I exclusively write all of my content for my own platform ( CodeTips ).
It's still a relatively new site so, to get the content out to more people, I cross-post to dev.
Up until now, I've cross-posted the entire contents to dev and linked back to my site if I am referencing previous posts etc.
I'm now considering changing this and, instead, posting a short summary of what the new article is and linking back to CodeTips if you want to read it.
Ultimately, this is so the original content gets the traffic and hopefully, I can make CodeTips into a success. But I don't want to do this and end up pissing everyone off.
I, therefore, have two questions:
I've managed to gain a decent following on Dev, so I'd like to assume my content is appreciated. Would this change be seen as negative by the audience I'm reaching?
Has anyone made a similar change? If so, what impact did you see?
Top comments (21)
As a use case, I at least know I'm not the kind of reader that would ever click through to your site. I have never seen a summary make me want to go out of my way to get more when I could just go back to the dev.to feed and read an actual article.
Thanks for your input. Out of interest, what would entice you to visit the original source?
If I were to still cross post the entire contents, with a consistent credit section at the bottom, would that be enough for you to click through to CodeTips?
What if I added a section to subscribe to new articles, from CodeTips, that go into your mailbox?
Consistent credit would be the best bet. If I notice your banner often, I'll remember that I like your stuff, follow on dev.to, and then move to checking out your site.
Email is hit or miss, mainly because I'm not apt to sign up for yet another thing. Following on this platform would get me the same notifications but with me having to opt to check them when I want to rather than being told to view it immediately (this is also why I miss RSS feeds being popular -- but that also wouldn't help your click-through problem, since I liked getting full text in one spot).
Innately, I may just not be the type of reader that clicks through, but you'll never get 100% conversation regardless of the method used, so probably don't worry about the difficult ones.
Thank you, I appreciate the honest feedback 👍
My recommendation is to continue to cross-post full articles.
Additionally: Thank you for cross-posting articles here, so I have an opportunity enjoy them! I can only manage so many platforms to consume information (even using an RSS reader like HeartFeed) so Dev.to supporting easy cross-posting via RSS (not sure if you're using this?) and content creators taking the time to cross-post is a win-win for me.
PS: Your CodeTips links appear to be broken (relative vs absolute?)
They should be fixed now. Weirdly they need the URL schema (https) otherwise it tries to resolve to a relative URL.
I think you're right, and I'm planning on continuing full posts.
I'm just glad you're enjoying them 👍
Can you point me to which link is broken please?
For me, both of the "(CodeTips)" links in your post above link to:
dev.to/devdrake0/codetips.co.uk
This looks like the links are relative vs absolute, i.e. maybe missing the leading "https://" in your in your link definition?
Since nobody else has mentioned it, maybe its just an anomaly in my browser.
Hmm no you're absolutely right. It looks like something has gone wrong on the dev side - the markup is definitely correct.
Thanks for letting me know.
Fix confirmed on my end - Nice to know my browser isn't borked.
Haha no it definitely isn't. Thank you for letting me know, I'll make sure all my links have the schema from now on 👍👍
The only time i usually follow through to a site is for more information. I would never follow through if I felt like it was forced though (think 1 paragraph of an article).
I wouldn't mind a brief overview with demo etc, then links though-out for detailed explanations and other ways of doing it etc.
Its a fine line, but I typically stick to a single platform for consuming semi-random content like this.
Thanks George - that makes perfect sense.
I think I'm going to stick with full content, but make sure I include a better "credits" section, so people are aware where it came from easily.
Out of curiosity (and since it would affect my response, I think), how do you define "make CodeTips into a success?"
Fair question!
I've not put a huge amount of thought into what "success" means for CodeTips, but right now I want it to help people while also being sustainable.
I want to grow and implement more "features", so getting foot traffic onto the site and potentially sponsorships of some sort so it can be funded would be the ideal.
Gotcha. I'm following a similar path, but working toward doing paid courses and the like. So getting folks reading my articles on ANY platform will help with that long term.
My gut reaction is that you're probably not going to get loads of click throughs off of a snippet and a link.
I wonder if having some form of standard promo at the bottom of each full article to talk about your site as a whole would garner a lot more positive feelings.
I'm also going a decent bit into SEO with my approach. So in syndicating, I reach a larger audience, but get extra SEO love to my main site for a lot of it.
I'm not too far down this path, but already gathering some additional "link" power from having some content over here. I'll know more about potentially benefits in a month or two, probably.
I say provide value to your readers wherever they live and then when you ask them for something (newsletter subscribe, paid course, patreon, etc.) they're more and more likely to commit to it.
I'd also say newsletters are a good sweet spot. After a helpful article, ask people to sign up for the newsletter, then you can use the newsletter to promote content on CodeTips.
Just a few thoughts :D
Ah nice! Good to know someone else is going through it too!
I appreciate all the thoughts & advice, I'll definitely take them into consideration!
Typically short summaries don’t do quite as well if it’s just the first part of a blog post, and not useful in and of itself. But if it is a useful, we’ll thought summary, go ahead!
Thanks Ben! So you'd recommend cross-posting the first half, still under the canonical URL, and then referring back to CodeTips for the rest?
As a reader, I'd hate that. It breaks the flow. Just post it here and and additional content at CodeTips, or maybe a more fleshed out or contulinually updated version of your article.
Thanks for your feedback, this is exactly why I wanted to have the conversation before doing anything.
from other comments, I am probably just going to keep a consistent "credit" section at the bottom so people know who I am, what CodeTips is and maybe some helpful links to our social media platforms and/or email subscription model.
Do you think something like that would entice you to visit out site?