On Writing a Technical Article
I know some developers who are blessedly good at coding and good at being a tutor at the same time, yet very few of them would pick up the pen (or type out on their keyboard) for technical topics they are enthusiastic about. If you are one of them, I think you are seriously missing out, and I am here to persuade you to start sharing with the Internet! I will try to make my point in as few words as possible, please read the whole piece :P
Benefits of writing technical articles
- Build your own portfolio
- Challenge yourself if you have a deep understanding of the topic
- Share your opinions / views with other developers
- Educate people who are less knowledgeable about the topic
- Become a better writer
- Be better at explaining and breaking down complex ideas
To begin
- Decide on a category
- Thoughts on programming, e.g. Building the Programmer’s Mentality
- Sharing a programming solution / How to…., e.g. How to create a Slider in pure Javascript - Think of a topic
- Draft a structure for your article
- An overview as the first paragraph
- Break down the content into different parts
- Provide a conclusion - Provide reference links for further research at the very end
If your main purpose is to gain followers, come up with a topic based on SEO keyword combinations that are related to your tech stack but does not have more than 2 articles on the first page of Google search result.
Make use of
- Sub headers
- Numbered lists
- Bulleted lists
- Questions as sub headers when needed
- Grammar checker, e.g. Grammarly
Also, it is good to ask samples of your target audience to read your article and provide feedback to polish your writing.
Medium-specific tips
- Always put an image at the very beginning of the article
- Use quote to capture attention when you want to emphasize a particular idea
- If you include code snippets, use Gist / CodePen instead of built-in code block, because code on Gist has some style, but not on the built-in code block, and CodePen is good for visualizing web front-end code
- Ask readers to follow your Medium account at the end of the article
Finally, the title
- Be precise i.e. readers can correctly expect what you are going to talk about before clicking in
- Be concise i.e. Use as few words as possible
- Come up with a topic that is good for SEO i.e. include keywords that developers search frequently
I hope after reading through these short lists, you would start sharing your knowledge with us. The Internet is never in excess of good programming tutorials and articles!
Applaud and follow me if you like this article!
I would share my front-end experiments and my thoughts on programming whenever I have time ;)
