I Published the Same Blog Post to 8 Platforms. Here's What Actually Got Read.

Six months ago I started an experiment: publish the exact same blog post to every platform I could, then track what happened.

Same content. Same title. Same publish day. Different platforms.

Here's the honest breakdown of what got read, what got ignored, and what surprised me.

The Platforms (and the Setup)

I published to: Dev.to, Medium, Hashnode, LinkedIn Articles, Substack, Ghost, WordPress, and X (as a thread).

The post topic was technical but accessible: "Why Most Developers Write Documentation Nobody Reads."

Publishing manually took me 47 minutes of copy-paste, reformatting, and tag-filling across all 8 platforms.

The Results (3 Weeks In)

Dev.to — Best developer reach. High-quality readers who actually engage in comments. Algorithm rewards consistency over virality. Medium-length posts (5-8 min read) perform best.

Medium — Decent if you're in a publication. Without one, organic reach is near zero. The paywall also cuts SEO reach.

Hashnode — Underrated. Developer-focused audience, great SEO from custom domain setup, and the community actively reads and reacts. Fastest growing of all my platforms.

LinkedIn Articles — Surprisingly good for business-oriented writing. The audience is different — more managers and decision-makers than engineers. If your post has a career angle, it lands here.

Substack — Only worth it if you have an existing email list. Zero discoverability without one. Write to your subscribers, not for the algorithm.

Ghost — Clean, fast, SEO-friendly. Pure owned audience. No distribution built in, but long-term the most sustainable.

WordPress — Fine for SEO. Terrible for community. I got zero comments, but the post still gets search traffic 3 months later.

X (Thread) — Highest initial burst. Dead within 24 hours. Great for announcing, not for depth.

What Actually Got Read

Ranked by total engaged reads over 3 weeks:

1. Dev.to — 1,200 reads, 34 reactions, 9 comments
2. Hashnode — 890 reads, 22 reactions
3. LinkedIn — 670 views, 14 reactions
4. X (Thread) — ~2,000 impressions (mostly scrolled, not read)
5. Medium — 340 reads
6. WordPress — 290 reads (search-driven)
7. Ghost — 180 reads (newsletter subscribers only)
8. Substack — 120 reads (tiny list at the time)

The Actual Lesson

One post. Eight platforms. 47 minutes of distribution work.

The reach multiplier was real — but so was the time cost. For a single post, fine. For a consistent content operation publishing 3x per week? 141 minutes per week just moving content between platforms.

That's what led us to build Blogboat at twRty Software Services (https://twrty.org/blogboat) — an AI writing studio that publishes to 15+ platforms in one click. No copy-paste. No reformatting. The 47 minutes becomes 3 minutes.

The strategy above still applies. But the execution doesn't have to be manual.

The Distribution Rules That Held Across All Platforms

1. Consistency beats virality. The platforms that rewarded me most were the ones I'd been active on before. New accounts get no algorithm love.

2. Write for the platform's audience. The same post title that got 34 reactions on Dev.to got 2 on Medium. The audiences are different people.

3. Engage on comments within the first hour. Every platform's algorithm rewards early engagement. If you publish and disappear, you lose the boost window.

4. Repurpose, don't just repost. The X thread had a different structure than the full article. That's why it hit differently.

Bottom Line

Publish everywhere. But do it systematically, not manually.

What platforms are you publishing to? Which ones are working for you right now? Drop it in the comments.

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