why post

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why post is a question that can help you post things more intentionally, perhaps less or more often, and provide motivation to post on your own site instead of social media silos or in addition for more distribution per the POSSE method.

Why post something? The answer is likely to be very personal, much more so than the general question of why IndieWeb.

Asking “why post” can make you question something you were going to post, can redirect you from posting something on a silo to instead posting on your own site, and can motivate you to post new things that you may have not previously considered posting.

Questions you can ask yourself before deciding why you post

From an empirical perspective, start by analyzing what you already post, and where, and reflecting on why you post what you already posting, e.g.:

Do you post on silos?

  • What kinds of things do you post on social media (or other) silos?
  • Why do you post any one specific post on a silo?
  • Is that something you could post to your own site instead? (and POSSE)
  • If so, try it. If not, why not?

Do you post on public mailing lists?

  • What kinds of things do you post on mailing lists?
  • Are they things you could post on your own site first? And POSSE to the mailing list with a link back to your post permalink?

Do you post long comments or issues?

  • Do you post long comments on someone else’s post? See if you can write your own self-standing post on the subject, and then summarize / link to it in the comment on the other post.
  • Similarly, especially for developers, do you post philosophical or deeper points in GitHub issues? Consider posting those insights and points on your own blog, and summarizing/citing them in GitHub instead.

Brainstorming

Why you (might want to) post (or just why write). Share your reasons why you post, maybe they'll help motivate someone else!

  • Dries's comment (https://dri.es/comment/134646#comment-134646 - 404 since at least 2021-04-25):

    I write for myself first. Writing, in many ways, pushes me to think; writing is my process to flesh out ideas.

    I write for the conversations second. I use this blog to think out loud in a public space, and to start conversations with people thinking about the same topics.

  • Shawn Wang: Learn In Public: Posting as a mode of "learning in public":

    You already know that you will never be done learning. But most people "learn in private", and lurk. They consume content without creating any themselves. Again, that's fine, but we're here to talk about being in the top quintile. What you do here is to have a habit of creating learning exhaust. Write blogs and tutorials and cheatsheets. [...] Don't judge your results by "claps" or retweets or stars or upvotes - just talk to yourself from 3 months ago. I keep an almost-daily dev blog written for no one else but me.

See Also

Posts on why and how to blog:

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