Writing a technical article/blog 101 ✍

Shoutout to @tringakrasniqi who inspired me to write this article. 😊

I've been writing technical blogs for quite some time now. Over these years, I've learnt a lot about how to write 'online' and how to write 'technically'. At the beginning, I only used to read articles or save them, but I got the urge to share my knowledge to others which came in the form of writing down a few words like "Great post", "I've bookmarked this article, thanks for writing" in comments, then I got a random idea and I converted it as my first ever article.

This journey started way back (4-5 years ago) on my WordPress blog and I can say, I've got so much exposure in technical articles that I'm now in a position to give others some tips regarding the same.

Here are the top 10 points I would recommend:

1️⃣ Choose a specific topic and write about it regularly. Like if you're into React, whatever you're learning (tips/tricks, a new feature) or building, you can write an article about it to help others.

2️⃣ Choose topics on which a few or no articles are written yet so that your article is benefited with the latest source and it becomes unique. If your piece is good, you'll definitely see increasing growth of reads on it over a certain period of time.

3️⃣ If you're not able to find any new topic or there is already a lot of content on the internet, then try to write it in your way. This can include your own writing style, explaining the concepts in a fun/creative way.

4️⃣ Try to make your article unique by citing a real-world example(s) you faced. For example: if you dealt with a bug on React, explain this to others how you fixed that by adding some screenshots, code examples and explaining them in simple words.

5️⃣ Use simple English words and try not to use some new/random words/phrases. Technical articles are not here to teach Oxford English, they are here to guide us and guiding can be done in plain English vocabulary. This is so that the reader shouldn't leave your article to search for that particular word/phrase.

6️⃣ Try to make your piece between 5-10 mins long (as shown in the DEV and Medium). Neither too long nor too short. You don't want your readers to just see the body of a long article and just go away to a new tab.

7️⃣ Use the Grammarly extension (or a similar tool) for correcting punctuations and to write in better English. It's a great tool. There's also a website http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ you can use.

8️⃣ Every article you write should have at least 3 parts: the intro, the actual body and a conclusion. Add some spacing between the three so that the reader is able to see where each one of those start and end.

9️⃣ At the end of the article make sure you tell readers to send them feedback, add comments, ask them questions for engagement (like "What other UI libraries would you like to have on this project?" etc).

🔟 Don't over-promote. Try not to say, "Please, please share this with others and follow me, subscribe to my YouTube channel, follow on Instagram" blah blah...you get the point. Those who loved your content will share it and subscribe, it's all-natural!

5 Bonus tips 💡

1️⃣ A lot of you know this but still I'll say, "don't forget to have a nice cover image on every post." Unsplash, Pexels and others are great resources. Else, you can make your own with Canva! Without cover images, a blog post seems quite lonely and much boring.

2️⃣ Always cite others and give them credit(s) wherever possible. Like in images, code snippets, quotes etc.

3️⃣ Keep the text formatted. Use symbols, emojis/GIFs (don't overuse them though), headings, quotations, bold and italicize etc. to make it look better. Use bullet points wherever applicable.

4️⃣ Add hyperlinks to resources like if you use any external library or software you can add its URL to it. This is so that readers don't have to search again for it and leave your article. ("I've used Postman to develop this API").

5️⃣ Write what you know and don't write anything in which you haven't worked on (or pretend to readers). If you haven't used the Vim editor but you still write about it a reader may ask you in comments "Why this, or why that?" and then you won't have a definite answer to it. What happens next is that the reader may not see your article again! You may lose your audience like this.

That's it! 😃

I hope you understood my tips and got to know something new. Next time you write on Medium or DEV, keep an eye on these 15 points I shared with you and let me know in the comments what other important points I missed. Keep coding and keep blogging! 👨‍💻 ✒

Every #SoftwareDeveloper has said this at least once in their career. #DevHumour pic.twitter.com/lVr91U3FCr

— BeautifulBoy (@Prince_de_Love) February 28, 2020

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PS: From this year, I've decided to write here on DEV Community. Previously, I wrote on Medium. If anyone wants to take a look at my articles, here's my Medium profile.