I will not focus on micro-optimizations like changing your call to action from blue to orange. Instead, I’ll concentrate on the major wins.

Tip 1: Find out who your readers are

Try to gain insight into who your users are so that you can understand what kind of problems they face and how you can help them.

Tip 2: Make your posts as useful as possible

The guiding light for your writing should be bringing as much value as possible to your readers. This is why knowing who they are and what problems they face (aka Tip 1) is so important.

When you are writing a post, ask yourself, who is this useful for? Am I solving a real problem here?

Tip 3: Focus on a topic

It is tempting to write about everything that interests you, but in my experience, one achieves the greatest amount of success as a blogger when focusing on a particular topic.

This makes sense when you think about it. People discovering your blog thanks to a particular article are likely to be interested in articles on the same topic.

Tip 4: Make it obvious what you are all about

Related to the previous tip, not only should you focus on a particular topic, but you should also make it obvious what your blog is about.

Use your domain name, site header, sidebar, anything really, to get people to immediately understand the subject matter of your blog.

Don’t leave people guessing.

Tip 5: Be vulnerable

Although you want to be an authoritative voice, don’t forget to be human, honest, and even vulnerable.

In the same vein, feel free to share your doubts, questions, and even tales of what went wrong. It won’t likely damage you.

Quite the opposite, it can really help you and your blog to be more relatable.

Tip 6: Be bold and opinionated

While you should be honest and even vulnerable, don’t be afraid to also be bold and opinionated.

If you are passionate/certain/serious about something, have the courage to boldly show it.

Tip 7: Don’t mock anyone

The easiest way to get people to dislike you is to waste time mocking others.

You can criticize people, but if you come across as a bully, you’ll lose nice people in favor of those who thrive on drama and gossip. Not a worthwhile trade.

Tip 8: Write at least once a week

As with all endeavors in life, the more you write the better you’ll become at it. Especially in the beginning, practice as much as you can fit in your schedule, and make sure you publish at least one article per week.

If you run more than one blog, consider consolidating (something I’m now considering myself) so as to increase your output frequency.

One blog that publishes three articles per week is apt to have a far better outcome than three blogs, each publishing once a week. 

Tip 9: Create series

Consider writing small guides and other longer content that can be split across a series of posts. These tend to do well in helping you grow your following.

People who liked the first part of a tutorial are likely to want to read the rest. Make sure you prompt people to subscribe via email or feed (though less adopted these days) to receive updates on the series.

You can even do reoccurring series where you write a given type of post ever so often. For example, a weekly round-up of articles within your niche that have recently caught your eye. 

Tip 10: Write epic content

I know it takes a lot more time and investment but, as I mention in my book, nothing is as rewarding to readers (and Google) as epic content. Content that is radically useful and extensive, covering a given topic with a great deal of attention.

You can think of these types of posts as guides or mini-books of sorts. I’m talking about 3,000-10,000 words. Chances are, you won’t be able to publish a post this size every week, but if you do pen entries in this size range periodically, you are likely to grow your blog much more quickly.

They are also backlink magnets, as other people are more likely to link to your epic content than they are to your smaller posts.

Tip 11: Read other bloggers

The best way to improve as a blogger is to study those who are successful at it. Use your feed reader to subscribe to the best bloggers in your niche. Read what they write and how they write.

Feel free to incorporate those elements that jump out at you into your own writing. Also, staying abreast of sites in your niche is a great way to help ensure that you don’t run out of ideas for topics to cover on your blog.

There you have it. 11 tips that can truly transform your blog. The hard part is putting them into action. Not because they are complex – indeed, they are quite simple. 

However, simple isn’t always easy. You will still need to put in the hours and work required to succeed, but doing so is certainly possible.

The post 11 Tips for Becoming a Better Blogger appeared first on Technical Blogging.

This header introduces the subject

This header introduces the subject I’m going to discuss over the next few paragraphs. Namely, the importance of headers.

Paragraph breaks and headers prevented this post from being a wall of text.

Visual breaks are important because most readers skim a post online. Headers like this one anchor the user as they scroll. Bold words can also serve the same purpose, but don’t overdo it.

This first header is where the premise of the article is further developed. I introduced it with the title, clarified further in the first paragraph, and now, in its own dedicated section, I can expand on it.

The rest of the post will literally describe itself, stretching self-referentiality without, I hope, becoming unintelligible.

As meta as this post is, I’m injecting myself, the author, into it to make it less impersonal.

This header takes the reader somewhere

With the premise developed, this post needs to go somewhere. Every article should tell a story. Everything you write, even technical posts, should narrate a tale or arc of some kind.

I was in the shower thinking about my next post. What could I write about? Then it hit me. Somebody must have flushed a toilet. The idea and the scalding water hit me at the same time. I should write about the structure of posts by writing a post that describes itself.

A post about nothing, Seinfeld would have called it.

Paint pictures with words. Ok, me in the shower is not the picture I really want to paint. Inject humor in your posts.

Literal pictures on top of literary pictures are also a good idea.

Don’t forget to include relevant quotes:

I always have a quotation for everything – it saves original thinking.

Dorothy L. Sayers

Quotes offer:

• Validation about what you’re claiming;
• A different perspective;
• Indirect clout via association;
• Amusement to the reader;
• A visual break.

The last trait is also shared by bullet-point lists.

This is the conclusion

A conclusion should summarize what just happened, allowing the reader’s brain to quickly recap the information it processed.

The recap for this post reminds the reader to start with a strong title that captures the essence of the post. Telling them to enthrall the user in the first paragraph, before introducing what the post is about. Without forgetting to mention why they should care.

Then this post used headers to guide the user’s attention as they scrolled. Offering a visual break and separating the post in mini-sections.

Images, sparingly used bold, bullet points, and quotations all enriched this post and provided further visual respite.

Speaking of images, this post included a small anecdote and used its headers to complete an arc describing how the post itself is structured.

Injecting humor and the author’s personality, elevated the post from a mere thought experiment to a masterpiece reminiscent of Shakespeare.

Closing your recap with a joke or some self-deprecating humor is okay.

Once you’re done with your recap, invite the user to comment and share their thoughts below. Finally, if so desired, bid the user goodbye.

Until next time.

The post This Is a Post About Itself appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Occasionally, I receive emails from people asking me about blogging. Now that the second edition of my blogging book is out, the volume of emails has only increased.

A common theme I see is people creating a blog, posting as often and as much as they can, only to run out of steam. Lots of work for dismal results.

Common questions are:

• Is blogging dead?
• Is blogging still relevant?
• I published N articles and made no money. How come?

There are other questions, of course, but these are the most common ones. These are not dumb questions.

People have legitimate reasons to be frustrated with their blogging efforts. One such email included a very relatable quote:

I spent 4 hours writing a 2348 word essay. It was read by 78 people. Maybe fewer, as I too visited the page.

Can we really blame her for being frustrated?

The fundamental problem is that a lot of people treat their blog as the product. Your blog is not the product. Let me repeat it, louder, one more time for those in the back. YOUR BLOG IS NOT THE PRODUCT.

Yes, blogging is still alive. Yes, blogging is still relevant. But blogging has also changed drastically. Most of the conversations that blogging used to spark have largely moved to social media.

Blogging is still amazing… but it’s not the product. Blogging can still change your life… but it’s not the product. Blogging can make you money… but it’s not the product.

If blogging is not the product, then what is it? Blogging is an incredibly useful tool. Specifically, it’s a content marketing tool. It can help you reach the people you need to reach and expose them to your product.

So what is the product then? The product can be you and your career, your business, a book you wrote, or something else that has value and for which you charge money.

If you treat blogging as the product, you’d be very disappointed to reach only 78 people, and be hard-pressed to make any money from it. Even if a quarter of them were to click on, say, your ads, it might not be worth your 4-hour investment in time. And trust me, such a conversion rate is extremely unrealistic.

78 prospective employers when you are looking for a job is not so bad, though. Well worth the four hours of writing. 78 prospective clients for your freelance business, could lead to thousands of dollars down the line even if only one of them were to sign up. 78 prospective readers of your book, might lead to quite a few extra sales.

If you treat your blog as the product, you’ll often need 100K+ people a month to extract any serious value out of it. If you have a product, even a small group of people who are the right fit for your product can change your life.

Reading my book will teach you how to ensure that the numbers are larger AND you’re leveraging them to promote the right product.

The post Your Blog Is Not the Product appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I’m not alone. We call it thinking.

I think about a lot of things each day, though I capture very few of these thoughts on paper.

Sometimes I’ll share them, summarized, wrapped in a blanket of humor, on Twitter.

Even more seldom, about once a week, I’ll elaborate them a little and share them through my blogs.

The funny thing about these conversations is that the very act of writing them down requires a formalization of sort, and the process itself elaborates the ideas further, thus purifying them.

The real tragedy is that a lot of worthwhile thoughts and conversations with myself are never published anywhere. They’ll die with me.

Some of these ideas, trust me on this, deserve better. They deserve to be shared, discussed, evolved, changed, and perhaps, at times, even debunked.

For that to happen, other people’s minds are needed. I can give birth to the thought, but the proverbial village will be required to raise it to all that it can be.

Sometimes I doubt myself. I think, “Nah, this idea is stupid”, or “This is obvious”, or worry about what other people might think.

Perhaps, they’ll think less of me. Perhaps, it will be clear then I’m not as good as I hope to be.

Not sharing my thoughts and ideas feels safer. They can’t criticize what I haven’t shared.

But if my thought, idea, or ongoing conversation with myself is important enough for me to ponder at length, then it’s important enough to share with others.

To put out there in the universe, where it can mingle with other thoughts, invade other minds, contribute to the collective consciousness of the human race.

Fear be damned. Criticism be damned.

The more prolific we are, the more original we become. The better thinkers, artists, communicators we edify ourselves to be.

Write it down. Share it. Repeat as often as you can. Do it as if your life depends on it. Because, in good part, it does.

The post Share the Conversations with Yourself appeared first on Technical Blogging.

A frustrating answer, I know. But let’s inch our way to a better assessment of what exactly it depends on.

Advantages of small posts

Small posts (let’s say those that hit below 500 words) have several advantages:

• You can write them quickly.
• People have short attention spans already and social media is training us to quickly jump from one story to the next one. No serious commitment is required on your readers’ part, so more visitors might read them from top to bottom. (Though most people skim on the web regardless of post size.)
• They keep your blog full and mailing list warm since, in the example of the ten posts above, you could easily be covered for a month even if you were to publish more than once a week.
• You can go wide and relatively quickly address a variety of subjects with your blog.
• They can be laser focused, and with some decent on-page SEO optimization, possibly rank well for a given topic. And since you can write more of them, you may be able to rank well for a variety of keywords, bringing some good traffic your way via an array of different subjects.

Advantages of long content

Now for long content (1500 words and more):

• You can cover a topic in-depth, making you post truly useful to your readers.
• Long content is a catalyst to establishing a deeper relationship with your readers.
• In an ocean of 140-character tweets and 280-word posts (the average for WordPress.com), your blog can stand out with its in-depth content. On a side note, I find it amusing that Twista could sing the length your average short post in around one minute.
• Google will love you. Changes to the ranking algorithm over the years have increasingly favored long content posts. Yes, you may have fewer articles to rank with, but those that you do have are much more likely to rank favorably.
• Long copy sells. In the world of digital marketing, it’s an old adage that long content sells much better than short content. If your post is promoting a service or product of your own, well-crafted long content will help you achieve greater conversion goals.
• Long content, due to its nature, has lots of long-tail keywords to rank with.

Write Pillar Content

Ultimately, it’s the old wide vs deep argument. Fancy restaurant vs quick snack (or less charitably, fast food). Some blogs succeed with short content. Others rely on long posts.

No matter what you decide to do, I highly recommend that you take the time to craft a special kind of content. I’m talking about Pillar Content, such as extensive evergreen guides.

These typically sit at 3,000–15,000 words, are divided into multiple sections (so much so that they need their own table of content), and stay relevant for years.

Here are three examples of pillar content:

• Everything you wanted to know about SQL injection (but were afraid to ask) (~4,200 words)
• The Ultimate Guide to Pokémon Go (~3,800 words)
• Scott Hanselman’s 2014 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows (~9,200 words)

It’s a fair amount of work certainly, but they are a blogger’s secret weapon. Posts like this can help you establish yourself and your blog as an authority on the subject. People will love you for the right pillar content. It’s not rare for pillar content to be shared, linked, and referred to hundreds, if not thousands, of times. A reaction that is rarely encountered in response to short posts.

Since they take so long to write, I suggest that you keep your blog “alive” with intermittent shorter posts, while you work on your periodically occurring pillar content.

Over time, people reaching your pillar content via search engines and social media will be more likely to become fans, subscribing, and in the process get more content of all sizes from you.

The post Short vs. Long Content Posts appeared first on Technical Blogging.

The common objection

A common objection I get, particularly from people just starting out in their careers, is: “But I’m not an expert”. Fellow programmers are especially partial to this thought pattern.

Listen, I get it. Unless you’re strongly affected by the Dunning–Kruger effect, you know full well the limits of your knowledge.

It can be intimidating to put yourself out there, facing criticism, ego bruising honesty, and the reality of potential unpleasantness from people on sites like Reddit or Hacker News.

But I would argue that the potential rewards from blogging are so vast, that it is worth facing our insecurities and the potential for criticism in order to experience such positives.

Criticism can be unintentionally useful even when it wasn’t intended to be constructive. You posted some code and someone mentioned that there is a better way to do it? Yeah, they weren’t friendly about it, but you just got a free code review and an opportunity to learn a more effective way.

This post is not about the benefits you get from blogging, however, so let’s see what you can blog about when you are objectively not an expert.

What to blog about as a novice

• You can use your blog to document your process of going from novice to expert in a given field. Document your journey.
• Review what you are reading or watching, assuming it’s relevant to the topic of your blog. You don’t need to be an expert to do that.
• Post your notes online as you learn more about the topic from various sources.
• Leverage the blog to ask questions and open a conversation with the community. More experienced people might find your queries and share their expertise.
• Blog about what you understand. It is said that the best person to teach someone X is someone who is just at X + 1. An expert might overlook how tough certain stumbling blocks are for beginners. Not you, since you just learned about a given topic that confused you only a few days or weeks ago.
• Express your opinions and impressions, even if they happen to be “first impressions” due to your novice status.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t need to be an expert to have an interesting blog that is read by people within your technical community.

In fact, sometimes getting to watch a blog “grow up” can be quite interesting, helping you build a large and lasting audience of readers who root for you.

The post But I’m not an expert appeared first on Technical Blogging.

Before answering the question, “Should you use pop-ups?”, let’s start with two facts:

1. Your mailing list can be your most important asset on a blog.
2. Pop-ups are extremely good at capturing emails.

Essentially, they are a very effective, if on the nose, technique. Not having a pop-up signup is literally leaving money on the table. And that’s why they are so ubiquitous.

When you don’t see one it’s often either an ethical choice (the site owner decided to maximize user experience, not profit) or lack of knowledge of how effective these pop-ups can be.

I recently decided to run an experiment on Math Blog, going from an embedded form to a pop-up one, plus the existing form. I was blown away by the results.

On average, I received 20 times more email signups, and my mailing list is growing like never before. I thought I would receive some complaints about it. Surprisingly, so far nobody has opted to say anything negative about it. For this and other reasons, I now actually regret not adding one there years ago.

So should you use pop-ups? The answer thus far would seem to be, “absolutely”. I think that for most technical blogs, we don’t need too many qualifiers or caveats.

A tasteful cookie-based pop-up that appears only once some 10-20 seconds after the user has landed, or when they are about to exit, will probably do more good than damage to your blog.

Where it gets trickier is with programming blogs. Programmers are notoriously adverse to pop-ups and marketing in general. To date I have not placed a pop-up sign up on my programming blog. Following my Math Blog experiment, I’m really tempted to do. If anything, to see what happens both in terms of signups and complaints.

I suspect that submitting a post from my programming blog with a pop-up enabled to Reddit or Hacker News will likely generate some backlash. But I can only speculate until I give it a try, which I’ll likely do and then report back here.

Maybe I’m underestimating how much people, even programmers, are accustomed to pop-ups these days.

Ultimately, it comes down to a delicate balance between ROI and user experience. On the one hand, you want to maximize the number of people you capture, transforming them from random passerby to – hopefully – regulars.

On the other however, you want to provide a user experience that doesn’t disrupt whatever the user is doing (e.g., reading an article) or irritate their individual sensibilities (e.g., the stereotypical anti-marketing programmer).

It’s really up to you in terms of what you are comfortable doing. Knowing your audience is key as well. I think you don’t have too much to worry about there unless your blog is about programming.

Generally speaking, I would say don’t be afraid of trying pop-up email form out for a short amount of time before making a final decision.

And last, but not least, if you’re in the market for a smart pop-up that will let you customize cookie duration, when it appears, and so on, then I highly recommend Optinmonster or WP Subscribe Pro.

The post Should You Use Pop-Ups on Your Technical Blog? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I’m a firm believer in the “why” of things. The why is often more important than the how. Find your why, and the how will become significantly easier to tackle and endure.

People are also significantly more inclined to follow, believe, and buy your why. What you do – and how you do it – simply becomes a consequence of your why.

If you’re a company, and your why/purpose is clearly outlined for your employees, you’ll also find that their productivity and commitment stand to be far greater.

You’ll want to start with the why, working in a top down approach that will lead you to decide which actions needs to be taken as a consequence of your core motivations and values.

Okay, so how do we apply this to blogging? Simply stated, we must ask what the why is at multiple levels.

WHY you blog

Let’s start with your reason for wanting to blog.

For example, take into consideration this very blog.

Q: Why TechnicalBlogging.com?

A: Because I believe blogging is a useful tool that can aid many students and professionals in succeeding further with their careers, businesses, and projects. It can also help them develop additional income.

Q: Why do you care about people succeeding?

A: Because lack of success often leads to misery for people. And because few things bother me more than seeing wasted potential.

Q: Why?

A: Because deep down I feel I have at times not reached my own potential. I’m working hard at improving that and would like to see other people do the same.

At this point we have gone deep enough. So when you boil it down, my “why” is helping other people’s lives by teaching them to leverage blogging so as to fulfill their own potential.

Now that I know my why at a blog level, I can define a plan of what needs to be done in order to carry out that purpose.

WHY your blog

The next part of the equation is ensuring that your why is conveyed to your users. Your blog should immediately answer the question, “Why should I subscribe to this blog?”.

Mine tells you upfront with its name, URL, and its tagline, “Grow your audience and make money online by sharing your knowledge”.

I can probably come up with a better tagline that is a little closer to my why. But the existing tagline and everything else on the site conveys the general idea of what I’m trying to do and thus visitors are able to quickly determine if they want to stick around or not.

They are either in or out. That mission either appeals to them or puts them off. What it doesn’t do is leave the reader wondering what the blog is about.

WHY this post

The final level of the why hierarchy is the “Why this post?”. Asking that question can really help you align your post content with your stated goal for the blog, and your own motivation for blogging.

For instance, this very post lines up with my stated purpose for the blog. In fact, I firmly believe that stopping for a moment to ask these important why questions, will lead you to much more purposeful blogging, in turn allowing you to succeed to a greater degree.

And that’s all I can hope for.

The post Why appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I like to classify blogging platforms into three different categories:

1. Hosted blogs. These are platforms that enable you to publish content online without any real configuration or installation work on your part. You typically register with the site, enter your information, perhaps choose a theme among the few that are available, and you’re ready to blog through their web-based content management system (CMS). Examples of this type of platform are Blogger, WordPress.com, Medium, and Tumblr.
2. Self-hosted blogging software. These are typically open source CMS that can be freely installed on a server or virtual instance that you run somewhere in the cloud. WordPress (.org) is by far the most popular choice.
3. Static generators. Squarely aimed at developers and other highly technical people, static generators are a type of software that enable you to write your articles (usually in Markdown syntax) and transform them into static HTML and CSS web pages that you can then upload to a server somewhere (much like the second category presented above). Jekyll and Hexo are two somewhat popular choices, among a sea of options available on developer repository sites like Github.

Hosted Blogs

If you don’t know what Apache and Nginx are (i.e., web servers), I suggest you simply stick to hosted blogs. They are the most convenient choice and even offer an element of discoverability, allowing your content to be more easily consumed by fellow users of the platform.

The downside is that they are somewhat limited in terms of customization abilities and the sorts of features that you can enable. They’re also hosted by third parties, so if the company you decided to go with runs into technical issues (or shuts down entirely), your site will end up being offline. They usually give you a warning, but trust me, switching to a different platform and importing all the content at the last-minute is not a fun experience.

The name that I trust the most in this space is WordPress (.com). I seriously doubt Automatic (the company behind it) will go down or discontinue their service if acquired. The only issue with their hosted solution is that you’ll have to pay to customize even minimal aspects of your site (like connecting your own domain name with your blog, something you must do if you are serious about blogging).

The two free alternatives that I like the most are Blogger (by Google) and Medium. Blogger is the better product, but Google has a worrisome history of discontinuing products. Medium is a startup, and that’s a risk unto itself. I suggest that you take a look at both and make up your own mind on the subject.

Generally speaking, if you are not technical, you’ll have to trust one of these companies.

Self-hosted Blogging Software

If you are fairly technical, this option is very flexible. You can install plugins and themes to your heart’s content, especially if you opt for WordPress (.org). And if your hosting company does end up going under, you can simply backup and move over to a different host.

The only real downside here is that you need to set up and update your own server. There are hosted/managed WordPress (.org) services that simplify your life by handling most of the maintenance and system administration tasks for you, however, generally speaking, they are not cheap. On the other end of the spectrum, there is shared hosting, which is significantly more budget friendly, while also being easier to set up. They’re limited though in terms of performance and reliability (which is important if your site becomes popular). [1]

Your average developer or technical person will find this second option quite appealing.

Static Generators

Static generators give you greater control because they’re usually small enough to easily hack and get them to do whatever works best for your workflow. Certainly easier than try to tackle a mammoth project like WordPress.

On top of full control and the closer to the metal feel, you get to enjoy great performance even with cheap hosting services. You are, after all, just serving static files.

I suggest you avoid this option unless you really know what you are doing and are proficient in languages such as Ruby, Python, or server-side JavaScript (for Node.js).

Feel free to share which option you chose for your blog and why. If you are still deciding, feel free to ask questions below, and I’ll try to provide some advice for your specific situation.

For the record, my blogs use WordPress (.org) and run on a self-hosted dedicated server.

The post Which Blogging Platform Should You Choose? appeared first on Technical Blogging.

I wouldn’t consider a blog that posts less than once a month to be an active blog. [1] Conversely, a blog that isn’t powered by multiple authors and/or isn’t a professional news outlet or the like, probably shouldn’t post more than a couple of times a day at most. [2]

So we have a wide range here. From once a month to two or three posts per day. Which one is right for you?

My suggestion is to base the answer on a couple of factors.

First, your ability to produce valuable content plays a huge role. It is always, without a doubt, better to post great content less frequently than to post useless stuff for the sake of posting often. Based on the time you can dedicate to blogging and your speed in researching and producing posts, being completely honest with yourself, how many great posts can you comfortably push out each week?

For most people the answers is one or two a week at most. If you have to, it really is better to compromise quantity over quality.

The second factor is consistency. Are you able to deliver your set number of articles per week on a regular basis? [3] If you only write two articles per week on your good weeks, it’s far better to set your publishing schedule to one post per week and leverage good weeks to stock up in advance on scheduled posts. This will also save you from constantly feeling like you need to write everything at the last-minute.

Try to be somewhat consistent in establishing a certain posting frequency expectation among your readers. You want your audience to feel like your posts are a regular part of their week/month that they can look forward to and enjoy on a regular basis.

In the case of this blog, I’ve set an informal pace of one post per week. On my programming blog, I now post twice a week.

If you are already blogging with a certain regularity, how many posts per month or week do you publish?

The post How Often Should You Blog? appeared first on Technical Blogging.