How to get started with a blog

[Travis Toulson]

Blogging is one of the simplest ways to get started in sharing your knowledge, experiences, and insights about the ServiceNow platform. As a technical professional, you likely already have everything you need to start: a computer, an internet connection, and unique perspective to share with the community. But the process of getting started can still feel intimidating, so this guide will help you establish your ServiceNow blog.

Step 1: (Pre)Write

Right now, pick one of the following questions and write down your answer. You can do it in Word, notepad, VS Code, on a napkin. It can be a one sentence answer, an outline, a paragraph, bullet points, your inner monologue, it doesn't matter, just write your answer to the one of the following questions in the first way that comes to you:

1. What is something new you learned today about ServiceNow?
2. What problem did you encounter at work today and how did you solve it?
3. What is one thing about the ServiceNow platform you wish everyone knew about?
4. What is one thing you would change about the ServiceNow platform to make it better?
5. What is one thing about ServiceNow that you wish was explained better?

Did you write down your answer? If you did, congratulations, you just completed one of the hardest steps of writing. You have communicated your thoughts. You can keep it, refine it, or throw it away. It doesn't matter, you still wrote something and that is something to be proud of.

One of the easiest mistakes to make when it comes to writing a blog is to focus on everything except the writing. It's easy to get distracted by things like choosing a blogging platform, coming up with ideas, trying to come up with catchy titles, etc. It's easy to have a list of ideas for articles that you never actually sit down to flesh out. I have at least three of those lists.

As silly as it sounds, if you want to make blog articles then you have to write. Not everything you write will make its way to being published. Some ideas will work out better than others. Somethings you write will immediately goes into the trashcan. Some of the things you write will only ever be seen by you. And that's ok.

In fact, it's the best part. You can write your questions, your thoughts, or even the words of others. You can write anything that you think might help you work out your draft. You never really know if the things you write are worth publishing or deleting until you've written them down. That's why the first step to starting a blog is to start writing.

And if you ever run into trouble figuring out what to write about, you can always refer to the questions above to help you as a prompt!

Step 2: Refine Your Draft

With that draft that you wrote in the first step, you will likely find that it's not quite right. Depending on your pre-writing style, you may have a great outline of an idea but not enough details. Maybe you answered the question in two rough sentences and are thinking your article looks a little short. Maybe you went stream of consciousness and are now sitting on the War and Peace of Today I Learned. Maybe you ended up with a mind map of ideas.

Whatever your approach to step 1, the next step is going to involve refining your draft into something that is pretty close to the final article. This process involves finding the right structure and level of detail. It might help to consider some common ways to structure an article:

• Five-paragraph essay: Structured as an introduction, three (or more) supporting ideas, and a conclusion.
  • Useful for articles presenting opinions, best practices, reviews, and other articles where you are trying to persuade others.
• Chronological: Structured around the order things happened or should happen.
  • Useful for how to articles, news articles, or stories
• Comparison:  Structured around individual attributes in which two or more items are compared
  
  • Useful for "when should I use / choose" type articles and comparative reviews
• Q&A: Structured as a series of questions and answers
  • Useful for interviews and FAQs
• List: Structured around the individual items of the list
  • Useful for roundups, ranking lists, and others
• Research: Structure usually includes sections for introduction, methods, results, discussion, and appendices
  • Useful for reporting experiments and results

There are of course other ways to structure your article, but when you are getting started, it can help to follow some well-known templates. If you look at the headings of many of your favorite articles, you can probably identify one of the structures above.

Now consider your own work in progress. What structure and headings would best fit the information you are trying to communicate. Write those down and then work your details into that structure. Feel free to experiment with different approaches. Your draft is meant to change and evolve, rewriting is part of the process.

Step 3: Find Your Voice

With your article now nearly complete, take a moment to find your voice. If you read through enough blog articles and you will find that each one has a different voice to it. Some articles sound like a technical white paper while others sound like a conversation with a friend. It's important to establish your voice in your writing and to try to maintain a consistent voice across most of your articles. Your audience will come to know you by your voice, it tells them who you are.

There are two things to consider when finding your voice in writing: yourself and your audience. An article is a conversation between you and your audience, so what does that conversation look like? Do you see yourself as a professor teaching a class? As a quirky geek trying to relate to your peers? As a standup comedian entertaining an audience? Revise your article to make sure it has a consistent voice and also check for spelling and grammatical errors while you are at it.

Step 4: Publish

Once you are happy with your article, you may want to consider handing it off to a peer to look over. But once you are happy with it, it's time to publish! There are of course a number of options for publishing your article.

The simplest choice is to publish in the ServiceNow Community! Publishing in the Community frees you from having to worry too much about reaching an audience. The Community already has built in search, has categories and topics defined, performs well in search engine results, and gives you immediate access to a large audience who is interested in ServiceNow. It frees you from most of the concerns of having to run a blogging platform. As an added bonus, you can earn all those lovely points in the Community.

You can also choose any number of other platforms. Some platforms such as Medium or Squarespace have a low barrier to entry similar to the ServiceNow Community although you will still have to do some more work to do to reach your audience. You could also choose platforms like WordPress or Ghost if you prefer to take a little more control over your hosting platform. If you prefer working in text files and git repos, you might want to choose static site generators like Hugo or Jekyll.

And don't worry about your initial choice, you can always change later (though it can be a bit of work). Personally, my blog started on the ServiceNow Community, migrated to Medium, then to Squarespace for a bit, then to Hugo, and now I'm back on the ServiceNow Community again.

The important part is to get started!

Step 5: Promote

Once your article is published, you should spend some time promoting it. This is especially true if you chose to publish outside of the ServiceNow Community. You put a lot of work into your article, so make sure people see it. Personally, I do most of my promotion on LinkedIn but you should choose the forum that works for you. At first, you may not see much of a response and that is normal. If you stay consistent, you will see your audience grow and be able to reach more people.

Step 6: Do It Again Consistently

That brings us to the last step which is to keep writing consistently! Consistency doesn't have to mean every day or weekly. If you can manage that, awesome! Traditionally, I've been more of a Netflix show writer. I drop an entire season of content for people to binge read and then disappear until enough people ask if I'm coming back for another season. As a Developer Advocate, I've had to start blocking out time on my calendar to create content. I've learned that if you wait to find the time or the right idea to write about, you might be waiting a long time. It's really important to schedule time to write.

Ultimately, remember that all of this is just a suggestion. There is no one correct way to write. As you write, you will find your own process that is comfortable for you. The most important part is to enjoy it because that is what will keep you coming back to do it again.