Growing up, one of the skills my father emphasized so much as a child is the ability to write and be able to pass messages to someone else. I grew up with this and I can barely read anything without the urge to write something down. I have so many notebooks and jotters all over my room that I can easily pick and write on at any moment in time.
The ability to write meaningful sentences, lines, paragraphs which a reader can easily understand is termed as Excellent Writing Skills. It is a perfect way to write and express your view on the topics you want to address your audience and listeners.
As such, I have been trying to apply this same principle to my software development journey. My goal is to document and share my learning experiences through writing blog posts.
To keep myself on track and accountable, I have itemized 4 ways successful blogging can benefit you, with the hope that you can join me on this journey and we can document more and impact more lives:
- Effective Communication: Organisations and companies require employees who can write and communicate effectively. Even the digital age has not reduced the need for writing. It has heightened the need, through channels like emails, online chat conversations, faxes or website updates all these require excellent writing skills. The clearer the communication is, the greater the chance of a higher success rate in any field or profession. Writing is a very important skill, as you grow as a developer.
- It Facilitates your Thought Process: It encourages you to think better. When developers learn how to write, they become more capable of analyzing what they read, interpret and think.
- Increased Visibility and SEO ranking: Simply having a blog on your website improves your Google ranking by as much as 434%! Regular blogging with high-quality content improves your Google ranking even more dramatically. Having a website is not enough. Google rewards sites that publish consistent, informative content that provides actual value to visitors. Freshly updated content is even better. Blogging remains the best way to pull this off.
- Catalyses Identity and Personal Branding: Starting a blog is a great way to cement yourself as a thought leader in your industry and helps with your branding as a developer. Blogging helps you reflect and share your personality and skills with your audience which in turn helps you create a niche for yourself. When somebody searches for you online, you want to make sure that they get an accurate and complete picture of who you are and what you’re all about. Starting a blog that covers all your developer’s journey is a great way to control your online identity and make sure that the top result on Google makes the right first impression. It also gives you the opportunity to share knowledge with others.
The 4 benefits above are just some of the few tips that developers should consider in order to have a successful blogging experience.