How to become a technical blogger?

As the article's subtitle says, I write this article based on the twitter space I attended. If you had listened or will listen that space, you will surely catch the phrases of the speakers in my article. This is not to take credit from their work but because they are the expert and explained many things in such a way that I choose to keep it as it is. Other than that I used a lot of my thoughts to combine whole conversation with my views and try to make this article a whole experience.

The podcast itself was a concise one. So taking inspiration from it, I will not bore you with any more small talk.

There are some questions a newcomer writer may come across with -

What is technical writing?
How to start your journey with technical writing?
What are the benefits of it?
What should be the process of technical writing?
What should be the tone of an article?
How to promote your article?

Let's discuss and try to answer them one by one.

1. What is technical writing?

So what do you understand by technical writing? By taking words into account, you can say that it is the writing work which is about technical subjects. It can be a computer hardware, programming software, electronics, physics, biology, economy, psychology. In short, anything related to the technicality of a subject. You can express your ideas about any topic in a simple way, specially complex topics.

In this form of communication, you can express a topic in many ways. Such as documentation, Read-me and an article. The article itself can be of many types -

Explain a project or any technology in detail or part of it.
Tricks and tips.
Question-answer type.
Experience based.
How-to-do type.
List of any kind. (People using it mostly in making threads in twitter, still it is very relevant in article writing.)

Here, we will talk about tech related technical writing only. But how do you start?

2. How to start your journey with technical writing?

You can just start writing. Be your own supporter and write like you yourself wants to read the article. Prepare your notes and make it public. You have to be sure that the information, you are putting in your words, is right.

You can participate in a writing challenge. This will help you to be in discipline which is the most required ability at initial level.

To pick a topic you can -

Do brainstorming.
Read about technology and an idea will strike you.
Interact with people and observe things. (I got the idea of writing this article after listening twitter space. A person encouraged me too.)
Make a project in any coding platform and then write about it.
Re-write an article you think you can do better.

Even if you can't do better, still do it. Every person learn differently and the type of reading they understand can match with your writing. : )

So just write, write, write and publish.

What a better way to motivate yourself for writing than knowing the benefits of writings!!!

3. What are the benefits of it?

Whether you are focusing only on writing as a career or writing to make notes or to help others, when someone get knowledge from it and appreciate your work, you will feel good. Your confidence will boost up. Your journey will be much easier when people acknowledge you.

Your work is helpful not only for learners but also for recruiters. They will notice that you have other interest and knowledge in technology and also can express it in a good way. So, writing will help you to get in the tech job.

You can learn something which is not in your work and can write it down in an article. On the other way around; every time you write something, you learn something new and can apply it in your work.

Also, writing will improve your English. Specially if English is not your first language, writing is quite helpful in improving your English.

Benefits of something like writing can't be summarized in some lines. But I think these are good reasons for you to start writing. So, how you are going to write it?

4. What should be the process of technical writing?

In an article, there is a title, a subordinate title (subtitle), some headings and the content within it. You can have list of contents, any numbered (ordered) or unnumbered (unordered) lists. Other than that, there are many things you can add. It depends on the content you have so don't bother about it too much.

You have to start the article somewhere. Deciding title and headings seems to be the first things. But if your thoughts are fuzzy then it is the best practice to write down the things you have in your mind first. Put your thoughts in bullet points. This will clear your mind and also outline the content. Now you can decide your title and headings based on the bullet points. You can fill the paragraphs later.

Or you can just start writing and go with the flow. Let your sense of writing take the lead.

Now which ever way you choose, you still have many other things to take care of.

Title: Title also helps the reader if they are looking for something. If they know why something is important for them, they are going to read through the entire article.
Content: As for the content, you can make a demo in any platform and then breakdown the idea. Explain it. But before explaining, you should know why it is important to know something. Like if you are explaining about background picture then it is important to know about Z-index.
Language: Use simple English. Don't use technical jargon. Readers should feel confident while reading.
Paragraph: Don't write lengthy paragraphs. Break your idea into smaller parts and write about them separately.
Difficulty Level: Assume reader at the beginner level unless the article itself at intermediate or high level. Even if the person already know something, they will feel confident and skip through the next part.
Length of the article: It depends on the content and what you want to achieve by writing. Theory about something will take a long article. How-to-do and tricks & tips type article can be of the short types.
Extras: Provide screen-shots, code snippets, link to the demo or GitHub repository so that people can experiment little more.

Don't forget to read what you write before publishing. But don't do this just after writing. Take your time to relax, 10-15 minutes as you required. Listen music, do exercise, meditate, spend time with nature. Do what you like to do. Just freshen up your mind. Then read it. In this way you can remove the mental fatigue and can do editing efficiently.

At the last part of the article, you can mention about the expansion of your article. Like will it be two part article or a series!!

Content is the king. But it is not the only thing. The way you present your content is also matter.

5. What should be the tone of an article?

We have to decide the tone of the article. It can be professional, fun, static, explanatory etc. There is no rule for this. You can choose as per your writing style. Like -

Static: It is for writing to the point and one can read article in less time. How-to-do, List type and Tricks & tips type articles comes in this part. Generally we search and read these article when we are in middle of something and don't have time to waste.
Explanatory: Write article like you are explaining. You can learn deep about any topic from these type of article. Documentation, read-me type, question-answer type articles are some examples. The article you are reading right now can be termed as question-answer type article. Title itself is a question and at the starting of article you read some questions. Answers are in the whole article.
Fun: Use memes & emojis to discuss an idea and make learning a fun. Experience, project and also theory type article can be of fun tone to make it entertaining. A picture is worth a thousand words. But a moving picture (GIF)? Well -

I will take care of my self

In my opinion, you can add fun tone in any kind of article except the professional one like documentation and read-me. But there is no rule to write article in any suggested tone. It depends on the content and how you wants to present it. Understand who your audience is and write accordingly.

After completion of our article, now is the time to promote it.

6. How to promote your article?

Writing in public helps in building up your personal brand, accountability & credibility to your work as well. People have different opinions on how to promote your article. You can make your own followers in any platform and them post your articles there. You can do self promotion and can ask people to promote it. Here are some views on the article promotion-

Share on social media like twitter, linkedin, youtube, wordpress etc.
Repost older article which is relevant in this time.
On blogging platform like Hashnode.
Try to solve a problem. Article will promote on its merit.
Add links of previous article in your present article.

Here is my previous article on Survey form project. I wrote it for 4 week 4 article challenge in Hashnode platform. : )

Finally, we reached at the end. Some final words for the beginners-

Don't search for perfection. Just start writing.
Don't think about recognition, likes or comments on your article.
The more you write, the better you become.
To write good quality content, read lots of good quality content.
Take people's advice on how to improve.

Before completing this article, I would like to give credit to the people who were part of that twitter space. Hashnode hosted that space. Other than that, there are a couple of co-hosts and some speakers. I am providing their Hashnode and twitter accounts.