Unless you enjoy writing, the idea of starting a blog has possibly never occurred to you. It may appear to be uninteresting, time consuming, and difficult so why is it a good idea as a Software Developer to have and regularly maintain your own blog?
It can enhance your reputation massively as your blog will come up when searching your name, it’s like an advertisement of you that works all day and night without you having to do all that much, other than update it every so often.
It can help with your personal development for instance writing in general improves your communication skills and your logical thinking.
Your blog can be used as a way to track your own progress and provides you with reference material to your work that you can easily go back to.
In his book “The Complete Software Developer’s Career Guide” John Sonmez describes how starting his blog “Simple Programmer“ gave him multiple job opportunities, allowed him to travel around the world meeting people he never would have met, got him invited to speak at conferences, and gave him the chance to make a positive impact on people’s lives. Now the running of his blog and the other opportunities he has gained from doing so is his full-time career generating a full income.
Many people will say that blogging is pointless now because of the sheer volumes of people that are writing them now. This simply isn’t true, the number of blogs that are consistently maintained and updated is much lower than a lot of people think. Regardless of this fact, no two blogs will ever be the same and depending on the niche you choose to write about there won’t be any even vaguely similar. This is why picking your niche is important, if you have a very small and focused topic that you are writing about you can become the expert of that niche. You can always expand what you choose to write about later once you have a bigger audience.
So where do you get started?
When deciding what you want your blog to be about, like stated above, pick your niche: make it something that interests you; something you already know a lot about; something you think you can write a lot about; something you believe that others would be interested in reading. Make a list of different blog topics and pick your favourite.
There are lots of blogging software around that is really good for example ‘WordPress’ pick which blogging software you are going to use and look at what hosts are compatible with that blogging software.
You’ll need to think of what you’re going to name your blog and you’ll need to register your domain name for your blog.
All that’s left to do is write a blog post and publish it. Simple right?
Simple yes, but not necessarily easy. Even if you’re an experienced writer, writing can be difficult. Everything you write won’t be good and that’s okay. As you write more and more you will get better, your confidence in writing will improve and you will be able to cope better when things aren’t going as well and know how to solve the issues. Although writing is never easy there are a few things that you can do to make the process easier.
Have a list of topics that you want to write about and pick one before you start writing.
If you need to do any research for this post then do it all upfront – it will be easier to write without procrastination if you are clear and knowledgeable on what you are writing.
Create a rough outline of the post breaking down the key information points in it – This will give you a structure to work from and will help fight procrastination.
Make a schedule and stick to it – Treat it like a deadline and be disciplined with yourself, this will help you stay consistent and remember consistency is key.
Getting a lot of people reading your blog is not something that will happen overnight. It takes time and as long as you are consistent then the audience will come. Remember that people are interested in people and the way that you write is important for people’s enjoyment when reading your work. A lot of people, when they start writing a blog, treat it like an academic paper. Reframe from doing this as people could find it boring. Try just writing like you speak, this will be more natural.
There are several different types of posts that you can write for your blog. Here are just a few examples:
How to posts.
Opinion posts.
News or current events.
Reviews
Tech or news round ups
Interviews
Resources and Guides
Explainer posts
Personal posts (This should only be done very rarely but will help with your audience feeling more connected to you).
When it comes to blogging, of course the goal is to have more readers; more comments; more links; and more traffic. When you're trying to build your audience it's important to learn what your audience wants from you, and this can be difficult especially in terms of the length your blog should be.
A lot of bloggers say that shorter posts are better, they say that online readers have short attention spans and don't want to read long articles. This not the case, short blog posts have their place but not every piece you write has to be less than 600 words.
If you want more comments on a post or more engagement with you readers then a shorter, discussion based post will be best. Keep in mind however, posts like this don't get shared widely on social media sites and they have a tough time ranking on search engines and are bad for SEO. Especially when you are first trying to build your audience don't focus on shorter posts.
Medium length posts of between 600 and 1,250 words are good for getting them shared on social media, getting your blog seen by more people and building your reputation. Posts of this length are pretty good for SEO and for generating discussion too. This is a good length to have as your average blog post.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a tricky business and the reward for getting it right will be high. However, focusing too much on it can be a waste of time and your main focus should be on the content and consistency. If you do want to get more traffic from Google then try longer posts of over 2,000 words. Search engines love long heavily researched posts especially when they're focused on solving pressing problems. They might not get a lot of comments and could potentially be shared slightly less on social media, but if you can wait until Google takes notice, you can get lucky and you'll see a big bump in search traffic!
Just Keep Writing – It’s not always easy and fun. Do it anyway and the reward will come!
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