Use Drafts
Create a shortcut to your Medium account. When you have an idea or have researched something cool quickly “Write Story” & jot down a few bullet points or maybe drop in a few lines of code.
This is a typical example how I do it — I’d been adding members to a Teams channel with PowerShell & decided to quickly write some bullets & drop in the code while it was fresh in my mind.
It took me less than 5 minutes & will hopefully form a decent post when I take time to finish it….
Use Blogs as your documentation store
This is how Pinal Dave — SQL Authority started blogging….
He was getting fed up with researching tech, not being able to find code/examples later on & having to research the same thing again.
He started blogging just as a place to store his own knowledge & code snippets so he could find them again. Use drafts, and jot ideas down quickly at the time — you will thank yourself later!
It worked out pretty well for Pinal Dave and at the very least you will have a store of ideas & techniques which you can find in seconds.
It doesn’t need to be 100% original
Your posts don't need to be 100% new, original ideas & content. Sometimes there is value in bringing together information which is in other blogs or documentation.
The value can be in bringing together several sources of information in one place & adding clarity/value with examples or practical application of a concept.
For Example, I wrote a post on Synonyms in Elastic Search — everything in the post was from documentation or other blogs but no one had done a simple run-through with some examples & the information was in several places. It’s been my most popular Version 1 Blog Post!
If you have to Google something so do other people
If you have to research & Google technology or find a solution to a problem — so will other people….
If you have to spend more than 5 or 10 minutes to get a solution then this is probably a good candidate for a blog post, clearly, the information you are trying to find isn’t readily available — Blog about it!
Let me know your tips for starting blogging in the comments.
About the Author:
Mike Knee is an Azure Data Developer here at Version 1.
