7 Sure Tips On How to be a Good Technical Writer

Being a good Technical Writer is a valuable skill that requires a unique set of abilities to communicate complex information in a clear and concise manner. It involves conveying technical information to a specific audience in a way that is easy to understand and follow. In this blog post, we will discuss seven essential tips on how to become a good technical writer, whether you’re looking to pursue it as a career or just want to improve your writing skills.

These tips include understanding your audience, simplifying complex ideas, using active voice, being concise, using proper formatting, testing your content, and continuously learning and improving your skills. By following these tips, you can enhance your technical writing abilities and create effective content that communicates technical information with ease.

However, before you begin this journey and delve into the technical world, there is a need for you to know two things. 

⦁ Who is a Technical Writer?

⦁ How do I become a very good technical writer?

Whether you want to be a technical writer, a professional writer, or someone who just writes for fun, there are a few know-hows you must not just familiarize yourself with, but grow upon on a daily basis. Think of it as a compulsory-before-writing-tip-mantra if you will. Without further adieu, let’s get started.

Who is a Technical Writer?

Simply put, a technical writer is a person who writes on technical knowledge, issues, and news. Wikipedia describes the term as:  a professional information communicator whose task is to transfer information between two or more parties, through any medium that best facilitates the transfer and comprehension of the information. Technical writers research and create information through a variety of delivery media (electronic, printed, audio-visual, and even touch).

Technical writing is a form of communication, literally. It is trying to interact with a given audience, and making them see and hear facts and information in a concise and easily interpretable manner.. It’s like a journey, but not just any journey, no; A journey where the traveler feels happy and satisfied with something he/she probably didn’t even know he was searching for.

How To Write Tech

Do you know how to write tech? Let me rephrase. Do you know how to commune tech related content effectively with an audience? No? Well let’s get to it then. As I said earlier, technical writing, like all other forms of writing, is communication, plain and simple. You want to talk to a targeted audience about a topic, probably because you feel knowledgeable about that said topic or you just want to air your opinion. If it’s the case of tech related news, you’ll definitely need to do your intensive research, whether you’re in a tech-inclined field or not. 

Either way, technical writing involves a lot of research, your facts needs to be right after all. This is because in the technical world, just a wrong line of code, or wrong update about a package, or even an error in a number or punctuation, can lead to a long thread of bugs (in programming terms), and errors that you do not want to be attributed to you as a writer, or attributed to your organization. 

To buttress earlier points, technical writing is like giving a speech or a presentation if you will. I’ll focus on the 7 main steps on how to write tech. These 7 tips, though they may seem easy, have helped a lot of beginner and expert technical writers alike. 

7 Hidden Keys On How To Write Tech Effectively

1. What Do You Want To Write On?

This might seem like an obvious question but it’s not. If you’re writing on a technical related blog, post, news or information, you’ll want to make use of good and effective keywords; keywords placed strategically in your content, headings and subheadings. These thing should be outlined first, before even a word is written. Do you know why? 

Chances are you’re writing for a company, or an organization. Either way, you’ll want people to search for your content and actually see it. Therefore, Search Engine Optimization, in simpler terms, the use of great keywords is mandatory for an article written, especially with the enormous amount of blogs and articles out there.

Another benefit of researching and outlining good keywords first is, when you begin writing like this, you find out that you no longer spend minutes thinking about how to start or where to begin from. Writer’s block will not be something you’re familiar with. This is because somehow, the words just keep coming to you.

2. Pick Good SubTopics (with SEO in Mind)

Now, like I said earlier, one of the major things to do, before you even pick up your pen or keypad to start writing, is to outline the sub topics that best explain your main topic. Allow me to elaborate.

For example, you’re asked to write on why companies should go for flutter instead of react native when building mobile applications. Let’s assume you decide to go with this as your main topic, “Flutter vs React Native: Which is Better For Mobile Applications?” Yes, it’s a bit lengthy however, if it’s a start up company, you might want to focus on long tail keywords instead of short tail. Anyway, suppose that’s the major heading, the following subheadings will definitely light up the path for you. Outlining them? Even better. Here they are:

• What is Flutter and Why Should You Use it?
• Why React Native is Compared to Flutter
• Flutter Vs React Native
• Is Flutter better for mobile apps?
• Is React Native good for mobile app development?
• Which is the future for app development: Flutter or React Native?

The above is just a rough sketch of how your outlined subheadings should be, again, depending on the SEO approach you want to take. If you go through the list, you’ll notice a few things, two words are used consistently, flutter and react native. It’s so subtle that only the reader with an avid eye might notice. 

So, get a notepad and write about 5 to 6 sub topics that best portray and explain what you’re writing on, before you start writing. Also, there is nothing like having a directive that you know will help you if you ever get lost with too much information or carried away. 

3. Research

While this might seem very obvious and evident, it’ll amaze you how many “technical writers” just write. Especially those already in the field like the developers, the ui/ux designers, or the data analysts. Research!! It doesn’t matter if it’s a tech blog, or a news article, or an informative piece, do your research. Chances are, there’s someone somewhere that has done it and written about it in a way you never would have thought of by yourself. In doing this, you get to see what others have done, and your brain unknowingly starts restructuring the words before you even get started.

Read on the topic, in the case of an tech article, so you don’t write things that are not true. Test the codes, so you don’t write outdated codes or use outdated packages. Re-solve the data, so you don’t use incorrect values or make the same mistake that the writer probably made. Technical writing is simplifying complex information. It is advisable to do this a few minutes or an hour before you actually start writing. 

This is so you don’t mistakenly use the words you’ve seen, or get frustrated proving and making sure the data is correct. This is for those that have photographic memories or ocd. It might affect your brain or your subconscious, and not in a positive way.

4. Set Up Your Workspace

One of the major steps, in anything you want to do, is creating the right atmosphere for it. This involves setting up the place in a way you’re focused on just that thing. The benefits of this simple but hard pre-work ethic is that it gets to streamline the things you see and work on and in so doing, get rid of any sort of distractions that might try to arise. What I mean specifically is this, if your phone is not adding to your work or writing materials (for those that use a computer system), put it aside, somewhere far away so as not to be tempted. 

Focus on what you want to do and do it. 

5. Start Writing

Start writing!!! Don’t think about the road bumps you might encounter, or the other zillion things you just have to do at that particular moment in time, just get started. If you’ve done the above steps, trust me, you’ll have a sweet, interesting and easy technical writing experience which in turn will give your readers a sweet, interesting and easy reading experience. You know why? They get to read it in a simplified and easy-to-understand version, different from the doc, or textbook. They get to understand what you’re trying to say and even comment on areas they have an opinion or question on. 

There’s nothing like writing and just flowing in it. Your readers get to appreciate your ability to communicate information to them as clearly, concisely and comprehensively as possible, even as you get to bask in your sense of accomplishment.

6. Know Your Target Audience

Who are you writing for? More importantly, what kind of people will search for what you’re writing on? Writing should always be, first and foremost, for yourself. What I mean is this, if it doesn’t make sense to you, how will it make sense to the person next door? Cause believe it or not, write for yourself, yes, but know that someone somewhere might benefit from what you’re writing; Especially if you want them to actually benefit from what you write.

Just to iterate my point, knowing your target audience is mainly for keywords optimization. As a technical writer, most often than not, you want search engines (such as google, yahoo, etc.) to easily find what you’ve written on, especially if you want it published and read. In such a scenario, it’s very important to have your target audience (and more importantly, what they’ll probably search on to find your write-up) at the back of your mind when coming up with subtopics and even the main write-up itself. This is a key that’s very useful for the professional tech writers in our midst. Know your target audience.

7. Take Your First Bold Step

Last but not the least, take that first bold step today. With the rise in laziness and self-entitlement, try and take your first big step today. Don’t you think it’s time to stop putting it off till tomorrow? Pick up your pen or writing pad, and just write!!! With all you’ve learnt today on how to write tech, and previously, if you’re the type that likes learning and reading (which writer doesn’t?), write. Also, put up what you’ve written online. This is for the self-publishing freelance technical writers out there. 

As there’s no real pressure to write, you know, the pressure that comes with working for someone, don’t slack or be lazy. I know many are afraid to post or publish their very nice pieces, or even own a personal blog. Trust me, you can do it. Besides, how long will you be afraid? 

Ever heard of, “the best time to do it is now”? So here’s a challenge to you. Write something tech related in the next 24 hours. It doesn’t matter what, and put it online. It could be published, or even if it’s just on social media. Once again, it doesn’t really matter the amount of readers or comments, you’ve challenged yourself, now let’s see if you pass. 

How Do I Become a Very Good Technical Writer?

Finally, how do you become a very good technical writer? By getting better and better each day. Not each week or each month, each day. There is nothing as rewarding as consistency. Consistency is key! In fact, there’s no greater self-love than making plans and actually going through with it (especially if you’re a perfectionist like me). “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

You can even try a daily progress app if you really want to monitor your progress. Either way, just like a famous quote says, 

“Do or do not. There is no try”

All images are sourced from unsplash