I’ve received this question from both developers and non-developers a lot lately. In most cases, the non-developers are seeking data around where and how to target their developer audience. Developers are looking for ways to expand their voice and become a thought leader within their pillar of the tech industry.
Read on for some ideas on where to blog and what to keep in mind for each platform.
Communities where developers blog
Dev.to
Dev.to is an amazing community that has given developers a chance to have a voice, even if they have a small social following. Since their inception, the Dev.to community has grown greatly among the developers and they now have over 140k developers on the platform.
Developer tip: Dev.to will bring your content more exposure and views than you may be able to obtain from other platforms or your own blog.
Start a blog, and cross post to Dev.to, but keep the original content on your own blog too. When folks search for your name, your website is more likely to pop-up than Dev.to results since it’s not focused on you specifically.
Non-developer tip: Consider opportunities your company or brand might have with Dev.to. Consider replacing some of your PPC spend to sponsor Dev.to instead.
Hashnode
I am actually not very familiar with Hashnode, however, before I wrote this post I wanted to ensure I wasn’t missing anything. Hashnode has a very similar vibe and offering as Dev.to. If you start blogging here, I would love to hear feedback on how it goes.
Hackernoon
Similar to Dev.to as well, with over three million readers today. Definitely a place to consider sharing your blog posts at.
Medium
Admittedly, developers don’t all love Medium, but it is a blogging community and a lot of non-developer focused businesses spend time here.
Developer tip: If you are trying to reach folks that are non-developers—like for career growth, thought leadership, level up your reputation, etc.—then you should also cross-blog on Medium as well.
Blogging platforms for your own blog
Ghost
My new favorite blogging platform! It’s very straightforward, but offers the complexity and features you want out of a blog.
Email subscribers is crazy easy. When you create a new blog post, you can automatically send that blog post, in a clean email, right to your subscribers. I don’t know about you, but I hate curating a newsletter and I never end up actually doing it.
Ghost is also open source, but I use the Pro version, which is hosted by Ghost directly. By the time I am ready to blog, the last thing I want to do is deal with my tech stack.
WordPress
WordPress is by far the most featured and expandable platform for blogging. I tend to want to over complicate things, just because I can, technically, and WordPress is a great platform for that.
They offer both an open source, you host option as well as a hosted option at WordPress.com. My personal recommendation is to go open source and host it yourself.
Hashnode
Again, Hashnode is new to me, but it looks like what you blog on Hashnode will also publish to your own yourname.hashnode.dev url. This could be helpful if you didn’t want to maintain your own blog platform and tech stack.
Happy blogging!
This article was originally posted on Devocate, which joined the Common Room family in August 2022. For more developer relations insights and resources, check out the Common Room blog. Learn more about Common Room’s solution for DevRel teams if you're looking for an intelligent community growth platform to educate, empower, and enable your community.
