Keyvan Nayyeri

You see that I publish many articles on .NET communities or my site.  During my activity on community as an author I learned some tips about writing articles.  So I thought it would be good if I give some tips and guides on writing a good article about .NET programming.  Obviously knowing these tips and guides and any other tip is just a helper to improve an article but the main parameter is content!

Do I Have Something to Write?

Before doing anything you should ask this from yourself: "Do I really have something to write?".  Some articles that we see on .NET communities are born because author just wanted to write something.  At this stage you should know many things about what you're going to publish.

You also have to find appropriate format to publish your content.  Based on the topic you want to cover there are some options such as tutorial, article, review, code snippet, blog post or webcast.  If you choose a wrong format for the content then it won't be success.  If you're a guy who loves to share his knowledge then having a technical blog is mandatory for you to share your content because always there are some tips that can't fit into above formats.

Is It a Good Time to Publish This?

Many times we see that a content is published when there are many popular resources about that topic available or it's very soon to publish this content.  You should be aware of community and the average knowledge of community members.  For example today (this today is before my training!) you can publish an article about extending a class in WCF but many community members are just learning WCF fundamentals.

Where to Publish?

You want to publish your content and simply choose a community to publish it but is this true?  No!  Based on the format that you have chosen for your content you need to choose a good place to publish it.  For example if you want to publish a webcast which site is better?

Here there are some parameters that turn lights on for you.  You have to choose a place where your content may get more visitors.  This doesn't mean that you need to choose a famous community.  It means that you should choose a place where is appropriate for your content.  For example if a community is all about C# then giving a content about WPF has less chance to get popular.  You need to check other content on a community and their popularity, main goals of that community and knowledge and skills of its visitors then choose a good place.

Here you may ask that: "Hey Keyvan, but why you have published tutorials about WPF and WCF on ASP Alliance?!".  The answer is I checked many articles on this site.  Although most of articles were about ASP.NET but I could find many popular articles about general .NET development, C# and ADO.NET so I guessed that writing about .NET 3.0 can get success.  Apparently I couldn't get this result if I had published my content on a community like Code Project.

Here there is another important parameter for me.  Knowledge of community owners and editors can have a huge effect on your content.  Later I'll talk about the importance of editors.

The last parameter which isn't a general one but can affect your content is the traffic of incoming content on a community.  Code Project is a famous community with many visitors but there is one drawback for it.  There are many unedited articles published on this community for a long time.  One of my articles is still there and is awaiting for edition after 1.5 years!  Publishing an article on a good time and after a good edition is very important.

Title, Does It Really Matter?

Yes!  Choosing a good title and proposal is like choosing a good showcase for a shop!  Not only you have to avoid choosing long titles but also you should choose a good title that represents your content.  All of us have subscribed to many communities and blogs.  Everyday we see many new tutorials, articles, blog posts, webcasts and ... but how many of them have this chance to get viewed by us?!

Choosing a good title and proposal can attract people and their eyes.  Nowadays titles are a part of URLs (for SEO purposes) and they can give you more traffic.

Divide Your Content

If content isn't a webcast (it's in text format) and is longer than a few paragraphs then it's better to divide it into logical sections.  This division is an art that comes from your knowledge in the field.  Better knowledge lets you to have a better division.  This division can have a huge effect of understanding of your content for readers.  Try to separate content in independent sections and don't make them long.

On the other hand the order of sections is very important.  One time it's obvious to put Programming Model before Hello World Example but the other time it may be so hard to choose an order for Contracts and Bindings in WCF.  Here your knowledge and art of authoring comes into play!

Do Not Write Long Articles

Articles (even webcasts) should be as short as possible.  Long articles are boring and aren't easy to understand.  If it's necessary to explain something in more details and it gets too long then try to write more articles or record more webcasts.

But do not index your articles (i.e. Part 1, Part 2, ...).  If you've decided to write more than one part about something then divide your content into independent parts and choose an appropriate title for them.

Although I said that it's not good to write long articles but don't hesitate to explain things in all details (especially for tutorials).  You see I talk about everything related to my articles regarding the level of my readers background.

Improve the Body

Main text of an article is its body.  Articles should start with a good (but not long) introduction or overview and should end with a summary or conclusion.  None of these sections are for decoration so spend enough time to write good starts and ends.  Use appropriate formatting to let your reader distinguish things.  You have to make some letters capital or choose italic and bold formatting to differentiate some words.  Don't forget to highlight source codes to make them readable.

Use figures and source codes to explain things.  "One line of code is worth than million words!", quote from myself!!  Sometimes a simple meaningful code can explain itself but a great author can't explain it.

Index figures and codes and try to refer to codes and figures in your text with indexes to let your readers find them quickly.

Communicate with Editor

Edition is as important as (or even more important than) authoring.  One of reasons to choose a good community for publication is this.  When a site owner or editor doesn't know anything about the topic that you're going to cover then he or she can't edit and improve it so you won't get good results.

I've written several articles on .NET communities and my editors could help me to improve them.  Sometimes it's necessary to explain and clarify something in your article for editors.  In these cases try to do your best and have a close collaboration with editor.  Trust on me, this helps your article to be better.

Promote Your Article

After choosing a good place to publish and writing a good article it gets published but author can promote his content with some tips:

• If you have a blog write about your article and link to it.
• Send your article link and proposal to related announcement forums.
• Send your article link and proposal to related newsletters.
• Send your article link and proposal to related indexers.  There are some reference indexers about .NET topics that only list available references.
• Add your article to social networking sites and put their links for your visitors to promote it.  For .NET community one of best sites is DotNetKicks.
• Enable commenting and let your readers to leave their thoughts, suggestions and questions.  Be sure these feedbacks can make your article better.  You're on a community so don't close any door!

There were some general guides and tips that I could give.  Feel free to leave your own tips as comment.