On how to write a technical blog

How to pick a subject?

🐦🐦🪨 Kill two birds with one stone.

Pick a subject related to something you are currently working on or something you are willing to learn.

Or 📰 Check the trending topics.

It's ok to lack inspiration. So don't hesitate to look at the trends in your field and share your experience or point of view.

How to take notes?

There are plenty of solutions:

Notion
EverNote
OneNote
Simple text files
Notebook
...

You have to try and find the one that suits you the best.

But:

Write your ideas as soon as you can, you may forget them,
Don't elaborate on your writing yet, you want to be quick and work on the writing quality in a later step,
Don't hesitate to use mnemonics that you know of or even create yours.

How to write the article from my notes?

Again, my suggestion is to use Hashnode

But anyway in general on most platforms nowadays you need to write in Markdown so get used to it.

Then based on your notes, write the first draft on your platform of choice.

But don't spend hours on it. Give you time constraints. Timebox the time you spend on it.

While writing:

If you realize you lack some matter for the content, go get that matter and come back to your draft later.
If you realize you have too much to say on the subject, don't hesitate to split your article into multiple ones. It'll be easier to read. Unless you are writing a complete guide on a subject, I would not recommend a long article.

Ok I wrote my article, I click on publish now?

No, please don't do that, yet!

🧹It's time to clean up your article! Here is the recipe:

https://hemingwayapp.com/ Copy-paste your contents and fix it according to the feedback. As a thumb rule at the same time, try to remove 15% of your writing. The shorter the better for your reader.
https://app.grammarly.com/ Copy-paste your article into a Grammarly document and fix all the left grammar issues.
(Optional) Get a friend or colleague to read your article and give you feedback.

Alright, remember that you don't have to get the best score in hemingwayapp, but fixing all the grammar issues is a must.

OK, I click publish now?

Wait! do you have a cover image 🖼️? No? 🤦

My advice here is:

canva.com, it's super easy and free to create a cover image with clear titles
or unsplash.com, it's a free website of stock photos so no titles over but good enough to illustrate an article.

So up to you, but obviously the more explicit is your picture about your article the better!

The last thing is the tags for your article.

I would suggest using a mix of trending tags and less trending ones.

You will take profit from the visibility the trending ones will offer you. And profit from the niche audience of the less trending ones.

Click on publish now!

Congrats! You published an article to the community!

Time to share the word on social networks and the internet.

Also, 🪴 don't hesitate to garden your article. Things may evolve, you may find better ways, change opinions, etc. So come back to your article and rework it.

On how to write a technical blog

Comments (1)

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How to pick a subject?

How to take notes?

How to write the article from my notes?

Ok I wrote my article, I click on publish now?

OK, I click publish now?

Click on publish now!

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Comments (1)

Software

Introduction to Liquid for developers

More from this blog

How to pick a subject?

How to take notes?

How to write the article from my notes?

Ok I wrote my article, I click on publish now?

OK, I click publish now?

Click on publish now!