Technical Writing: Optimize Your Content Creation

We spend a lot of time writing technically as developers. With the trends of learning and building in public, were creating more content than ever. All of this technical content creation requires both knowledge and time to create the content. With different platforms, you also have to know how to navigate through various processes and genres. As technical writers and developers, this can be a challenge. Optimizing how we package our technical writing can help to ensure a larger audience and greater value for the time we put into our writing.

Content Creation Lifecycle

Enter in the Content Creation lifecycle. What does that mean? Well, lets start with a brainstorming session. There are three questions were going to answer:

• Whats your process?
• Where do you post?
• What content are you comfortable creating?

Your Process

When youre writing your post, how do you get started? Do you tweet about it? Ask others what they want to talk about? Thats a good way to gauge interest and let others know youre working on it.

Do you research the topic? How do you research it? Do you talk to others about the topic? Do you start drafting with an outline or just start writing?

How can you be more public with your writing process? This is the first step in optimizing your content.

Posting Your Content

Once you've completed your writing, take advantage of the many places to gain visibility. If youre posting your blog and not sharing anywhere else, youre losing your reach. For example, I post on my own site and Dev.to or on the Deepgram Developers blog and Dev.to links on Twitter and LinkedIn and sometimes Instagram and Polywork. Im familiar with those platforms, audiences, and how to post. You might also post on reddit, Hashnode, Facebook--theres no short list of where to post.

Types of Content

Up above I mentioned the type of content youre comfortable creating. I say that but I really mean what content can you tolerate creating? For example, Im super uncomfortable livestreaming, but I can tolerate doing it. Blogging is my happy place, so this is where I start. You might be more comfortable creating a YouTube video, so that video could be your starting point.

My suggestion is to list what youre comfortable creating and then set some reach goals.

Putting it into action

Now, were going to create your content creation lifecycle. Lets venture back to your process. How can you utilize content creation in your discovery process? For example, if Im writing a post on Storytelling in Writing, Ill do research to ensure I grasp the topic. Heres how Id break down the content creation strategy:

Exploration Phase

The first step of my process is doing some research. That research includes reading articles and maybe watching some videos.

My next step will involve reaching out to my network. To do this, I could create a strategy to build my resources:

1. Create a message in my most active social media space. In this case, its Twitter:

1. Hold a Twitter Space: Youll need to do some research to help create productive questions, but by inviting other experts in the field, youll be actively doing research and creating a content creation path for your technical writing. For example, you might build on the previous tweet with a Twitter Space on Storytelling in Writing like I did to help you develop your understanding of the topic.

Writing Phase

After the exploration phase, I have a pretty good sense of the direction I want to take things. This is the perfect time to start drafting my blog post. Within that post, I can link to previous posts Ive written like Technical Writing: A Beginner's Guide because its relevant to the topic of Storytelling-its useful to know writing basics before telling the story.

Repurpose Phase

Content doesnt have to stop when you hit that publish button. In fact, you have momentum you can continue to build on. Some options for repurposing your content:

• Livestream: You can do a project walk through or a Q&A.
• YouTube Video: Turn your blog post into a lightning talk or short video like this one I created.
• Podcast: Turn your Twitter Space into a podcast
• TikTok/Instagram Reel: Create a fun or informative short video highlighting the main point of your writing.
• Give a talk: Youre already prepared. Depending on your audience, the material may need updated, but youre close to being done if the talk is short.It can be a lunch and learn, a conference talk, or something you put together yourself.
• Wiki: Can your post be grouped with other posts? Is there a place they can live together to provide greater context to an overall subject? Grouping it with other posts can help you to maximize your visibility for your other posts as well.

Content Creation Tools

Its worth noting that using tools that help you to repost content can make this whole process seem a lot easier and can provide inspiration for how to repurpose your content. For example, I use Canva a lot. Theres a free version and a paid version, but both give you tools to edit images and video in a variety of ways.

Any audio or video you create for your projects can be repurposed through their transcripts too. For example, if youre publishing a video you can use Deepgram to get the transcripts of your pre-recorded audio and use those transcripts to create an image of a quote, to create the rough draft of your blog post, or as part of the description for an Instagram post.

With so many social media options out there, there are many ways to optimize your technical writing. Where you start is up to you, but its often easiest to start where youre most comfortable and then maximize your content by creating different paths to the work you want to highlight.

What does your content creation lifecycle looks like? Let us know on our @DeepgramDevs Twitter.