# Building an Audience Through Technical Writing: Strategies and Mistakes

DevFeed: [Building an Audience Through Technical Writing: Strategies and Mistakes](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/building-an-audience-through-technical-writing-strategies-and-mistakes-18784.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://hamel.dev/blog/posts/audience/>)

Author: Hamel Husain

Published: 2024-11-30T08:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Hamel Husain](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/hamel-husain.md>)

Topics: [Learning](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/learning.md>), [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>)

Tags: [building](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/building.md>), [consistency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/consistency.md>), [developers](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developers.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [marketing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/marketing.md>), [personal-experience](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/personal-experience.md>), [technical](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/technical.md>), [writing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/writing.md>)

## AI overview

An advice article on building an audience through technical writing. It recommends thoughtfully engaging with other people's work, adding meaningful insights, publishing consistently, and participating in discussions rather than relying only on promotional content.

## Source excerpt

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 Eugene Yan's work on AlignEval Ben Claive's work on rerankers Jeremy Howard's work on llms.txt 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 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 tr