Why Every Developer should have their Own Blog. In a world, with millions of developers, it may be hard for an average developer to stand-out. If you ask me why a developer should have a blog, I would give a lot of reasons and obviously will be bored listening to them all. So I have stated some reasons that would interest you.
Are you a developer? Did you ever ask yourself why you should have a blog of your own? If the answer is No, at this very moment ask yourself. If you ask me why a developer should have a blog, I would give a lot of reasons and obviously you will be bored listening to them all. So I have stated some reasons that would interest you.
- Motivates you to be Updated
- To Market Yourself
- Share Code snippets
- Improve your communication skills
- Developer Community
- Criticism
- Build your targetted audience
- Checklist
- Choose a Name for your Blog
- Choose a Blogging Platform
- How to Present Code Snippets
- Publish your Blog
Motivates you to be Updated
Being a developer is challenging and is an adventure because new and updated versions of the software get released nearly 2-3 times every year and you always need to be updated with the current version and know their limitations. Blogging helps you stay updated as you will be searching, researching and accumulating facts for your content to present to your audience and obviously you don’t want to give outdated content.
To Market Yourself
In a world, with millions of developers, it may be hard for an average developer to stand-out. If you notice every popular developer out there has a blog of their own, they share knowledge and showcase themselves. You know what? Employers love that, they might even approach you with job offers. By having a blog of your own you will be creating leads, creating leads is 2nd step in marketing.
Share Code snippets
Don’t worry about the level of content that you share. If there is something that cannot be achieved conventionally and you have a workaround for that problem, share those code snippets and workarounds in your blog, Many developers around the world may not be knowing or having a workaround for the same problem for which you have the solution. They will be benefitted from your work and they will, in turn, become your potential audience.
Improve your communication skills
Communication skills are very important for a good developer. Even though if you are a genius programmer and lag in communication skills, you will not satisfy your manager and mostly the end user. Consider that, your manager asked you to prepare some technical document and you mess the documentation with your immature communication skills which totally change the meaning of the requirement, you will be in total danger. Writing blogs improves your writing skills and even speaking and increases your confidence levels.
Developer Community
Be active in the community. Provide answers to the questions posed in the developer communities and build professional relationships. This is a great place to meet Iconic and like-minded people where you can share the common agenda of staying in touch.
Criticism
Who didn’t face criticism? Even great people faced criticism when they started. I faced a lot of criticism when I started my blog and started sharing it on social media sites. My friends were like you will only write a couple of posts and shut down. I didn’t listen to them, I ignored them and stayed focused on content that I deliver. No content is bad content, it has some piece of information in it which will help at least a couple of people solve their problems. You will eventually improve.
Build your targetted audience
For any blog post you write there may be at least 10-20 visitors a day, Don’t worry about that if your content has quality people will surely return to your blog and enjoy reading it. Publish your posts on social media sites and newsletters. List building is very important. When someone likes your post quickly grab his/her email and write a personal email ex: [I have seen that you have shown interest in example post in example.com website. example.com has many posts related to that, please feel free to check those out. You can get free content in your inbox by subscribing to our newsletter. –Thanks].
I am a developer and I have a blog of my own, so can you. It’s not as complicated as it seems.
Just complete this checklist and you will have a blog of your own.
Checklist
- 🗹 Choose a Name for your blog
- 🗹 Choose a Blogging platform
- 🗹 How to Present Code Snippets
- 🗹 Finally, Publish your Blog
Once you go through the checklist one by one you will find this process very easy.
The first and very important aspect,
Choose a Name for your Blog
If you see the internet you don’t find any blog/website without having a name. If you are wondering what the name is? it’s this www.example.com. This is called as Domain name in website terminology. Domain names are unique, There cannot exist two websites with the same domain name unless their extension is different. An extension is something with which the domain name ends like (.com, .in, .co.in, .dev) and many more. People, to visit your blog has to come through it. Now, that you have understood what a domain name is and what is it used for? make sure that you select a domain name that better suits your niche.
Choose a Blogging Platform
Blogging Platform is something that you use to write and publish your blog posts. Blogger and, Wordpress are two well-known blogging platforms.
Blogger
Blogger.com is a free blog hosting platform that doesn’t require any web host as itself has that capability. It belongs to Google. If you are a beginner and don’t have money to buy paid hosting services I highly recommend Blogger.com. It comes with some basic design templates and plugins to get started.
Wordpress
Wordpress is one of the best blogging platforms with unlimited design templates and plugins available. To use Wordpress you need to have a site that is WordPress compatible. Some of the Web host services that provide Wordpress hosting are Bluehost, Siteground, Hostgator, Hostinger, Namecheap, Godaddy and many more. These web hosting services don’t come for free, they come in monthly, yearly … any many more subscription packages.
I have used the word web hosting a lot in the above paragraph, To get the basic idea of what it is, then continue reading this paragraph or else skip to the next. Web pages consist of Html, Javascript,and CSS. Web hosting as the name implies hosts our web pages on the Internet so that our blog/website is online and available to the users 24/7 😃.
So, choose your suitable platform to write your first blog.
How to Present Code Snippets
As a developer, we will be sharing a lot of code snippets if the code is not formatted and highlighted properly users will have a hard time reading and understanding your code. There are many ways to format your code. As we are just starting with our blog we will reduce the customization and concentrate on the content. So the best way is to use Gists, they are formatted and highlighted ready for us, we just need to copy and paste the embedding Html in our blog. Go to gist.github.com, create code snippets and start sharing. See how easy it is to share the code which is formatted and highlighted.
Publish your Blog
After you are done setting up your blog and writing some useful posts, start sharing them. Find user groups in social sites that match your niche and start sharing your content there, so that it reaches your targetted audience. If your targetted audience is from a particular country, register your blog with the country’s local directories. For example, with the appropriate category selected.
Learn what are the marketing tools available and how to use them to reach your target audience in my upcoming articles.
Happy Blogging! 😃😃
I am a blogger, I have started blogging six years back, stopped blogging for a long time but started again and still continuing. Blogging matters a lot, it’s become my passion.
Feel free to ask your questions in the comments section below. I am excited to answer them all.
Icons made by itim2101 from www.flaticon.com
Never miss a
story from us, subscribe to our newsletter