— Five steps from creativity to refined results

The original link: medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-writ…

I’ve been working in the open source community for almost five years, building and promoting developer tools including Meteor and Apollo. At that time, I found blogging to be one of the most effective ways to spread ideas.

Unlike a video or interview that takes a long time to prepare, a blog post is widely accessible and easy to accomplish. I personally get a lot of benefits from writing: it helps me organize my ideas, spread the technology I love, and let people know about me.

I published my first blog post in 2014, and now I’ve written 68 articles on Medium, some of which have more than 50K views and 1,000 followers. I also edit many posts for my friends and colleagues. Over that time, I’ve developed a strategy for bringing concepts to paper.

In this article, we will cover the five main steps of the post writing process:

  • Try to find a good subject

  • Identify your target and audience

  • Have a good beginning and end and be informative

  • Get feedback and iterate

  • Add the finishing touches: packaging, release and publicity

Let’s take the first step.

1. Try to find a good theme

You need to have some ideas before you can start writing. People who want to start blogging tell me that not having an idea is often their main obstacle.

The simplest strategy is to write about what you know. If you spend a lot of time learning something, and you think you can explain it in a few minutes, then you will provide a lot of value to the reader.

Another idea is to write something that doesn’t exist in a certain area. For example, there are currently few posts on how to apply for a technical conference, so something about this could fill a gap in the community.

Here are some specific types of posts you can use. An example is from the GraphQL related post on the Apollo blog:

1. Step-by-step guide to achieving specific goals: “Build a great scrollable list in React Native using FlatList” or “Simplify your React component with Apollo and Recompose.” These are great for readers who want to make a quick demo.

2. In-depth investigation of a specific topic: “Using nullity in GraphQL” or “Anatomy of a GraphQL query”. This can be very useful if your target audience is interested and wants to learn more over a cup of coffee.

3. A useful list around a common topic: “4 Simple Ways to call the GraphQL API” or “5 Benefits of static GraphQL Queries”. This is a fun, lightweight read because you don’t have to read the whole thing and it’s easy to do with fragmentary time.

There are also some common concerns, so let’s put those concerns to rest:

There has been a discussion about this topic. Don’t worry. Even if the idea has been written about before, you can use your own perspective to illustrate what might be done differently in your particular situation.

2. My ideas aren’t interesting enough. A lot of my friends and colleagues don’t write because they’re afraid their conclusions might be boring or obvious. That’s normal! If you are an expert on something, then of course the conclusions you write will be boring to you. The point is your audience doesn’t know that stuff yet.

Even with all this said, it’s hard to predict in the end what will make a great article and what won’t, and it’s often stick with or change articles rather than a great topic. My main advice is to try writing a few different things and see what works.

2. Identify your target and audience

Now that you know your topic, you need to provide an audience and target for your posts. Who will read it and what will they get out of it?

Your goals need to be specific so that you can focus all your energy on one main idea. For this post, the goal can’t just be “blogging.” I need a more specific goal:

  • Audience: People who want to start blogging, especially on technical topics, but haven’t done it yet.
  • Goal: Provide people with a specific set of steps and instructions so they can get started.

Once you have these, keep your main idea by removing anything that isn’t useful, and avoid adding extra details because they need to be relevant. I’ve found that relatively brief posts that take 5-10 minutes to read have the highest probability of success.

Understanding the audience’s knowledge background can help refine the article based on their existing knowledge and help determine how to publish and promote the content of the article. For example, I would like to publish this on freeCodeCamp because many of the target audience will probably have already read the publication.

3. Have a good beginning and end and be informative

It can be confusing when the structure goes strange. Plot twists can be a great benefit in fictional short stories. But a technical article is much easier to read if it gives the reader the knowledge they want. Good structure allows readers to finish reading smoothly.

introduce

The first or second paragraph will neither hold the reader’s attention nor turn them off. Start with a short paragraph and a big picture to help the reader understand the main idea of the article. Then, tell the reader what they will learn from reading the article. It can be tempting to reveal the secrets ahead of time, but be warned: if you don’t have a good hint, the reader won’t read around that point.

In the middle

Now that you’ve told your readers what to expect, please give them what they expect! Feel free to add as much detail as you need, and leave a signature post along the way to guide them. Use headings, numbered lists, etc., to help readers understand what parts of the article they are reading, so that they can skip to the parts they are most interested in.

conclusion

Don’t finish at the end of your article. If your readers have read everything, they will still be interested in what’s left at the end. Give them a quick summary of what they’ve learned, and the end of an essay might just be to tell them to do something about it if they’re interested.

As for the structure part, what I’ve suggested may not be the most creative, but there are other ways to do it better. But a simple structure is the most direct way to communicate with readers.

4. Get feedback and iterate

You don’t know what people will get out of your writing until you read it. This is where your idea of theme, goal, detail and structure is really tested. Do not skip this step if you want good results.

You may feel a little pushy when you want feedback, or you may be worried about the negative impact, but people are more willing to help than you expect. It’s a good idea to know how to publish your article before Posting it to the outside world. When I took all this into account, I got some very valuable feedback that made the article better and more focused.

What should you ask your readers? My main advice is to keep it as open as possible. Try not to explain your intentions in advance. Hand over the draft as it is, and ask your reviewers what they learned from it or what should be changed. When someone on the Internet comes across your article, they are an individual without any additional background (and reader recognition).

The main thing to verify from the feedback is: will this post achieve the goals you identified in Step 2? Keep iterating until you’re sure you know your target and audience.

5. Add the finishing touches: packaging, release and publicity

Now that you have the idea, goals, structure, and some feedback, it’s time to polish everything and release it.

packaging

Come up with a good title and subtitle, and make sure your article has at least one picture. This is what people see when they share an article on Twitter or Facebook, and it’s an opportunity to get people interested in reading it.

It’s important to look and feel professional in order to make your content truly meaningful. The minimum goal should be to have no typos, grammatical errors or strange formatting in your text. If you have a friend who is really good at finding small details, ask them to read them carefully before Posting.

Posting on freeCodeCamp also has some good advice on writing style and format. Since you’ve put so much effort into your article, it’s well worth the extra effort to really improve it and make it more accessible.

Finally, please show your appreciation by commenting on the work cited or by the person who helped review and modify the post.

release

Finally! Choose the site where you plan to publish so that you are most likely to reach your audience. Medium is usually a place for technical articles, making it easy for people to read your articles.

For rewards, try Posting your article to a relevant tech site so they can help share your article – with this in mind, I chose freeCodeCamp because I think this article is relevant to their readers. If you want to do the same, please submit your article in the following way. Technical sites in your area of interest may also be looking for articles, so don’t be afraid to contact!

propaganda

You’ve posted the article, but you’re not done yet! If you want people to see what you’re writing and get value from it, be sure to share it in places where people are likely to read it. This could include Facebook groups, Reddit, Hacker News, LinkedIn or any other platform. Also, be sure to share your creations on your own social media accounts, such as Twitter. Your friends will be happy to read, share and approve of what you write!

Now, you’re done. Go for coffee or a walk – starting a blog post from start to finish is no small feat. Read any feedback and responses from the community so you can keep improving. When you have another idea, write another one.

There is no substitute for practice

In writing, we’ve just covered the five most important things, from coming up with an idea to publishing it. Now that you’ve read it, try applying this advice and see what works for you.

I’ll leave one last piece of advice. The main thing I’ve learned from blogging over the past three years is that I can never predict which articles will go unanswered and which will eventually become a full series. Sometimes I will spend days polishing every detail of an article without allowing a single mistake. Sometimes, just a few hours late at night writing “GraphQL vs. REST” became the most popular article I’ve ever written.

So even if your first, second or third article doesn’t work, keep trying new things, get your ideas out there and improve them over time. The world wants to hear what you have to say. Go tell them!

Many thanks to Editors Anvisha Pai, Angela Zhang, Katie Siegel and Fred Codecamp for helping review this article.