XamGirl

When I talk to people about why they should start writing, most of the comments are “I don’t know how to write”, “I don’t know how to start”, “I’m not a writer”, “I don’t have the discipline”, etc. 3 years ago before starting my blog I thought exactly the same but HEY I started writing anyway: P.

In this article, I want to summarize the things that I have learned over time about how to get started.

How to start

Probably when you google “How to start with my blog” you will find many good sources on how to do it, so I will not talk about the same thing, because here is a great article about it.

In case you don’t want to read that article, here are the 3 most important parts in my opinion:

Select a Niche

To choose what about your blog will be about the formula is:

What you know + What you like + What do you think people want to know

Since we are developers, you might know a lot of things, but of all those things there is probably one that inspires you the most. So that’s probably the thing you should be writing about.

Choose a blogging platform

There are many blogging platforms out there. My favorite ones are WordPress and Medium, if you don’t know WordPress don’t make that an obstacle to start your blog or waste time trying to learn it, just start writing on another simpler platform. You can start with Medium and then move to WordPress if you like.

Choose a domain name

This is probably one the saviest tips I can give you as the domain name will be your brand. Good options are:

Choose a domain based on your niche: If your Niche is for example Xamarin you can create your domain based on this, ex: Xamgirl, Xamboy.

The only problem with this approach is that if the brand of the product changes (for example to MAUI :P) you will have a problem like the one I have when MAUI gets released 😀 Mauigirl maybe?.

My recommendation is to choose a niche that covers enough ground, instead of Xamarin, maybe go for .NET Technologies in general, so you have more flexibility.

Use your name: You can also use your name, but only if you have a short and easy to pronounce/write name. For example, my name is Charlin Agramonte, I personally believe that my name does not follow those rules. Because if I’m in an event and I say, “You can check more info in my blog CharlinAgramonte.com” probably I’ll have to spell it or write it down for people to get it right.

How to start writing

It’s the hardest part and probably the one where most people get stuck. Here are some tips on how to start writing:

Define your writing process

This is important because it standardizes the way we create technology content. The following image shows my personal writing process:

My personal recipe is to start by doing the code sample because as a developer writing code is the easiest part, then I just have to explain what I did, write an introduction that summaries that, add images/gifs that show the result, write a title that makes sense for the topics covered and finally check my article.

To check your article, I recommend that you send it to a friend before publishing it to get some feedback.

Keep it short and sweet

If you have an article that is quite large, a good option is to divide it into parts. That gives us a few advantages: your article is easier to prepare, you will have the topic for your next article and will keep your audience interested in your next post.

But not too short

PLEASE don’t write an article that could be a Tweet :(, unless you are planning to expand on the topic, do like Andrei and write a Tweet :).

Find inspiration

As a writer, there will likely be times when you feel uninspired or have no idea what to write about. Here are some tips to mitigate this:

Find community questions and try to solve it in a blog post

A good option is to go to StackOverFlow / Facebook Community Groups, etc. and see what the community needs are, then do some magic code and write a blog post with the resolution.

Find UI inspiration

If UI is your thing, you can find UI designs and try to replicate it. A good option to find amazing designs is Pinterest.

Assist to events

It’s a great way to get inspired because you’ll learn new things (which are probably things you can write about), meet new people, and learn about the new developments in your tech community.

(Since we are living in times of pandemic, online events are a good option).

Be original

I think the difference between a good blog post and a bad one, is how original is it. So, PLEASE! POR FAVOR!, don’t take the documentation or an article of other author and do copy/paste that.

NOTE: You can write about things that are in the docs, but if you do it, make sure you explain it in a different way or try saying something different that is not already covered there.

Nothing is perfect

Even if you are a perfectionist, you should know that no article is perfect, there will always be things to improve, so don’t be ashamed to publish an article because you think something is missing or imperfect.

Final thoughts

Don’t wait until tomorrow to start, just start TODAY and write about any topic: an interesting talk you’ve seen, something you’ve learned on the job, an interesting project/custom control you’ve made. No matter what you write about, it should be valuable and useful to someone else.

That is all for now! This was a different blog post than usual but I hope it’s useful for anyone who wants to start blogging.

Happy coding! :).