How to get started on building a personal brand as a Technical Writer? | Hacker News Reader

How to get started on building a personal brand as a Technical Writer?

9 pointsmirza_rizvi13 comments

Looking for a roadmap, suggestions...anything that will be helpful tbh

>How to get started on building a personal brand as Technial Writer?

I would start with double checks on spelling ... /s

Seriously, a typo can happen to everyone, but when they happen, particularly in short text or in a title they immediately give (at least to me) the impression that there has not been enough attention/diligence, which is not a good sign, particularly for technical writers.

Thanks :) fixed it.

That's a very vague question so accept my very vague answer, I'd do what people are recommended to to do when they're trying to find their personal art style. Find ~5 people that inspire you, try to figure out what part you like about them/their "personal brand", mimic and improve on that

There are a few books on it like 'Writing for Software Developers' and 'Write Useful Books'. Working with Hit Subscribe is an option for getting a better idea of the workflow. Then its really just a game of building up your blog/books and maybe sales with companies.

[Metaphor]

When the phone rings, always answer and say "Yes."

When you get big, hire other writers to maintain the "Yes."

That's what a B2B brand is.

[\Metaphor]

Good luck.

Help some open source projects write some documentation

Currently looking at how I can help with the official WordPress documentation from (https://make.wordpress.org/) here. But I am confused about how it gets documented on who did what.

May I suggest trying a much smaller project? Wordpress probably has a well established documentation team and standard. You won’t be making a name for yourself there unless you do something really amazing.

There are many small open source projects that could use a technical writer’s help.

Not trying to be a jerk, but I have an alternate thought. OP could find a specific area of the Wordpress documentation that needs improvement, make that improvement, and do a pull request or whatever. That would probably be a good way to get the team’s attention.

What’s your goal? To land a job? Write a manual? Write a book?

I am already in a job. Looking to build a personal brand around my work. Mainly worked on WordPress plugins' user manuals, tutorials, and so on. There are not much ideas on the internet about a specific technical writing personal branding guide.

But why? What are your motivations?

I guess it’s quite close to the playbook for building a personal brand as a developer?

I would image these thngs could be useful: Write a newsletter, give conference talks, build a portfolio. Write a book. Use social media if you’re into that kind of stuff. (Instagram, YouTube, Mastodon, whatever suits you.) Have a website/blog for your longform articles on the subject.

HTH, good luck!

PS.

Be persistent and be patient. Set realistic goals so that you will not burn out and don’t be too dissapointed if it doesn’t go as fast as you would like.

For a given time frame, i.e. a year or so, it’s probably not possible to be prolific in all the areas I mentioned. So maybe pick 1-3 areas and focus on them, based on what you would find most fun.

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