[Evangelism Reps] Some tips on Tech Blogging

As a ramp-up measure for the Mozilla Evangelism Reps program I just finished a first draft of tips and tricks how to approach technical blogging in Mozilla.

Topics covered are:

• Basics of blogging – being a spokesperson
  • Be professional (no racism, sexism, calling names)
  • No political and religious views
  • Have something to say
  • Speling duz kount
• Doing research and finding gaps to fill
• Tone of voice
  • Use active voice
  • Use short sentences
  • Skip the foreplay
  • Give a full disclosure
  • Answer the WIIFM - “what is in it for me”
  • Stick to one thing and explain it well
  • Give credit where credit is due
• Structuring your post
  • Use proper headings
  • Tell your story
  • Use lists
  • Give away everything at the beginning
  • Add breathing space
  • Extra value goes to the end
• Linking
  • Link meaningful text
  • Links are proof, not context
  • Know your link targets
  • Test your links
  • Provide “read more” resources
• Images
  • Link to the resource
  • Use absolute image paths
  • Have a sensible alternative text
  • Crop what is not needed
  • Play nice with people’s bandwidth
• Multimedia (Screencasts, Audio)
  • Provide a fallback link
  • Keep them snappy
  • Cross-link from the video site
• Code examples
  • Link the original source
  • Embed readable code (colourcoding, Gists, interactive code examples with JSFiddle/JSBin/Tinker.io/Dabblet)
  • Make your code work
  • Write code for the web
• Cross-posting and promotion
  • Do not publish the same blog post on different blogs
  • Write targeted smaller posts linking to the main one
  • Link all the resources back to the blog
  • Find outlets to promote the post

A lot of this might appear basic to the casual observer, but I am constantly amazed just how many simple things are done wrong when posting technical content. So I hope this will help some people get started on solid footing.