One of the traits of publishing work on social media is its quick feedback loop. You’ll quickly know if an algorithm believes that people care, or doesn’t.

Some people strike gold the first few times, but it’s more likely that the experience of posting will feel disappointing. You need to hang in there until you experience a golden moment, but the silence is discouraging.

One solution is to create a surface for yourself that sits between your drafts and your social media profile. It should be obscure enough that most of the people who follow you won’t see it, but also that some people might. For me, it’s this blog. 

Every post I write here has a URL I can send to friends when I’m discussing an idea. More importantly, I also get the first say on my response to my own ideas. I can take time and see how I respond after I write and publish something.

There are a lot of other great reasons to start a blog, but the ability to gauge your own response and shield your early ideas from obscurity is a good one. You can write to think.

(This blog is also a great place to post stuff after social media, because it has a longer half life. For example, I can easily search for a post I wrote about any topic here or through Google, but I won’t be able to through LinkedIn or Twitter search. I can also easily back up and export all of my posts from my blog.)