Eh, Singaporean techies! You ever feel like you’re shouting into the void when you blog? You pour your heart and soul into a post, only to see crickets chirping? You’re not alone. In fact, a recent study shows that the average blog post gets a measly 10 views. But before you throw in the towel and go back to watching your dramas, let’s talk about why blogging still matters, especially for us here in Singapore.
Tech Trends: Still Worth It?
First off, let’s look at why blogging is still relevant.
- Credibility Booster
“Writing on a blog is a very inexpensive way to establish your credibility about different subjects.”
- Personal Documentation
“I document technical things on my blog and hardly anyone reads it. But later on when I need that thing again, I just go there and I have the perfect documentation available for the topic (it’s perfect since I wrote it hahaha).”
- Learning and Teaching
“Writing something for others is teaching, and teaching is one of the steps of the Feynman technique. Even if you don’t follow it, writing and teaching forces you to organize the subject in your head.”
- Community Connection
“I follow a bunch of developers (surprise surprise) and read mostly technical blogs, I’ve found a lot of developers mix writing blog posts about their personal and family life alongside technical posts. As I’ve been reading I’ve found those are some of my favourite posts, as someone who balancing professional and open source development with parenting, I really love hearing about other people’s experiences doing the same.”
- Long-Term Value
“I’ve kept a blog of some kind since 2005 and I’m always surprised looking at the traffic what posts get picked up by Google and end up driving traffic for one reason or another.”
Blogging Barriers: Implementations Issues
Okay, so it’s still useful, but what are the problems?
- Time Commitment
“If I write it, they will come. They won’t. There are billions of blog posts out there. The internet is an infinite void, and your blog is a whisper in a hurricane.”
- Lack of Immediate Gratification
“Over a decade, I’ve learnt to blog as if no one will ever read my blog posts. With social referral traffic now completely dead, the only traffic I get to my blog is when my posts appear on Hacker News, and even that is going down year-over-year.”
- Competition
“There are billions of blog posts out there.”
Blogging Boost: How to Succeed
So how do we overcome these issues and actually make blogging work for us?
- Write for Yourself First
“So, don’t do it for the others. Do it for yourself. And I won’t say “keep doing it and someday someone will see”, I can’t guarantee that, but a least you’ll have a chance.”
- Focus on Quality over Quantity
“It’s not the number of readers you have that matters: it’s their quality. I’ll take a dozen people reading my stuff who might engage with me usefully or lead to future opportunities over a thousand readers who don’t match that criteria.”
- Promote Your Content
“Actively send links to people who you are already engaged in conversation with.”
- Be Consistent
- Embrace Your Unique Singaporean Voice
So, don’t give up! Blogging can still be a valuable tool for Singaporean tech professionals. Keep writing, keep learning, and keep sharing your knowledge. Who knows, you might just become the next tech guru in our little red dot.
