crosses this super specific, and I'm definitely if I has followed questions, feel free to tweet needs from the like. When I see you, I don't mean you three me people who are listening

I have I actually have a quick question. How long would you say it takes? You from the idea to publishing it. How long

would you probably depend? So the things that that don't have co examples take me a lot less time so I could have a blogger written to completely edited and ready to publish within five hours. But the one of my favorite posts that I've written was my D three bar charts and accessibility block posts. And that pose probably took me 20 hours from start to end. And the reasons for that was one. It was very code heavy, too. It wasn't like I was still relatively new to D three, like, I've only been doing the three for six months. So that was also, like, very tricky for me. So because I had to double check things, it wasn't like things that I knew in the back of my head. It was still stuff that I was relatively new to. So second,

checking all of my code samples so that that one took me probably about 20 hours from start to finish. And, uh, but, yeah, it's something also, like my most recent posts about labeling that one actually didn't take me that long. I wrote that post when I was on a plane and then edited and refined it later because that's all because I know that stuff. So second nature. So it really depends on the content. If you're challenging yourself to learn something new, it's gonna take a lot longer. If you are doing something without code samples, it's gonna take a lot less or if it's code simple. But it's stuff that you know so well you could like. You don't even need to research for code interview type things like those things are

a lot shorter. Wonderful. Kelly, what is your workload look like? Since you don't post regularly and you're focused more on kind of blogging for your job To be a subject matter expert? What is your work full like? Yeah, so when it's something that's not related to my business, if I have an idea, I write it down and then I post it. But I don't I don't do any editing. I I'm kind of really lazy when it comes, like about all my post son Dev. I've never actually proofread um, so just a little sign other. But for the business most my content and topic ideas come from questions I'll receive from clients or issues that me we may encounter in a project, then maybe 20 to 30 minutes writing an email for our weekly newsletter.

And once that been sends out, I pass it over to our digital marketing strategist, who shall henceforth be named Shannon because that's her name. And Shannon turns it into a log post. And I'll proof read that, Um, it's usually Shannon sending me a message being like Kelly, you need to write a long first. Here's an idea, Phil in the outline and I'll write it. And that's my other favorite workflow. It doesn't require much work on my end. Emma, what do you Ah, it's one of two situations. So the the most frequent situation is that I get an idea and I sit down and I kind of just like word vomit and do a document and I hit published.

Uh, and I don't think too much about it. And this gets me in a lot of trouble sometimes, and sometimes it turns out really well. Sometimes all posts things without really like I should really let it seep in a little bit more and digested. Ah, and re read and whatnot. But I'm the kind of person that, like I have a very low attention span for things. And once I like, get all my thoughts on a page, it's very rare for me to really go back and rework things. So some of my biggest ones have just kind of been word vomit. The other way that I work sometimes is I'll come up with a topic idea outline like the section hunters and I'll fill in the content, and this is probably how I should be doing them. But,

um, realistically, that's kind of know how it goes. So it's it's hit or miss. I feel like the career or the topic based posts are a lot easier for me to come up with. I really enjoy coming up with the graphics for those and sketch I. Really. Those just drive with me, really, while the technical ones where I have to actually go create just for everything I do use just I was previously using carbon the carbon screenshots. Sometimes I still use those, but they're not accessible. So I've been switching over to just and managing. Those can take a lot longer and be very frustrating those technical posts Take me a lot longer to right, and that's why generally you'll see more like theoretical posts. For me,

they're just a little easier. So, Ali, what about you? So I also start with a really, really messy outline, and I actually will normally batch very writing. So before even the process. All have similar types of activities all together. So all, for example, have a bunch of topics that I want to write about in a list. And I'll keep track of that so that if I have an idea, I have it written down. Is that what I actually have? Time to write?

It's there. I don't have to come up with something on the spot, so I'll come up with topics. At one point, I called you a bunch of outlines for multiple posts at once all at once. So have a bunch of outlines, right? And then when I want to publish something, I just have to fill in that outline so similar to you, all those outlines will be super messy at first, not complete thoughts in any way, shape or form. Little go back and fill in. Those thoughts make sure that it flows properly. That headers Aaron correct orders that it makes the most sense it is most engaging and that it's the cleanup process of making sure that the text is broken up, that I have lists in there.

If that's appropriate, just we have to break up the contents so that it's not just a S a or something along those lines. Then I edit again with Graham really similar to Lindsey. Our processes look really similar. So Lindsay did my blogging workshop way back in the day before she launched its A lot of our stuff will look really, really similar, I think, Yeah, at least hearing of act. It definitely sounds familiar.

It's very it's very insp owed by Ali

Super Body. And then I am huger, making content with images, especially for social media sharing, but then also just for the post themselves. So we'll add those in I also, usually, if I'm doing something friend, really, it'd all have a bunch of code pens for every step of the process, and so I'll make sure those all work and have the code that I want in them. If it's in a different language, that it's usually just copied in peace did code, and I'll make sure that each step works there as well. But I totally agree with you all that usually non technical writing that doesn't have a ton of photon. It is quicker to right, though I do have some really skyscraper long posts in that fashion,

and those definitely take a lot more time as well. My fever thing to write is like complete beginners guys to stuff that a really comprehensive and have a ton of different topics. And one think I read somewhere that the most active blood posts the ones like the most traction are between, like 3 to 5 minute read times. So if you're interested in, you know, data and statistics and things like that, I do for find that my post that are shorter and that use graft fix specifically to explain these convoluted topics, they definitely get the most traction. People have a very short attention span, so yeah, I think that it really depends, So I think that if you're making it multimedia, it will feel like it's quicker anyways. But for search engines, technically longer content is usually better than that but yeah,

in order to get traction that way. But Marquis words Ooh, interesting. So once you actually post these things and you're kind of waiting around, how do you actually get people to read it? How do you gain an audience and and why is consistency really important when you're trying to build up your readership? Let's just jump right back to you, Allie. How do you How did you gain your audience s? So I think that it's important to before we talk about anything else to say that you want to diversify your audience. So if all of your traffic is coming from Twitter or all of your traffic is coming from instagram or S E O and that's really hard to rely on, all these algorithms are constantly changing. Like recently, Google just had a really big update to their algorithm, and a lot of sites dropped 50% in traffic overnight, which is awful.

If that is your primary income and you're relying on that, then that's really scary. So make sure that you're getting your traffic from different set resources so that if that algorithm changes, you're not super dependent on it. So I think the first thing that we've all thought about is consistency. When I was writing really seriously, it was every single Monday morning. You knew to look for a new block post for me. A first thing in the morning and usually beginnings of the weak have hired traffic. So that's why Monday, Tuesday posting is usually the way to go unless your brand new and then weekends are a great time to push because there's lower competition and then making sure that you're writing content that people want. Oh, read good contents important the search engines really value. If people are spending a lot of time reading your article, that means that they're gonna make it so that your post is featured. So having longer content is important for that,

and also just making a good content that people actually enjoy reading. That's important. And so that on top of that, the search engine optimization we can show that you're adding in key words, all that that's really important so that you have that audience that you're building most really big bloggers, relying mostly on Seo so definitely important to focus on that to some extent and then social media. I think they're all of us definitely rely a lot on social media, whether it be over for all of us. It's Twitter mostly, but I tryto try Different stuff is a while. Reading Hacker in is a break, too. One thing to know on the S e o side of things when it comes to key words when you're writing block post really writing any content for a website? It's not about just plugging in keywords and rain those spots. It has to be a more organic the way that you would read it on, you know,

like a long form sentence or something like that, or a phrase. Google is very aware of your just try to plug a key words, and you could be penalized for that 100%. Yeah, I also think it's important to discuss the fact that you want engaged readers and engaged audience members. Right? So this goes where anything that you're trying to build up, audience wise social media, blogging, et cetera. You can hack the system if that's something that you're interested in doing if you care mostly about numbers. But I often see people who grow their audience is too large into a large scale, and there's no engagement. They don't get like some their tweets. They don't get comments on their blog's air likes on their blocks.

So be clear about whether you care more about numbers or you care more about the quality of the interactions than I think. When you start to care more about what you're writing, the quality of readership in interaction on there by default is much higher. Then if you're just pushing out content that you think is pot right, I think going on top of that is if you have storytelling and tell your authentic story that's unique to you and your somewhat vulnerable in that I think that people are going to relate to that, relate to you and want to keep reading your content. So I think that that's something that's really helped me as well, both on social media but also in blood. Post is telling my story and being really honest, so definitely even if it's like a technical post, you can interweaves stories in there, too.

Something I think is super super interesting about storytelling and even just authenticity. I found that now my traffic is super high when it comes to referrals. And I think when you're when you're just relying on S, e. O and key words, it's a lot harder to get referrals. My last month, June was unreal with the amount of referral traffic I got. Um, I think a lot of times people really just jump into Seo strategy and SDO strategy is quite important. But it's something that has worked super well for me is just really developing my don't let's say my online percent, because my online persona is very much who I am in real life, just a little bit more technical side of me. Um, but I find that building up that persona and, like people will eventually learn about you. And when people learn about you,

then they'll refer to your content. And when you refer to your content, then S e. O starts building up because when people refer to your content in their content, that's called back linking, which I'm not super advanced in. But I know it's good. I know it's good precios so once you have back links, that also improves S CEOs, so it's a little bit more that's more of my strategy because, quite frankly, my space I'm competing with huge organizations, and that's just not gonna but keyword research. Like while I can start looking into keyword research and all that stuff. I think it's just gonna be very difficult for me to compete with those keywords right now until I get my referral traffic up. So,

um, it ties back into it like my strategy is just being exactly who I am and storytelling and adding code along with that. And I think what s E. O. Has improved a lot last month because of referral traffic. So, uh, can be a little bit more of a, um human, uh, touchy feely. Like I'm being myself strategy toe build up something that's kind of technical, like a

CEO. One point I want to make it to the storytelling thing is that everyone has a unique story, and I'll often get the question of like, Well, it's already been done before, right? Like, should I still do it? Yeah, absolutely. Because your story is different. Everyone else is. And I always opposed these Ah, like Twitter. Polls of like do you guys wanna block post about ex topic and and I always giggle when I get, like, no responses because it's like,

OK, it's free content like if you don't like it, then just don't read it like it's fine. Um, and then the people that comments like, Oh, it's been done 1000 times before and it's like, Yeah, maybe. But maybe the content that's currently out there today has not resonated with someone and potentially mind will. So if it's been done before, nothing's unique these days, right? Almost nothing is unique. Go for it. You've got a unique story segueing into.

You know, we've talked a lot about the positives of blogging and and the benefits that can come out of it. But there are also negatives that I think we should discuss because it's not all bring bosom butterfly. So, um, Kelly, why don't you kick off this section? Are there any negatives in your opinion of blogging for me, as I have you know, talked about previously? Ah, the idea of blogging regularly could be very, very daunting. So it becomes almost a source of anxiety for myself, And it can definitely do that case if you're not naturally a writer. I can I can write tweets all day because they're short and sweets,

but, you know, forming, forming the full. The full idea around the block post, especially when it gets technical imposter syndrome kicks in. And, you know, you start questioning your own abilities, like, am I Do I have enough experience to be talking about? This s o on on that side of things like it becomes more like a like a personal battle is to whether or not blogging is actually going to be right for me. Yeah, I'm almost I'm almost overly concerned about what others are going to be thinking about. What about the constant eye put out? Yeah,

that makes a lot of sense. And I personally, I think we all struggle with imposter syndrome. I think this is something that we will cover very soon. But one of the byproducts of feelings imposter syndrome is that inevitably, at some point, you will receive negative hate comments, harassment, et cetera. At some point, you will receive some and and how do we deal with that? Right. So, Allie, how do you deal with these negative comments on your blog's or just rude comments? Yes.

So I will say it before starting off that I didn't deal with a lot of it until I was getting a lot of views. I think that at least when I was getting, you know, a couple of 1000 reads a month or whatever, I would get one off stuff. But the one our stuff is, in my opinion, somewhat, not the worst to deal with its one. It's like an onslaught of stuff at once. It's like one paper cut is a paper cut, but if it's a lot, then it's a lot worse. But I think last summer, when I started getting my post features on Reddit and hacker news, that's when the the rough side of it started building as a well.

So I think my fevered strategy that I have come up with is a test right on my responses to things, but then screenshot them and delete them so that I don't have to deal with the fallout from calling somebody out, are responding or any of that because that could be a lot of work, both because the person probably won't respond to you for a while, and then the audience is always telling you that you know, ignore the troll and stuff like that. But sometimes I do. You respond. And when that happens, I try to educate, not for the person who's trolling because they're probably gonna get defensive and shut down, but for the audience. So if they are reading it and no, now that that's not an appropriate way the actor that if they try to do something similar in the future than they're probably not going to get a great response from it, then that does help in some way is like I had one person who was following me from website the website kind of harassing me, and I eventually right.

I wrote him an email because he kept e mailing me and took a screenshot of it. And a couple 100,000 people read that response and maybe votes. Couple 100,000 people got something from that, and he probably didn't. But all those people probably did so. It does happen less than I thought it would as an onlooker before starting out, but it is pretty common. Another thing is, and we do this within the four of us is we'll have this common experience of dealing with it a lot, and so we'll take screenshots of stuff and just laugh at it internally and events about it within us for instead of doing it publicly. So that's been really helpful is long.

Having a support system, I think, is probably the best thing, because while yeah, it kind of sucks, it's It's one of those things, too, when you can just, like, laugh with each other, how ridiculous it is because then you don't feel so it's act. You're like, Well, yeah, it sucks. That person is a jerk, but, uh, look how ridiculous this comment is. I can't believe somebody would even bother saying this, but

I think it's important we don't make fun of the people, right? We're not sitting here like making fun of people, but we're trying to shrug off the fact that, like we all go through these things and as opposed to just berating these people online, um, as ah snap judgment or a snap reaction to something just kind of giggling about the fact that someone took time out of their data like, call you, you know, a name that isn't so nice or what not, But I do think educating, um is a great way to handle it. You will always get the comments like ignore the trolls. But at some point, I think we need to be role models for things, right When we're given this platform, we think we've that comes with an air of responsibility for certain things.

So finding that line of like should I educate or sturdy ignore is hard because at some point, you know, this can also be misconstrued. Like if we if we try to respond to try to educate it can also be taken is, you know, inadvertent bullying. So I think I think we need to be careful how we educate. But I do think that we're giving this platform when we need to kind of set the the tone of like, Hey, if you're gonna leave a nasty coming on my block, it's not gonna be tolerated here, right? There's no place for that. Happy to talk to you one on one if you have questions or concerns. But maybe don't you know, call me every name on my block post not acceptable.

But also, you know, one thing we can do is mute. We can block people we can meet people, and I have been doing this a lot more liberally from my mental health. I don't generally like to block people, but if it's really that bad, I will do it because the end of the day you're probably then we're going to see these people in real life. And if it saves you a burnout or a Depression viral, I think it's worth

following up with that with the whole educating people something I want. I like people listening. I want people to know that the whenever somebody does take a very advert mint step to educate, don't tell them to ignore the trolls because there is a very strategic reason why they decided to speak out. And that's something that personally gets under my skin and I think, actually probably gets out under all of our skins. It's when people say, Ignore the trolls and it's like we already do. We put a lot of effort into it, like muting and blocking people who are trolls who are not productive. But every once in a while, like all of us, have an audience to some degree, like I think I have the I think I know I have the smallest audience, but I still have, like, 7000 followers at this time.

And a lot of times we do put a lot of dress on ignoring the troll. So when we decided, speak out and people are like, Ignore the trolls and you only have eight followers. It's like you really have no idea what those people are going through. We are ignoring the trolls, But whenever we take us, we take a very purposeful step to educate. Don't tell us to not do it because we're not like Ali said. And we're not responding to the Troll for responding to educate to the larger audience. We know he's gonna see it,

and I think just quickly to that point is the fact that we've all made mistakes through trial and error, right? We've all been at a point where we respond in a nasty way or we dried to, like educate that and it maybe didn't come across well and we fail. But I think all of us are very good at admitting that. So when we do respond to these things, it's it's carefully curated for the most part, and and we know through trial and error that this is going to probably be the most effective way to do that. So the ass that was a lot about online harassment. I would say there are a few other negatives of blogging me. Personally, I feel like I always have to be creating something. This goes back to this consistency idea, right? Posting consistently good. Especially if you want to be considered a serious blogger. But you don't have to do that each week,

right? You can batch create. We talked about this in Episode two about managing our side projects. You can batch create all of these block posts and schedule them consistently. Right? So you don't need a set aside time every week. It could be once a month. You just batch, like four block posts and you post? Yeah, one every week. Right. That's kind of how you can get around that one. But going back to this imposter syndrome idea that Kelly mentioned earlier anxiety over maybe not making the top post. They're getting readership or what not. I cannot stress enough.

Don't focus on the numbers, right? This is going to be really hard on you. If you're focused on how many reads or likes her thumbs up you get Figure out why you wanna block if you're blogging for yourself. Great focus on that. Are you blocking to help people? If one person walks away with something new, perfect Eve, achieve your goal. Right? So those are a couple of things that you can d'oh really quickly. I want to switch gears. Kelly is more of a casual blogger, and as such, maybe she has a little bit different perspective on on things. So do you have any last words that you want to,

you know, contribute about being in casual blogger? Yeah, So blogging, unless you're literally going into a career in blogging, blogging is not going to is not a requirement to have a successful career. So if it's something you're not interested in doing, if it's something that you start doing, you find out that just you don't like doing it and don't do it. It's not going to prevent you from moving forward with your career. And if all you're wanting to do is, you know, share your own ideas in perspectives and, you know, just walk through unique solutions to issues you've encountered. Great.

If you're not trying to monetize this just right at your own pace, right, right, Whenever you want, it's It's your, you know your own project is her own little side project. There's no there are no real rules around it if it's just something for fun.

Yeah, I think it's really important to mention that because I blood consistently, but that's because of my own personal goals. And if I didn't have those personal goals, I probably would not have any motivation to consistently put out content having your fly behind it. We talked about this so many times during all of our 1st 2 episodes, But having your wife, why you want to do it is super important, because if it's not something that you have a direct school on, you're not gonna keep it up. And that's also okay. Just, you know, just to kind of say it's also okay and you still can have a successful career. I mean, I started blogging last year, and since I started blogging,

as far as I know, my career has still been pretty good, like it's definitely it took a turn for the better with blogging but I still was having a lot of success before started, so it doesn't mean you have Thio. Everybody has a different path of what they want to take in your career.

And how do you actually get the confidence to press published, like, do you think about it a lot? Do you kind of just hit the button and like, walk away and, you know, ignore the fact that you just like But you're content in the world, Allie. How do you How do you could gain the confidence? Yes, I think going back Thio earlier. I think a lot of people are like this block post have spent written before, and my voice isn't needed. Maybe I'm not enough of an expert on something. My whole entire original blogged that got decent readership and was really incredible for my career was about learning new things. There was all these topics that I was not an expert on. It was just things that I was learning and writing about my perspectives,

learning and how difficult or easy it was. And then also pretty much everything has been written to some extent. That's totally fine. I talk about my react tutorial. So I wrote a reactive Torrey a ll last summer, which is way after a lot of people already had written reacted Torrey als and there were great ones already out there. But that one is one of my most red blood posts of all times. People still resonated with it. I wrote it differently than other people, and that's so help the lot of you boys. So even though some topic has already been covered, used to have a unique spin, and you can add your unique voice to the to the topic. So I don't always have the confidence to put press submit. So I always have a bunch of drafts on my computer at any time. It'll be upto like 20 block Post that I have not pressed.

Submit on and it's tough. I I deal with this all the time, but at some point you just gotta feel confident enough in it and just just go for it. And do you need to be an expert? I mean, like, you said you had this reactor toe. Really? Were you an expert in reality before you published this? Yeah. I mean, I've been ringing, react for like four years before that. So that one's probably not a great topic there. But, um l'm,

for example, is this functional programming language for the front end. And that was something that I tried to learn over and over and over again and just couldn't figure it out. And I wrote a block post about that, and that was my first bog post that ever got attention. It got featured in a bunch of newsletters and stuff like that. So it was all about writing how something was hard for me to learn. And and that was still something that people resonated. The best 101 post, actually, you know, come from your own unique experiences on how you learned howto how to do something because this literally walking through your process even if you've made mistakes along the way, you know, others are probably going to encounter those same mistakes and knowing like, Oh, that's not what I need to do.

Okay, that's great. So even if you're not an expert by any means, if you're just learning something, please write about it. Well, let me just say my most red block post was like my Reg IX. Good, Cici. And let me tell you, when Kelly asked me for, asked us if we could help with rejects. I immediately was like, Sorry, I'm busy. I don't know anything about rejects.

So, like, No, you don't need to be an expert, right? Absolutely not. Like we said, a lot of us refer back to these things as a reference sheet. So, no, you don't need to be next by any means. Also, that cheat. She did actually help me. I'm glad.

Something I wanted to point out just like a literal anecdote. So I one of my favorite posts that I've ever Britain was your CSS posts about accessible keyboard accessible of check boxes. And I had finished writing it and adding it. And it was Sunday. I was gonna post that Monday and I was scrolling through Twitter, and I literally saw a inaccessibility account tweet a block post that was almost identical, like, literally the same exact content. And I was just like, Oh, my God, I cannot believe that I just spent so much time and I posted on Twitter, and I'm like, I just put this all this effort into this block post So I still post it and I got an overwhelming Yes, People want to hear your perspective. And to this day, this is so one of my more popular blocos.

What I did feel like make myself feel better. Is I actually linked to that. And I'm like, Hey, I actually almost didn't post this because I saw this article on Twitter right before the day before I was going to post it. So go and give it a read. It might help you, too. And I think also that helps a swell because I wrote this without looking at any documentation, anybody else's blood post. So it was all from my own memory, but I don't want to be like, considered plagiarizing. So I wanted to make sure that people got that perspective as well. So I was to boast about that. To be honest, though,

I think related to this whole conversation is that if you're learning something and you're struggling to find a block post on something, so you're googling it over and over and over again and you can't find the answer, or you can't find one that makes sense, or one that works when you finally do get it. That's the perfect flog post, because that's something that you were struggling to learn. So probably somebody also struggling to learn it as well. And so you've got this built in thing that you already know, that there's an audience where so go write it. So when you're blogging, like or you want to start a block, where do you go, like, how do you know what plus worms to block on, Kelly, where do you write your blood posts? So I write some of my posts own Dev and the rest of them,

I would consider to be like our personal block. So on our website. So one of the main things to think about when you're your thing about writing your content and where to publish if you're going through a certain platform, know that you might not have ownership of the content because if their platform where you know, it went down for some reason, it just went away one day. You, you know, you may not have a backup of, you know, your entire history of everything that you've written in the past. So just, ah, something that think about when you're choosing where's your right or, you know, have it on your personal blogged and have it on another platform.

Just learn about ah, economical Urals. Yeah. What are conical Urals? Yes, Economical euros are setting that you'll use if you cross post that make it so that all the search engine juice still goes to your original Blawg instead of thio the place that you're cross posting two. So this actually makes it so they're cross posting can be really beneficial for your s e o instead of negative for it. Google penalizes duplicate content if you don't have it set. So if you have this posted in eight different places, Google is going to say, Oh, this content is plagiarized. I don't know which one's the actual real version, but somebody's copying it, so I'm just gonna penalize all of it. So you really need to set that canonical you,

Earl to all the places that you're cross posting. It's also important if people are plagiarizing your work toe do take downs and stuff like that. But that's another Another team. Jim, I started only cross posting, so I started on medium first and then started cross posting to death and then on Lee wrote Personal log warns, I knew that it was something that I enjoyed because building the bog platform itself is a lot of work. And so I always recommend people to know that you enjoy writing and that that's something that you're going to stick to before putting in all that sun cost of building up the site for yourself. I just have a really quick question. Yeah. Uh, early on in, which were saying, Did you say search engine juice? Yeah. Okay, good. I'm going to use that in future.

Awesome questions. Yeah, well, the thing also, um, with that is I I only had my personal blood when I started blogging. So when I started posting on Dev, it was all cross posted content. And this is actually really good strategy if you're newer because a lot of people go to death and not as many people were going to my site. So it's a good way to get more eyes on my content. Well, still starting out. Um, I don't even at this point now, I cross post a week later, but at the beginning, I posted at the same exact time right now,

it's just it's now less of an urgency because my traffic is starting to grow organically, which is really cool. But at the beginning, I didn't have much of an audience and that when it comes down to it, the point was to help people learn about this stuff and more eyes on that content and more people we're going to learn. And that's why can articles

are good. That sounds to me like a big win free. Speaking of winds, Lindsay, you want to take this

one short? So something we were doing is we all have our winds. But the best part of building this podcast is hearing your thoughts on our podcast and just hearing from everybody here. So we decided that we wanted to have listener ones. So we have one Wisner with one Winston Irwin. Uh, I and this is from Juneau. I've submitted an application for my first hackathon, which is super super awesome. We love hearing these types of things and congratulations. Super excited for you. But do you want to be featured? Sign up for newsletter will have a link in the show notes because we love hearing from you that's the point of the podcast is to interact with the community, so definitely would love to hear your wins. We have a couple of tangents about that. This isn't supposed to be like promotional stuff. This is your own winds,

your things that you're proud of. We've gotten a few like promotional items, and that's not what we're interested in. We're interested in hearing those vulnerable winds that you're super proud of, even if it's just like I finally had the guts to apply for that one job or any of that. We love that stuff, so but let's share a couple of our personal wins. Two. I'm just to keep that going. The positive vibes.

I have one more note on that. Actually, if you can keep it like tweet length, that's awesome, because you can see how long this podcast episode is, and we would love to keep the winds concise. Yes, but I'll go next. So, you know, kind of on the same topic of how I write out my newsletters and turn them into blocos. For the first time ever, I finally got a head on writing newsletters by three weeks. I'm finally starting to catch these instead of right one Tuesday night to be published Wednesday morning, or write it Wednesday morning to be published in five minutes. So I'm very proud of that. You don't like being a stressed out,

though I don't understand. My entire life is just this ball of stress around running a business. So I mean, it is very on brand for me, but I'm trying to do what I can to move away from that. I mean, Kelly, when you batch things, you'll have more time to cook me spaghetti, which I still have yet to receive in the mail. But TSA did say we could bring it. Don't be in Germany in August, for we will talk about that. I had a cool wind this week. I wouldn't say it's a big win, right?

Like it's big for me. I I'm working on building a design system and we're working on the style guide, and my kind of like partner designer was a little bit busy this week, so I took it upon myself to design a U user interface and sketch, and I put it all together, spending several hours doing it, and we went in for a design review. And he just had, like, 1 to 2 very minor comments, and he told me that he was proud of me for, like, the quality of my design work. So that was like, really cool

for me. That's awesome. I love that I can go next. So our last or second episode I we were talking about patching, and I started trying, patching and just just focused on whatever was the most relevant of that time. And it has spent super effective. I've also been doing time blocking, and I found myself a lot less stressed this week, which has been super great because sometimes the past month, my stress levels have been pretty high. So it was such a gift to block some time. And then I didn't feel super guilty in the evening when I wanted to take time for myself. If I knew I had a plan and I knew I had things done, so only one will win.

Yes. Oh, actually, last summer I built this off lines green for Dev, where you could draw while your computer can't connect to the Internet and it's kind of in this Easter egg this week, somebody discovered it and posted it on Writes our web, Deb. And it was one of those hot post of the week and people were, like, super nice about it, which is always excited to read it. Okay,

awesome. So thanks for listening. This is probably a little bit of a longer episode, but we love talking about it. So if you like the episode tweet about it will select 12 year to win those fancy ladybug stickers that you saw on Twitter and everybody was super excited about which is awesome. So we're posting new podcast

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