Welcome to the second part of “How to write an out of the box technical article”. In the first article of this series we discussed on
- A) Understand the technology first
- B) Have a quick line before you start.
- C) Don’t Write too Geeky unless
- D) Validate your article.
This series is devoted solely on writing a out of the box technical article on any site. At the end of this article we will cover some more points and you will have more points on how to make a good technical article.
E) Upgrade your articles with latest changes
News withers with time so will the articles. We all write the news as it comes up and when new things come, the older posts die off. But the point is you don’t want it to happen. So what you do. This is one of the practices i have followed in blogging. I keep track of my posts ( at least which gives me traffic ) and anything that comes along with it. For an example if you write a post on a software, keep track of it. When the software upgrades , you upgrade your article. Simple!! There are two ways of doing it.
- Any news that gives a chance of making that post outdated is added to my old post. As the post is already indexed the updated news comes along with it and you don’t loose the hits.
- Make a new post and refer the old news like “This happened before” and add whats new.
Daniel wrote a post on 5 tips for writing timeless content do read it.
F) Be Innovative and Be Live
So the point is how to make a tech post live for even a non geek to read. There are few simple ways you can try.
- Make sense in you writing
- Create Humor.
- Tell them what you feel can be wrong.
- Keep changing the way of writing with use of images, videos and diagrams. Using just one can be really boring.
- Be live with the news. Don’t try to review a Nokia 3230 which nobody will use.
- Try making images with your own style and create some difference.
G) Take Ideas from Magazines and News Papers and Media Sources
Don’t just read technical blogs. Get into every possible ways where you can find news. I have seen lot of media channels like BBC, CNBC and others which can give you a very accurate idea on how they work so well. If you read news papers you can pick up the way of writing and how they arrange images along the article. Technical magazines are one of the best people who arrange everything so well. They even have related articles along with the pages. Check out the way they write in a flow and keep people attached to them
H) Give a summary or a conclusion at the end
If you remember i had a small brief of what we learned in the last post at the end. This is very important to do. If you remember our good old days of school books, they always had a summary at the end of the post. Do you know why ? I guess you got the answer. Its always good to remind the reader as a brief of what we discusses. This gives readers re collect all the points in one go and can initiate them to interact with you. If they have skipped some points ( they thought it was boring) they might read it again.Darren wrote a post on 18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging dont skip it. He has written some amazing points that can work for any blogging niche.
Summary of How to write an out of the box technical article
So now we have some good points over lets summarize them all.
- A) Understand the technology first:
- B) Have a quick line before you start
- C) Don’t Write too Geeky unless….
- D) Validate your article
- E) Upgrade your articles with latest changes
- F) Be Innovative and Be Live
- G) Take Ideas from Magazines and News Papers and Media Sources
- H) Give a summary or a conclusion at the end
I hope you enjoyed the article. If you have any more points do share in points. I would love to see what you have in your experience and what new you have discovered.
