Improve Your Blog Writing Skills

Contributed by Charles Humble

Difficulty level: Easy

A shortcut about blogging should probably start with a definition of what that means, although this turns out to be harder than you’d expect. The word is a shortened form of “weblog,” which my dictionary tells me is “a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.”

While this is a perfectly serviceable definition, I’d venture to suggest that the distinction between a blog post and an article has become blurred to the point of being indistinct. So for this shortcut I’m going to consider a blog post to be any professional, long-form article that you publish on the internet.

Since this shortcut is part of the networking section in this series, I will focus primarily on the networking aspects and provide links to other material on how to write well.

What’s My Motivation?

It can be helpful to have a goal in mind before you start writing, such as, “I want to be better known for Java so I’m going to write articles about emerging trends in the Java ecosystem.”

You may have any number of reasons why you want to write, for example:

• Sharing your knowledge is one way to give something back to the technology industry and help it progress.

• Writing will raise your profile within the community, and can help you develop a network.

• Writing can help you to learn new things and, as any school teacher will ...