A blog post about blog posts
How to write a good blog post
So you want to start a blog and if you were taught about writing well at school as well as are a native English speaker, writing in English should not be a problem. However, if you’re like me who doesn’t have either, you might struggle a little bit with your writing. While I can’t claim that I’m a good writer, I have learned a few things throughout the years which I’m going to share here in the hope that someone may find it useful to some extent. The focus of this post is on organization, development, and correctness of a post.
Analysis: This section, marked as heading 1, is where I can give an introduction about the post. It usually has a few sentences that help readers know very quickly:
- What it is about. Have you ever read a lengthy article that even after you finished you still didn’t know what it is about? I have, many times.
- Who its target audience is. In this case, the target audience is young software developers who want to start a blog but don’t have the necessary writing skills yet.
- What the audience will get after reading it, or what main arguments you are using to prove your point depending on particular topics.
It seems to me that most readers are always busy so you have just a minute (aka time to read the first few sentences) to convince them that your post is worthy of a read. Btw, you can google for thesis statement if you want to learn more about how and the importance of this section.
Start going into details
After the introduction, you start going into details and you should use “heading 2” for this section. If your post is about a problem, you have probably mentioned it in the introduction section and this section is where you describe it in detail (1). Another case is that you want to write a post to make a point about something (aka an argumentative essay), this section is where you should put your most important argument (2).
Analysis: so far, you can see that this blog post structure pays a lot of attention to organization: what headings to use, what to write in each section. Imagine you want to take your reader on a journey with your post in which the introduction section is like a gate and the next sections are a path which leads them to something wonderful in the end.
Continue on developing post
This section is all about continuing on the next point after the first one. For posts of type (1), you can discuss your solution for the problem. Meanwhile, your next argument should be the content of this section for posts of type (2). Please note that this section is a continuation of the previous sections. You can have a few sections like this if you want to explore some aspects of the problem (1) or you have many other arguments (2).
Analysis: subsequent sections are all about continuing on the development of your post. You must stay on topic and one section is a continuation of the previous section to some extent. Remember the notion about a journey above? You definitely want your readers to keep exploring it steadily.
Always use a spell checker
Although you can be a non-native English speaker, there is no excuse for typos in your writing. Always using a text editor that has a good spell checker is a must.
But you don’t need to follow a single structure for every post
There is simply no such thing as a best structure nor one that fits all kinds of blog posts. In fact, as a new blogger, high chance is that most of the time you will write about simple things that you work with day in day out. For that type of post, this structure might be too heavy. Instead, you can opt for a simplified version as demonstrated in this sample: Caching bug in .NET 4.7.
Over time, you will get better in terms of both writing skill and professional skills and you will aim for more advanced posts as described in the previous sections. I have a sample for a post of type (1) at Dependency injection - dealing with large object graph which applies this structure. For an example of type (2), you can refer to Why IELTS test might be ideal for non-native English speaking software developers (I can write about why unit tests are must-have but it can be a bit boring).
Closing down
In short, this structure has three main parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. As How to Write an Essay/Parts says:
Aristotle suggested that speakers and, by extension, writers should tell their audience what they are going to say, say it, and then tell them what they have said. The three-part essay model, consisting of an introductory paragraph, several body paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph, follows this strategy.
I have used this very typical structure for many posts with good results so I hope that it can help some of you who want to start writing.
Analysis: After you have written about all necessary details, having a short summary section is usually a good idea. This section is where you can summarize the content of the whole post that helps readers memorize the most important points you want to tell them.
Credits
Well, the summary section might not be the last section yet. If you use free materials such as images from other websites to decorate your posts, having a section to give credits is a good idea. Tip: make sure you search for materials that use Creative Commons licenses.
Images used in this blog post are provided by: