Writing an article can seem like a piece of cake. You just get to it and start writing while your readers are already dying to read your new article.

However, it turns out that writing a quality article is not that easy, and you have to put a lot of effort to make it interesting for readers. Especially when it comes to software developers. And it doesn’t really matter whether you write it for your personal blog, your company, or for a reputable online magazine. You should always do your best – your article should not only look great to everyone but also attract clients. Moreover, it should be amazing content Google wants to index to help readers find the information they’re looking for.

With that said, today, we’ll consider the main points to keep in mind when writing smart content for a software development company.

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1. Analyze

The first rule of writing an article: work with the text begins before you have written your first line.

You must first analyze everything, i.e. understand why and who you are writing for, the results you want to achieve, and how you are going to achieve them. Answering these questions means eliminating everything unnecessary and focusing on your target audience (we’ll come back to the latter a bit later). This way you’ll know what style to use and if you can add professional terms. After that, you can sketch out the future structure of your article, decide on the approach, and many other important nuances.

Here’re a few points to consider when writing an article for a custom eCommerce development blog.

• Who: potential customers who know the subject on a basic level; professional programmers, analysts, and “sympathizers;”
• What: mention current trends in the tech market and how to use them for your own, selfish purposes;
• Goal: confirm the expertise and prove to your clients that your company can be trusted with their money;
• How to achieve it: provide arguments and analysis; contact professionals if you don’t have enough knowledge and experience; use basic professional terms and explain more complex terms separately.

2. Structure it

You know what to write about, now let’s figure out how you should do it. To make it clear and convenient for your readers, you want to “pack” your thoughts into blocks and paragraphs so the text is easier to read. This will help you get everything together in your own head and in your readers’ heads. Plus, searching for the right information is also easier this way.

When it comes to the text structure in an article, it’s more about common sense than about rules and formulas. If the format allows, go from general to specific content. Let’s consider an article about web designers.

Content

• Introduction:
• What Is Web Design;
• Who Are Professional Web Designers;
• How Do You Become a Successful Web Designer? What Skills Do You Need?;
• How Much Do Professional Web Designers Make?;
• Web Designer VS Web Developer: What’s the Difference?;
• Conclusion.

In our opinion, this makes sense: you start with a general concept and gradually delve into the subject. Use headings and subheadings for each individual meaningful block, do not combine them if you don’t have to. You can talk about who web designers are and how they work/think in two different blocks. However, you can’t do that with the skills, salaries, and differences – these things are tied tightly to each other.

3. Be unique and relevant

This should go without saying, however… Yes, you want to always provide original and relevant content. Simply keep this in mind during the whole creation process and when you check your article (twice). Because there are so many similar articles and plagiarism on the Web. Thinking that you will be a groundbreaker or an “explorer of the great beyond” is sort of naive. However, you should. Never stop researching, even if your chosen subject seems to be quite popular – you still can make it even more interesting. Don’t be afraid to add twists to your content and make it even more appropriate.

For example, if you write something about Magento web development services, you should study the reviews of customers and partners of service providers, as this is a reliable source of unique information and can tell you about the business even better than they do. You can hire a Magento maintenance and support service provider if you lack confidence in your technology capabilities or want to spend more time focusing on your business.

4. Think about your readers

Identify end users who will interact with your article. It’s important to cover the maximum range of issues and questions customers have when choosing a product/service. Such issues can be identified in several ways:

• Build a semantic core for each article and add it to the text;
• Ask people who interact with customers the most pressing questions;
• Analyze thematic blogs of your competitors and identify articles of interest for your site.

These methods, when writing SEO texts, should help identify the pain points of users and understand the essence of your articles. Plus, depending on the subject, every article should also provide a solution to a certain problem.

Don’t write complex articles – you’re not a literalist. Don’t write text for the sake of text, make it useful. You can (and should) use your personal experience but just don’t turn the article into your personal diary.

Think about what kind of content you would Google yourself? Which content will you find attractive and engaging? Consider developers and tech geeks who work with different popular backend frameworks or other programming languages, as well as your potential clients. Use both educational and entertainment approaches but don’t forget about relevant topics and discussions (for programmers, of course). Check your competitors and analyze their blogs. In the end, it’s all about knowledge sharing. Especially, if you’re creating content for an educational software development company, your readers are likely educators, administrators, and students.

5. Start writing

After you figure out the structure, you can (finally) start writing. Write as you can but keep a couple of the following things in mind:

• One paragraph – one thought. The principle here is the same as with blocks – don’t try to “stuff” one paragraph with everything at once – it’s going to get sick, bloat, and feverishly tell something incomprehensible to your readers. The latter will certainly not appreciate it;
• Don’t be like someone else. All these recommendations leave enough room for creativity – the main thing is not to overdo it and turn your blog about everything and nothing. Useful information first, then everything else;
• Cling your thoughts to each other. The end of the previous thought is the beginning of the next;
• Use examples. Abstract concepts are hard to try on. Share real-life experience;
• Don’t think for too long. Try to write well at once but don’t spend hours on one sentence. If you can’t make it cool the first time, move on. You’ll get better in the next stage.

6. Make it simple

Do not use intense jargon (unless it’s critical) so that everyone could understand what you mean in your articles. Break down your text in sections/paragraphs, use headings/subheadings, bullet points, bold, etc. But don’t overdo it. Your text should look compact and well-organized, and most importantly, it should be easy to read. Because your readers will only need like 3 seconds to understand if the text is worth their time or not.

7. Mind SEO

A common mistake is meaningless filling articles with keywords and expecting a miracle, i.e. hoping they will become useful to search engines and users. Big misconception. A good SEO article for a web application development company blog, apart from the content of users’ key queries and their proper use in the text, should fulfill a few other requirements as follows:

• Your text should have a sufficient number of entries;
• Keywords must be distributed evenly throughout the article;
• The required amount of text is also based on search engine results;
• Text uniqueness should be 90% at least. For topics that use a large number of highly specialized terms, the uniqueness can be 75%. Use the appropriate services to check how unique your text is;
• Use LSI keywords and keywords for internal linking;
• Mind grammar. Reread and (ruthlessly) edit your text – it’s not only about grammatical errors but also about milk-and-water, logic, clarity, and usefulness.

You have finished writing your text, but it’s not ready yet. Now the material needs to be fine-tuned and polished.

8. Proofread

Editing material can be harder than writing. You need to correct every typo, grammar mistake, inaccuracy, and unnecessary element. Add bullet points, bold text, and everything you missed to make it 100% readable.

Let’s deal with each element in order:

• Typos and grammar mistakes. It’s all clear here – you can rely on yourself or use online verification services, e.g. Grammarly;
• Unnecessary elements. The first edition of the text is always a stream of consciousness, which must be streamlined. To do this, we proofread the text and ask ourselves how it can be reduced without affecting its meaning. Trust your intuition. Also, you want to remove duplicate information and make blurred wording clear and abrupt;
• Structure. Once again, check the structure, namely, headings/subheadings, not two paragraphs, and insert additional headings where appropriate;
• Missing elements. When writing an article, it can be quite challenging to provide all the necessary information at once. You just can’t save everything in your head, and, often, some ideas simply pop up later. But you still need to compensate for these losses. Say, you re-read your article and suddenly recall something that insidiously escaped your head earlier. Otherwise, you can come up with something even better! All of these things need to be added.

9. Use social media

This is where you can search for inspiration and insights. Plus, you can promote your content there! You want to be open to constructive criticism and get more ideas and feedback to improve your company blog. And people, especially tech-related communities, are quite sincere in their thoughts (sometimes, even too much) so they will definitely not be silent about this or that topic, nor will they sugar coat something.

10. Ask for opinions

Ask your in-house programmers for help. That’s right, don’t be shy and ask for insights to use in your material. Even if they don’t seem to be friendly. You want to encourage your company’s dev team to participate in content creation since you are all in one boat. They need to understand it. Maybe they can even become your guest writers – why not? This will improve your brand awareness and your blog in the eyes of your customers.

11. Update your content

Nobody likes outdated content and old numbers. Thus, you want to keep your blog relevant and engaging. New people will visit it, and they always want reliable and up-to-date information, which means you have to regularly check your articles and keep them fresh. A great example of an article about artificial intelligence in the automotive industry proves that fast-developing trends require constant updating of content, otherwise, the material quickly loses its uniqueness. For those looking to stay ahead in this rapidly evolving field, consulting an AI development company can provide the cutting-edge insights needed to keep your content fresh and relevant. The same goes for your social media pages. Plus, search engines will appreciate this too.

When thinking about getting started on a new entry, consider how you can explore it in the future. Is it related to something you wrote before? Is it a two-parted text? Can you add links to the original article? Thinking about all this in advance will save your time and headaches in the future.

Conclusions

Now you know how to write an engaging article. We have outlined the basic points and saw how everything really works. The main thing is to think through the future opus to the smallest detail, optimize your text, and double-check it two, five, or even ten times. One thing many people ignore is using the right font for your business. It’s essential to choose fonts that go well with the website to make an impact. For example, use a stamp font for vintage-style websites or urban font for modern websites to make your content realistic.

Analyze your target audience, decide why you are writing in general, think through the structure, and edit the finished article. Ideally, you will get quality content that is interesting to read (not only for software developers). And if you properly optimize the text, you will attract tons of traffic.