Ask HN: I just started blogging; how can I improve?
1) Make sure you can measure readers, and set yourself goals to grow. Seeing the number grow will give yourself extra commitment. I use Medium, and their weekly recap is also very motivating to me.
2) Develop your audience, either on HN, Reddit, mailing list, etc.
3) I personally write "keyword-oriented", meaning I try to state 1 or 2 points per post, and analyze the keywords to make sure what I see from keywords is consistent to what I was planning to say.
4) Good keywords, especially on titles, help with SEO. For example from your 2 posts: one is good, one is bad :) (not bad in general, only from this perspective). The are other techniques as well, but I like the SEO style, because I prefer to write to answer someone else's question. (vs, for example, collect click because of a catchy headline.)
5) If you lack ideas, one "trick" I've used myself is this one. Whenever you have a problem, that a single search on Google doesn't solve, but you need 2+, then write about it. Even if it's just 2 lines of solution, it'll make a good post and keep you in the spirit or writing.
To give you some numbers, last year I gave a presentation to my colleagues on blogging titled "how to get to 100 reads/article". Now I'm typically over the 1k, with 3-500 reads/week. From HN (which is my sole network for "advertising") I used to get 10-30 reads, now I grew to typically 100+.
Enjoy, and keep on blogging!