Ask HN: How do you build a reputation without social media?
5•unbeholden•1d ago
I've recently started writing a blog to boost my online presence as I think it would be beneficial for my career. The thing is I don't enjoy being active on social media which feels like a major constraint. I'm curious about your thoughts on this matter and what you'd do in such situation.
Comments
vincent-uden•1d ago
Linking to your blog on your profile here is a starter :)
But seriously, it is kind of difficult and it depends on your definition of social media. Is Hacker News a social media to you for example?
I've had some great success in the past just posting my articles here. As you can see from my post history I'm not exactly "active", posting 6 times in the last year.
There is always the traditional routes of paying for targeted advertising, email campaigns and so on. However this depends on the type of "growth" you want. Does your blog have a comment section? If not you kind of need to post it somewhere for you to get any feedback whatsoever. If you are writing solely for the purpose of advancing your own career I struggle to see why the articles would be interesting to read for others. So I at least suggest having some other motivation than that.
I realise that my answer contains a lot of "ifs" but it is really hard to answer such a vague question without any particulars.
unbeholden•1d ago
Thanks for your reply. Yes I consider HN a social media. I like to read through it from time to time but being introvert in real life I also don't have the urge or need to comment on what I read.
I really like the idea of adding comment section to my blog posts.
I'm adding the link to my profile as well.
vincent-uden•1d ago
I see. In that case you could see social media as a one-way street. You post your articles and you don't have to go back and read or interact with comments on the respective site. You could even use some crossposting solution to post to all the medias at once (I think these exist still).
I suspect growth will be slower if you don't interact at all on these platforms, but by the sounds of it that would be an acceptable trade-off for you.
On my biggest post/article I did not have the time or effort to respond to even 10% of the comments here, and that is/was totally fine. The article and its comment section on HN had a life of their own which I was not required to partake in.
gus_massa•10h ago
> I also don't have the urge or need to comment on what I read
Wait until you see a comment by other person about a topic you know. It's not necessary to write just to write, but it's very helpful for the community if you can provide some information from time to time.
vincent-uden•1d ago
But seriously, it is kind of difficult and it depends on your definition of social media. Is Hacker News a social media to you for example?
I've had some great success in the past just posting my articles here. As you can see from my post history I'm not exactly "active", posting 6 times in the last year.
There is always the traditional routes of paying for targeted advertising, email campaigns and so on. However this depends on the type of "growth" you want. Does your blog have a comment section? If not you kind of need to post it somewhere for you to get any feedback whatsoever. If you are writing solely for the purpose of advancing your own career I struggle to see why the articles would be interesting to read for others. So I at least suggest having some other motivation than that.
I realise that my answer contains a lot of "ifs" but it is really hard to answer such a vague question without any particulars.
unbeholden•1d ago
I really like the idea of adding comment section to my blog posts.
I'm adding the link to my profile as well.
vincent-uden•1d ago
I suspect growth will be slower if you don't interact at all on these platforms, but by the sounds of it that would be an acceptable trade-off for you.
On my biggest post/article I did not have the time or effort to respond to even 10% of the comments here, and that is/was totally fine. The article and its comment section on HN had a life of their own which I was not required to partake in.
gus_massa•10h ago
Wait until you see a comment by other person about a topic you know. It's not necessary to write just to write, but it's very helpful for the community if you can provide some information from time to time.