How to properly, easily write steady blog posts without plagiarizing

#beginners #blogging

Short post because topics like these should be short guides, not long reading manuals.

Welcome to DEV community. You probably came because you like the content here, or maybe you want to start your own blogging activity here, and get recognized in the tech community (this is after all a developer portal).

There are ways to write posts that get good viewership without copy-pasting other people's articles, also known as plagiarism. It is not OK to plagiarize someone else's work.

Liquid error: internal

(I meant to say "my Numpy post" 😄)

So how do you write a substantial post every week? I average about 100 views per post, have a little more than 500 followers so I think I'm qualified to answer this question.

First of all, you blog about your favorite topic, whatever pleases you. Don't blog about web dev solely because they get more views. Don't try to "optimize" your article hoping that #DEVcommunity will tweet about it (although when that happens, it's not uncommon to get thousands of views on that article). Attempting to do this will make you frustrated at the end.

Instead, I do something like this:

Pick a day of the week when you're going to publish your articles. This should be a day you're not too busy. Only change days if exceptional circumstances happen.
Find a resource on the internet that teaches about the topic you're trying to write about. Even an online tutorial or library manual will do.
Write a draft on a text file. The only reason it's on a text file is that sometimes I accidentally overwrite my edits on the DEV editor (super annoying when that happens).
- Write about the concepts the tutorial or documentation page talks about. Use your own words if you can make the points clearer (very important, you almost always can).
- For the rare occasions when the point is already well put in the original article, you can blockquote it like this, and post a link to the original article. This prevents plagiarism and makes it clear where it originally came from.

This is a link to the original page.

This is a quotes paragraph of the tutorial verbatim. The link to the webpage should appear just above the quote.

Spellcheck it for errors.
Save a draft on DEV.
Give your post a cover picture. I get mine from Pixabay, they are free to use, but make sure you post an attribution at the end of your article
Publish your post, and optionally share it on Twitter. For me, sharing on twitter only got me a few extra views, but that may be because I have a few followers on twitter anyway. But it's not a big deal.

And like that, even if only a few people read your blog post, you learn from the content of what you just wrote. Things you learn are remembered more if you explain them to people, and blogging is one way of doing it.

That way, as you become more seasoned in writing, you will have a credible history of blogging and that will help you establish a profile of yourself.

Here are a few other guides if you're curious: