How do we decide what to write?
Two weeks ago I received a very curious email where I was asked to explain how we design the graphics and the illustrations that we use in our write-ups.
I love being in touch with the readers but mostly I love sharing.
And, as a result, 24hours later I published How We Write at PlainFlow. I gave an in-depth overview of what looks like our thought process when when writing a new post.
This week I got another email.
In this post we will see how we come up with new write-up ideas.
The Areas
When we started the Plainflow blog we knew that we wanted to cover a few areas. Some of those areas were core to our product. We wrote those primary areas down:
- Product Marketing
- Data & Analytics
- SaaS Marketing
We wanted to cover these areas because they are core to our product and would had made so much sense attracting readers that are a good fit for our product.
But we also wanted to cover some other areas, that were not primarily related to our product but still relevant for us. We wrote those secondary areas down:
- Entrepreneurship
- IT & Engineering
- Product Management
Of course, this doesn’t mean that we will never go off the track. It means that we will put a bigger effort effort in these topics that are closer to our product and to our vision.
The Topic
Now that we know the areas, how do we came up with new post ideas?
- Conversation— Talking to people that belong to our industry is the easiest way for us to come up with new post ideas. It’s not something you have to plan. It will happen natural. We spend a good portion of our time engaging with people on email, on Skype, and even Slack groups.
- Hacker News — I’m a long time reader of HN. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t check their home page. At Plainflow, we take inspiration from a lot of interesting threads in the HN community.
- Indie Hackers — I personally started using IH only a couple of months ago but I have to admit that Courtland Allen did a terrif job in putting together and maintaining such a great place.
- Personal thoughts — whie this might seems a bit trivial, I always have a paperbook with me to take notes on the go. Lot of interesting ideas actually come up quite unexpectedly when you’re stuck in traffic, when you’re listing to a podcast or just walking down the street. When I start writing a new post, most of the times I already have a pretty clear idea of what to write. I already know how the write-up will be structured, what the hierarchy will look like, what’s the thesis and how I should support the arguments. Very rarely I find myself starting with a blank canvas.
Once we have a clear idea of the post we want to write, we ask first:
Is this something that I would personally enjoy reading?
If it’s something that you would personally enjoy reading, than other people will enjoy it as well.
The second questions we ask ourself is:
Is this something that it’s going to last?
When writing new post we try to find a good balance between evergreen content and temporal content.
NEW—Plainflow Blog Pipeline
From now on, each write-up idea will be included in this public Trello dashboard so you can see when it gets selected for writing, when it’s in progress and when it gets published.
The dashboard is accessible here: https://trello.com/b/ynfiXgdg/plainflow-blog-pipeline
How can I contribute?
Get in touch with me on twitter @leonardofed or via email and make your proposal. I will list your ideas in the ideas swimlane.
Our write-up workflow
- Ideas
- Validation
- Selected for development
- In-progress
- Published
Conclusions
- Write to attract readers that are a good fit for your product or your company vision.
- Don’t write something that you personally don’t enjoy reading. If you find interesting your piece, many others will do as well.
- Don’t write because you have to. Write only when you have something interesting to say.
- When people read, they’re making an investment of their time in your words. Write like they feel you’re not waisting their time.
