Takuya MatsuyamaHi, it's Takuya.
I'm sharing my experience on a profitable product called Inkdrop, a Markdown note-taking app on which I'm working alone.
I recently started cross-posting my articles to dev.to.
And luckily, this article got covered on their top page for a few hours:
So far, it generated:
- More than 10,000 views
- 800 reactions
- 200 followers
I guess it's worthwhile to keep cross-posting to it.
Thank you, dev.to.
In this article, I would like to share my thoughts on why it happened.
I hope it's helpful for those who are considering to post articles on dev.to.
TL;DR
- They check new articles carefully
- Contribute first
- Be honest, like talking with a friend
They check new articles carefully
I got the first like by the staff from dev.to. That usually happens when you posted an article. And I always consider this is an automated like which is one of the growthhacks to let people post more. But I guess I was wrong. It seems like they are actually reading every article and considering if it's worth featuring on their top page. So, you can expect they are actually humans, not a bot.
Contribute first
Let me get straight to the point - All you have to do is to make contributions for them first.
You may think like "Well, let's sign up and start cross-posting some articles. Then, they will feature one of them if they liked?".
No, I guess they wouldn't.
dev.to is a developer community.
Think as if you are a community manager.
What kind of people would you like?
What kind of posts would you like to display on the top page?
They don't like people who only pitch their product.
They don't like people who just take page views from their website and quickly leave from it.
You have to do completely the reverse.
In other words, be a giver.
Make some contribution for them first in order to get a return gift from them.
I registered an account 2 years ago, so I was not a new user on dev.to when started cross-posting.
I already have 8 posts and made 15,000 views.
For example:
It is not a cross-post from my own blog.
It has got 4,200 views.
I didn't expect any return from the community.
I was merely sharing what I learned.
Yeah, it's small, but I guess I helped the community grow a little bit :)
Again, be a giver.
Be honest, like talking with a friend
A small tip for attracting people in writing - Be honest and straightforward.
You don't have to shout out what you did.
People are tired of such clickbaits.
That may increase some views but people will not become your audience.
So, do not focus on numbers.
I hope it's helpful for those who are considering to post articles on dev.to.
And I hope the dev.to community grows more!
