Improving the writing style of technical blog posts
For Developers in Florence 01 3rd March 2010 - http://www.open-lab.com/diff01
1
Startupping
For launching products, you need copywriting, in many, many different ways.
Not going to justify or motivate this. If you don’t believe me, just read The Web Startup Success Guide
2
Home made copywriting
It may be a good reason to learn copywriting, instead of hiring a copy because:
1.you have to create copy material almost every day of your startup activity.
2.there must be a close collaboration between production and copywriting to communicate effectively to the users / visitors / buyers
3
Home made copywriting
“Starting with a killer headline and moving strategically through the copy to a stirring call to action, traditional copywriting technique works amazingly well in social media.”
(Copyblogger)
Social media EXPANDED the opportunities for good copy communication.
4
Popularity of blogs
Now let’s focus on blogs. Some popularity factors:
• Theme /contents• Writings• Design
Others?
5
Joel On Software
6
Joel On Software
As an example post from Spolsky’s blog I’ve picked this one: The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses) :
Ever wonder about that mysterious Content-Type tag? You know, the one you’re supposed to put in HTML and you never quite know what it should be?
Did you ever get an email from your friends in Bulgaria with the subject line “???? ?????? ??? ????”?
I’ve been dismayed to discover just how many software developers aren’t really completely up to speed on the mysterious world of character sets, encodings, Unicode, all that stuff. A couple of years ago, a beta tester for FogBUGZ was wondering …
7
Coding Horror
8
Coding Horror
9
The Great Newline Schism. The topic of this post is newline invisible characters, and this post topic is probably on one of the most uninteresting topic ever.
Atwood is indeed engaged in narration:
“The Carriage Return (CR) and Line Feed (LF) terms derive from manual typewriters, and old printers based on typewriter-like mechanisms (typically referred to as “Daisywheel” printers).”
Seth’s blog
10
Seth’s blog
Consider The hidden power of a gift:“Perhaps we resolve it, as the ancient Native Americans did, by
acknowledging the power of the giver … The key is that the gift must be freely and gladly accepted”
and Frightened, clueless or uninformed?“Comfort the frightened, coach the clueless and teach the
uninformed.”
Yes, out of context seems a bit cheese – but go to the source. Just to realize how many different ways of writing there can be.
11
Design for beauty or readability?
12
These are incredible designers that create a different design for each blog post.
But as said above, our idea is to excite the reader with narration, not with novel design, as we want the reader to focus on contents.
So pick a simple, highly readable, consistent layout for your blog and stick to it.
Writing
13
Titles and starts
Blog titles play a crucial role in your posts, similar to that of product / web site’s pitches.
What is the purpose of the pitch – in our case, of the title?
14
Titles and starts
The purpose of the title is to make the first sentence read.
And what is the purpose of the first sentence? The purpose of the first sentence is to make the second sentence read.
And so on: if you don’t get the attention of the visitor with the title, your failure is complete.
15
Titles and starts
So make sure you try lists of different titles and starts, and variations on them. Get someone to verify them with you. Do the titles and openings grab attention? Interest?
Examples: These are some recent blog posts from Open Lab:
JavaScript grid editor: I want to be Excel
Get visitors to read and remember your home page
A checklist for improving the writing style of technical blog posts
16
Titles and starts
The words that you are choosing there are important too:
these should be inspired by the words used by your potential visitors / customers to describe their wishes, hopes, desires, dissatisfactions, fears,
worries (emotions)in relation to your topic / product.
17
Tell stories
1. nobody is “spontaneously” interested in what you are writing
2. people are hungry for stories
18
Communicating technical topics
You have to somehow introduce your topic – find a way to communicate without trivializing it.
Tell stories, about conflicts, experiences, problems leading to your theme, and you’ll get the reader’s attention
19
Hiring a copy
You don’t need her once, you’ll need her all the time.
Can you afford that?
20
Checklist – Get attention
* There is an effort to capture reader’s attention in the title and very first sentence
Copy is never too long, just too boring.
* Benefits for the reader are immediately clear – instead of features I woke up this morning thinking: I really need …
* At least in the first paragraph, every sentence somehow leads to the next one.
* The post contains a (short) story “For sale: Baby shoes. Never used.” Ernest Hemingway
21
Checklist – Establish authority
* Substitute opinions with descriptions “That’s just like, eh, your opinion man” Big Lebowski
* Your assertions are backed up with specific proof
* You establish authority somewhere, somehow
* You kept the initial promise through which you got attention
22
Checklist – Style & format
* Can you make it shorter? Where in doubt, cut it out
“To be or not to be?”
* You kept the language simple and clear. No one will ever complain that your writing is too
easy to understand.
* You sum the contents up at the end of the post.
23
Checklist – Review
* You’ve printed the draft on paper and re-read it A way to get a new perspective, a bit like giving it to someone
else to read it.
* You read it loudly A way to become sensitive to the rhythm of your writing.
* Immediately before publishing it you did spell check it not just on some online spell checker but on Microsoft Word.
24
Applications
Show me your blog posts …
25
Applications
A well-written blog post can have several “usages”:
• It can be used as a base for a talk for a conference – or for proposing one
• It can become a chapter of an e-book
• It can be the base for building the contents of a dedicated micro-site
• It can be transformed in a project
26
