# Building an Audience Through Technical Writing: Strategies and Mistakes Hamel Husain 2024-11-30 *This post was originally published [here](https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/audience).* People often find me through my writing on AI and tech. This creates an interesting pattern. Nearly every week, vendors reach out asking me to write about their products. While I appreciate their interest and love learning about new tools, I reserve my writing for topics that I have personal experience with. One conversation last week really stuck with me. A founder confided, “We can write the best content in the world, but we don’t have any distribution.” This hit home because I used to think the same way. Let me share what works for reaching developers. Companies and individuals alike often skip the basics when trying to grow their audience. These are proven approaches I’ve seen succeed, both in my work and in others’ efforts to grow their audience in the AI space. ## 1. Build on Great Work Here’s something surprising: few people take the time to thoughtfully engage with others’ work in our field. But when you do, amazing things happen naturally. For example, here are some recent posts I’ve enjoyed that present opportunities to engage with others: - Shreya Shankar’s [DocETL](https://data-people-group.github.io/blogs/2024/09/24/docetl/) - Eugene Yan’s work on [AlignEval](https://eugeneyan.com/writing/aligneval/) - Ben Claive’s work on [rerankers](https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-09-16-rerankers.html) - Jeremy Howard’s work on [llms.txt](https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-09-03-llmstxt.html) In the above examples, you could share how their ideas connect with what you’ve built. You could add additional case studies and real-world insights. If you deeply engage with someone’s work and add your insights, they often share your content with their audience. Not because you asked, but because you’ve added something meaningful to their work. Swyx has written a [great post](https://www.swyx.io/puwtpd) on how to do this effectively. The key is authenticity. Don’t do this just for marketing—do it because you’re genuinely interested in learning from others and building on their ideas. It’s not hard to find things to be excited about. I’m amazed by how few people take this approach. It’s both effective and fun. ## 2. Show Up Consistently I see too many folks blogging or posting once every few months and wondering why they’re not getting traction. Want to know what actually works? Look at [Jason Liu](https://x.com/jxnlco). He grew his following from 500 to 30,000 followers by posting ~ 30 times every day for a year. You don’t have to post that often (I certainly don’t!), but consistency matters more than perfection. Finally, don’t just post into the void. Engage with others. When someone comments on your post, reply thoughtfully. When you see conversations where you can add value, provide helpful information. Finally, don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results immediately. Here’s some advice from my friend (and prolific writer), [Eugene Yan](https://eugeneyan.com/): > In the beginning, when most people start writing, the output’s gonna > suck. Harsh, but true—my first 100 posts or so were crap. But with > practice, people can get better. But they have to be deliberate in > wanting to practice and get better with each piece, and not just write > for the sake of publishing something and tweeting about it. The Sam > Parr course (see below) is a great example of deliberate practice on > copywriting. ## 3. Get Better at Copywriting This changed everything for me. I took [Sam Parr’s copywriting course](https://copythat.com/) just 30 minutes a day for a week. Now I keep my favorite writing samples in a Claude project and reference them when I’m writing something important. Small improvements in how you communicate can make a huge difference in how your content lands. One thing Sam teaches is that big words don’t make you sound smart. Clear writing that avoids jargon is more effective. That’s why Sam teaches aiming for a 6th-grade reading level. This matters even more with AI, as AI loves to generate flowery language and long sentences. The [Hemingway App](https://hemingwayapp.com/) can be helpful in helping you simplify your writing.[1] ## 4. Build a Voice-to-Content Pipeline The struggle most people have with creating content is that it takes too much time. But it doesn’t have to if you build the right systems, especially with AI. Getting this system right takes some upfront work, but the payoff is enormous. Start by installing a good voice-to-text app on your phone. I use either [Superwhisper](https://superwhisper.com/) or [VoicePal](https://voicepal.me/). VoicePal is great for prompting you to elaborate with follow-up questions. These tools let me capture ideas at their best. That’s usually when I’m walking outside or away from my computer. At my computer, I use [Flow](https://www.flowvoice.ai/). The key is to carefully craft your first few pieces of content. These become examples for your prompts that teach AI your style and tone. Once you have high-quality examples, you can organize these (transcript, content) pairs and feed them to language models. The in-context learning creates remarkably aligned output that matches your writing style while maintaining the authenticity of your original thoughts. For example, I use this pipeline at Answer AI. We have started interviewing each other and using the recordings as grounding for blog posts. Our recent [post about SolveIt](https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-11-07-solveit.html) shows this in action. The raw conversation is the foundation. Our workflow turns it into polished content. I’ve also integrated this workflow into my meetings. Using [CircleBack](https://circleback.ai/?via=hamel), my favorite AI note-taking app, I can automatically capture and process meeting discussions. You can set up workflows to send your meeting notes and transcripts to AI for processing. This turns conversations into content opportunities. The real power comes from having all these pieces working together. Voice capture, AI, and automation makes content creation fun and manageable. ## 5. Leverage Your Unique Perspective Through my consulting work, I notice patterns that others miss. My most popular posts address common problems my clients had. When everyone’s confused about a topic, especially in AI where there’s lots of hype, clear explanations are gold. This is the motivation for some of my blog posts like: - [Fuck You, Show Me The Prompt](https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/prompt/) - [Your AI Product Needs Evals](https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/evals/) - [Creating a LLM-as-a-Judge That Drives Business Results](https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/llm-judge/) You probably see patterns too. Maybe it’s common questions from customers, or problems you’ve solved repeatedly. Maybe you work with a unique set of technologies or interesting use cases. Share these insights! Your unique perspective is more valuable than you think. ## 6. Use High Quality Social Cards, Threads, and Scheduling This is probably the least important part of the process, but it’s still important. Thumbnails and social cards are vital for visibility on social media. Here are the tools I use: - [socialsharepreview.com](https://socialsharepreview.com/) to check how your content looks on different platforms. For X, I sometimes use the [Twitter Card Validator](https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator). - [chatGPT](https://chatgpt.com/) to create cover images for my posts. Then, paste them into Canva to size and edit them. Some of my friends use [ideogram](https://ideogram.ai/), which generates images with text accurately. - [Canva](https://www.canva.com/) for the last mile of creating social cards. They have easy-to-use buttons to ensure you get the dimensions right. They also have inpainting, background removal, and more. - If using X, social cards can be a bit fiddly. As of this writing, they do not show your post title, just the image if using the large-image size. To mitigate this,I use Canva to write the post’s title in the image [like this](https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/audience/content_2.png). - Social media can be distracting, so I like to schedule my posts in advance. I use [typefully](https://typefully.com/) for this purpose. Some of my friends use [hypefury](https://hypefury.com/). Finally, when posting on X, threads can be a great way to raise the visibility of your content. A simple approach is to take screenshots or copy-paste snippets of your content. Then, walk through them in a thread, as you would want a reader to. Jeremy Howard does a great job at this: [example 1](https://x.com/jeremyphoward/status/1818036923304456492), [example 2](https://x.com/jeremyphoward/status/1831089138571133290). ## The Content Flywheel: Putting It All Together Once you have these systems in place, something magical happens: content creates more content. Your blog posts spawn social media updates. Your conversations turn into newsletters. Your client solutions become case studies. Each piece of work feeds the next, creating a natural flywheel. Don’t try to sell too hard. Instead, share real insights and helpful information. Focus on adding value and educating your audience. When you do this well, people will want to follow your work. This journey is different for everyone. These are just the patterns I’ve seen work in my consulting practice and my own growth. Try what feels right. Adjust what doesn’t. P.S. If you’d like to follow my writing journey, you can [stay connected here](https://ai.hamel.dev/). ## Further Reading - [Simon Willison’s Posts on Writing](https://simonwillison.net/tags/writing/) - [Eugene’s Posts on Writing](https://eugeneyan.com/tag/writing/) - [Why you, (yes, you) should blog](https://medium.com/@racheltho/why-you-yes-you-should-blog-7d2544ac1045) [1] Don’t abuse these tools or use them blindly. There’s [plenty of situations where you should not be writing at a 6th-grade reading level](https://x.com/swyx/status/1863352038597558712). This includes, humor, poetry, shitposting, and more. Even formal writing shouldn’t adhere strictly to this rule. It’s advice that you should judge on a case-by-case basis. When you simplify your writing - do you like it more?