Welcome to the fourth part of 14 Steps To A Career-Boosting Portfolio Interactive Course - we're now well under way to have great portfolios!
If you missed it, read the announcement here!
Alright now! Are you ready to write your first blog post?
Didn't think so. No worries, you'll see that it's easier than it seems.
Blogs have become wildly popular. They allow anyone to start sharing information and stories. Especially in the programming world, when we search for a solution to some problem, blogs always pop up in the search results. Well, blogs and StackOverflow.
Today, on work, I will probably read a dozen blog posts. You simply cannot go a day without reading someone's blog if you're doing some programming work.
So, you can see why blogs are important in getting your name out. I became familiar with a lot of people by reading their blog posts. When you read several posts on the same blog, you start to remember the name of the author. You start to like them.
You probably feel like you don't have what to say, that you don't know how to write or that you don't have enough knowledge to teach someone else. Disregard all that. It's irrelevant. You just need to start writing.
The thing is, the more you write, the better you get at it. Don't be afraid to put texts online that are not perfect. Being perfect absolutely does not matter. What matters is the process - the process of creating something valuable. You'll put a text online. Then maybe someone in the comments will point out a mistake you made. You'll fix it. Someone will report another mistake. And on and on it goes.
Don't think of your blog posts as something that's either done or isn't. Think of them as something that can change and evolve over time.
As for the knowledge, you don't have to be a genius to teach others. Actually, you just need to be one step ahead of them to be able to teach them something. And listen to this - beginners can often learn much better from other beginners than from experts. Because experts forget what it's like to be a beginner and they take things for granted that should be explained. So find your level and start teaching for the level below!
Now, if you feel you don't know what to write about, do this. Sit down and come up with 20 blog post topics. Just brainstorm it out. Some will be good, some won't, That's okay. Don't be afraid to jot down a seemingly dumb idea.
That will be your To Do list. Any time you start writing a blog post, you will take a topic from that list that you like. That way you won't have to sit for hours starting at the screen, not knowing what to write about. You'll always have a topic.
Now, when the list gets to 10 items, sit down again and refill it. And of course, you can add an idea there whenever you think of one. Just don't let the list get below 10 items.
What are some topics to write about? Don't worry, you don't have to start writing those technical pieces yet. You can write about a million things. For example, you can write about how it was to create your portfolio. You can write about how it feels to be a beginner in some field. How to manage time better. Or about how to communicate with a client. You can create a "Top 10" list about something, those always get a lot of traction.
You can even use one of these blog post headline generators:
When you write a blog post, try to make it be around 2000 words. That's the perfect length for longer pieces. For shorter ones, aim for around a 1000 words.
How often should you publish blog posts? Aim for once or twice a week.
"Are you crazy?! It's impossible!" I hear you say. No, it is very possible. You just need to get into the habit of it. In very short time, writing will start feeling natural and you'll get better at it. You just have to do it for a few weeks.
It's really important to blog often, because you're building your online presence from the ground up. The more you blog, the more likely people are to find and read your blog because you've answered a question that they had. Just think about it this way - if you write a blog post every week, at the end of year you'll have more than 50 posts! And that's really something!
How should you go about writing a blog post, and how much time should you allocate towards it? Aim for a few hours per post. Do some research on the topic before you start writing (read other people's blogs, Wikipedia, search YouTube...). When you begin writing, try to come up with a first draft as quickly as possible. After that, you can start refining it and add more content. But listen to this - nowadays, I don't even edit my posts! I just write and publish the first draft. It saves a lot of time, and feels very productive. You can get to that level too, soon.
Here's a useful technique for planning your post. Before you start writing, take a piece of paper, and write the title of your post in the middle.
Now start drawing lines from that center, writing subtitles or topics you want to write about and connecting them to the title. You can branch further creating sub-subtitles and topics. You'll end up creating a kind of a mind map that will help you visualize the structure of your whole post, so you can easily see if anything is missing or needs to be cut out. Do this while you're researching your topic, so you can get ideas on what to include in your post.
Now the nodes in the map are the paragraphs for your blog post. You can start writing it paragraph by paragraph. It's much more manageable this way, and you see concrete progress. You can say "I have 4 more paragraphs to write, so I'm 50% finished!".
What you need to do for this lesson is to first create a list of topics you'd want to blog about.
Next choose a topic that you like the most, and start dissecting it using the mind map technique described above.
Send me your chosen topic as a reply to this post, and include a list of subtitles. Include a short description that will tell me what the topic will be about.
And the last step: Write the blog post! Don't hesitate, just start writing, and before you know it, you'll have your first blog post! You can send me the first draft of the post to check it out if you want.
But be sure to actually write the post, as it is required for the next lesson.
Now pick a topic and start writing!
Take care and stay Open Source!
In the next lesson we'll talk about publishing your blog post.
The next lesson is scheduled for Thursday, September the 28. 2017.
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