What are your best tips for writing technical blog posts?

#writing #productivity #beginners #discuss

Especially targeted at those new to writing technical blog posts, but any tips are welcome. Exactly as the title implies:

Ranging from just talking about tech, to programming tutorials, to code-heavy posts.

For me, the main tip is to just write. If you are stuck on a part of a post, write a note stating what you may want there and write the next part. The other is to write an outline.

What helps you write well and get them done?

Top comments (7)

Daniel • Jul 14 '19

One tip I read from someone on Hacker News goes like this, to paraphrase:

If you find yourself googling a problem and it takes multiple searches/Stack Overflow posts to come up with a solution, this is great candidate for a "How To" blog post.

You can write a post that synthesizes your multiple searches/Stack Overflow posts into a one-stop shop for someone else (or yourself after you've forgotten how to do what you just did).

Rémi Lavedrine • Jul 15 '19

From time to time, I am writing for the future me and actual you exactly for that.
I solved a problem and just want to be able to rely on it later.
My last post is absolutely for that purpose. 😄

Scott Simontis • Jul 14 '19

Whenever I write something, I set a timer I feel is appropriate. For example, I try to respond to all e-mails in under five minutes. If I cannot do that, I'm overthinking things and not conveying my ideas clearly enough.

I think that attitude of staying out of the weeds is very important...no one is going to take about the issues you are presently overthinking for hours. And sometimes if I am slowly struggling along and failing to make satisfactory progress, I just delete everything and start over.

Sometimes I outline things. When inspiration hits me, I record the idea as an outline, and if detailed enough, I basically end up with an article minus some glue sentences by the time I am finished.

Daniel • Jul 14 '19

Sometimes I outline things. When inspiration hits me, I record the idea as an outline, and if detailed enough, I basically end up with an article minus some glue sentences by the time I am finished.

This articulates the process I've come to use almost exactly. Except I don't outline things just "sometimes"—I have to all the time.

Thanks for sharing.

Ben Halpern • Jul 13 '19

Write with one person or archetype in mind, don't write for everyone. It can really help you overcome paralysis.

I recall writing this post in about five minutes specifically as a response to a DM I thought others would appreciate

How to Grow a Multi-Sided Platform: Start with Single Player Mode

Ben Halpern ・ Jun 20 ・ 2 min read

#startup #meta

And it wound up getting a few thousand reads and being really well received.

It wasn't a technical post per se, but I think this logic applies in general.

@pbeekums touches on some of this well here:

Letting Go of the Edge Cases

Beekey Cheung ・ Oct 10 '17 ・ 3 min read

Shawn McElroy • Jul 14 '19

Great points. Basically, MVP your blog post. We don't start by writing apps by creating what will be released in a year, we just make it work first, even if it's fragile. Then we [code|editorial] review and fix it.