It’s day 4 of Blogvent, where I blog every day in December!

I’m often asked about how to make blog posts, websites, social posts, and other things more interesting to developers. It’s kind of hard to answer, because there’s not really a perfect formula that has worked for everyone, and I can say “it depends” all day long. But, there’s a few rules and guidelines I’ve learned over the years that have helped me in general.

The AIDA formula

This is an older formula that’s pretty tried and true specifically around marketing and social media. AIDA stands for:

• Attention: Grab the attention of the reader.
• Interest: Give them facts to create (and keep) interest.
• Desire: Tell them stories to foster desire. Share features and benefits.
• Action: Lay out the specific action that you want the reader to take.

Developers are a small enough niche that catering these points to them is often a balance between showing how technical you/your product/whatever you’re trying to share is, and showing how you can solve their problems in an easier/more interesting way without diminishing their skills. They can see through the buzz and the big statements you might try pushing. Which brings me to…

A developer voice

Being consistent with your voice is key. You don’t want to pop out a ton of memes and then go, “hello valued customer, best regards!”

Typically, the developer voice and copy style you’ll want to go for is:

• Relatable
• Relatively casual
• Free of jargon (unless it’s using specific terms for your developer audience)
• Easy to understand

If you try to go beyond that, you’ll miss your mark and you might get snark in the Hacker News comments. This is something where I do think practice makes perfect, and the more you write, the more you’ll find your voice (for both you and/or the brand you represent).

Be useful

Beyond all of this though, I think the best advice I can give you is to be useful. Ask yourself:

• How can I be helpful to someone?
• How can I put out good things in the world?
• How have people gotten value out of what I’ve shared?

Being useful to others helps build trust with them. Building that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose, but if you continue to try to write content and create things that are overall a net positive (and not just SEO buzzwords), you’ll actually get devs reading what you have to say! And they might even like it!

I hope this was helpful. Again, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all guide, but these points have really helped me improve my own writing skills, both personally and professionally. See you tomorrow!