Hello there!
I am really excited to share my journey in technical writing and how I got into it! First, I am really thankful to hashnode for providing us with an amazing bootcamp.
Yesterday was the first session of the Bootcamp hosted by Sam Sycamore, where Quincy Larson and Edidiong Asikpo shared amazing tips on technical writing which really helped a lot!
Here in this article, I am going to share my background in technical writing - from where it started where it is heading towards and what is my vision. I would also include some tips at the end for you which I learned by hit and trial, the hard way đ.
Flashback 2018
I was in 8th grade back then, and I was trying to learn android app development from an amazing book by J. F. Dimarzio titled âBeginning Android Programming with Android Studioâ.
I had also learned basic web dev skills like HTML and CSS. Javascript, or broadly, web dev didnât appeal to me that much so I went to learn native app development. I didnât know about frameworks like Vue or React back then, so that was it.
At that time, I found out various resources and learned a lot of things from otherâs blogs, but sometimes, though I could understand the concepts, it just happened that the article wasnât that well written or it was hard to understand all by reading, and some struggle was needed. In short, it wasnât that beginner-friendly.
I would sometimes also want to document things I learn because teaching someone else makes your own concepts stronger, and that is more powerful than just reading and practicing.
The above things were accompanied by my thoughts of having my own place on the internet where I could share things I love about, and have the world read them. And thatâs how I started with blogging.
At first, I came to know about blogger- Googleâs service that allows you to make minimal blogs. It was actually a good start for beginners who wished to make a simple blog. But, it turned out it was not a good fit to make a developer blog.
From there, I turned to many platforms, from blogger to WordPress, from WordPress to medium and dev community, but none could give the freedom of owning your own content- and having all the SEO juice to your own domain. Thatâs where hashnode came in and I quickly migrated and use it as my daily driver for blogging!
And yeah, it has been 3 years since I started blogging and I have learned a lot through the way! From making an article enjoyable for the readers to improving my English- and even making good friends in the community. I also feel blessed to have the opportunity to help others through my articles!
My motivation
Everyone needs some motivation to keep doing a thing, and if they love what they do, the motivation manifests from the passion for the work itself!
Itâs similar in my case. I really enjoy programming and I can sit hours coding an app. I really love how what we code actually works in real life- designing the UI and embracing it.
And this passion for programming motivates me to write about it on this blog. The comments and feedback from the community really help to keep up the spirit.
Sometimes itâs hard to keep writing because there are other things to consider, like schooling and studies, but I do write when I am bored from other work because it gives refreshment from the usual routine!
There are other ways I keep myself motivated- by challenging myself for each article I write, aiming for at least x views per post, and then sharing it to different platforms, it just feels good even if I get 100 views on an article and I feel it was worth my time.
My goals
As far as this blog is concerned, I wish to take it up to 10k views a month, which is 10x to the current scenario. For that, I spend time on on-site and off-site SEO and my small efforts have started to make a difference.
Hereâs an image from the Google search console about this blogâs analytics for the past one and a half years.
There used to be good traffic earlier because I wrote consistently when I was on WordPress, but then I had left blogging for some months, mostly because studies became dominant.
But then I started again on hashnode, and I was happy to regain the impressions I generally used to get, all because of hashnode.
Hashnode is really awesome platform because it allows you to post your content on your blog, but at the same time they circulate the article on their platform, so youâll always have a base audience ready! And since the content remains on your domain, you get all the SEO benefits :)
Also, on a side note, I am looking forward to learning some new technologies and write about them, so follow me on hashnode to stay updated with what I post.
Some tips for new writers
Now is the time to share some things I learned over time!
Donât fear what others will think about your article
Many people face this! Even I used to be conscious about each word I wrote when I was new to blogging. But with different experiments, I found out the more informal you write a tutorial or any kind of article, the better it is perceived by people.
It is hard to keep up with formal language- otherwise, whatâs the need for blogs, documentations would have been enough for the people to understand things đ.
Avoid slangs
The point just discussed doesnât mean you should be using different internet slangs to make your article informal. That can actually put a bad impact.
What I do is I speak what I am writing, just as if you are conversing with someone and explaining the tech you are writing about. That helps to write articles that are easy to understand and at the same time write articles that donât bore the reader.
Hereâs another thing I usually do, and it was also shared by Edidiong Asikpo during the Bootcamp session yesterday:
To improve your writing skills, you can try to write an article and read it as if you donât even know who has written it, that helps to point out parts of the article that are hard to understand and also fix any grammatical issues, speaking of which, I recommend you to use grammarly đ
Itâs ok to make mistakes
Mistakes are how you learn things. Nobody is born perfect =)
Itâs ok if you canât write good words, or if your English fluency is a hurdle, just start going with the flow, and over time, youâll become better at the skill.
Focus on a niche that you are passionate about
Itâs hard to come up with article ideas if you start writing about tech that you donât enjoy. Find out what you like because that can help you stay consistent. Also, you yourself will enjoy the researching process when you wish to explore new things about the tech that you didnât know.
Keep the interaction going
You should try to reply to each comment your post gets, because that invokes interaction and builds trust around your blog, and if your blog is an active community- people are likely to come back to read your articles again!
You can make an email newsletter too- that helps to regain users. You know what? Hashnode blogs get an email newsletter feature completely free! What are you waiting for? Join hashnode and start blogging in minutes!
Hereâs one of my in-depth articles about some of the mistakes I had been making in blogging, which you should stop making right away!
Final words
I hope you enjoyed the article and took away something from it - thanks for reading so far! I would appreciate it if you could take 5 more minutes to write down your opinions and feedback :)
