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Evangelism Reps Training Program/TechBloggingAtMozilla: Difference between revisions
Evangelism Reps Training Program/TechBloggingAtMozilla (view source)
Revision as of 20:47, 9 April 2012
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Structure is important when you want to write a good post. In tech, you are dealing with busy people. We want the facts and we want them in simple to take in chunks. This sounds terrible, but makes sense when you consider just how much information is out there on technology every single day. Thus, make sure to keep a good flow of your post by structuring them. | Structure is important when you want to write a good post. In tech, you are dealing with busy people. We want the facts and we want them in simple to take in chunks. This sounds terrible, but makes sense when you consider just how much information is out there on technology every single day. Thus, make sure to keep a good flow of your post by structuring them. | ||
*'''Use proper headings''' | *'''Use proper headings''' — the h2 to h6 elements are powerful (h1 is normally already taken by the title of the post) as they give the eye something to rest, show the reader that they won't be overwhelmed with a long piece of text and they even aid accessibility. Users of screen readers can skip from heading to heading instead of having to listen to all you wrote. Search engines also love headings so make sure you use headings that make sense out of context. | ||
*'''Tell your story''' | *'''Tell your story''' — but not like you'd do in a presentation. Start with the climax (what you want to show), follow with the explanation of how it works, continue with where it might fail and what to do about that and end with "and one more thing" (other resources). | ||
*'''Use lists''' | *'''Use lists''' — bullet-point lists, whilst horrible in presentations, make a lot of sense to make a lot of information easier to digest in posts. As you can see here another extra would be to have a bold first statement followed by a dash to give your item even more structure. Do not use numbered lists unless the order of the list items matters. | ||
*'''Give away everything at the beginning''' | *'''Give away everything at the beginning''' — start with what you will talk about and then show how it works. This could be a linked example, a screencast, a screenshot — anything to get people going. Link to the source so people can download for later use whilst reading. Avoid the "Where do I get this?" comments. This is similar to the "What, where when" of news journalism that every first sentence of an article should answer. | ||
*'''Add breathing space''' | *'''Add breathing space''' — each paragraph should deal with one topic. Nothing is more annoying than a massive blob of text. Give some breathing space for the brain to digest what you just described and what will come next. | ||
*'''Extra value goes to the end''' | *'''Extra value goes to the end''' — after your main post, it is always a good plan to add some extra value. End with a question, offer "read more" links, or show where the tech you talk about is used. Leave with an extra to keep people interested in learning more. | ||
==Linking== | ==Linking== | ||