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How and why do I write articles on Habrahabr. Personal experience

Dedicated to all users and readers Habrahabra

In this article I want to talk with you on the topic of writing articles for Habrahabr. Most likely, you have already heard about this resource, read useful articles there, or even are a member of the community of this project.

Today Habrahabr is a whole series of projects, because not so long ago resource owners divided it into several thematic ones:


About two years I have been writing articles for Habr, and now for Megamind. These articles are published, read, discussed. Today I decided to share my own practical experience with everyone and give answers to the questions:
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I will answer the last question right now. My personal experience shows that being a readable author on Habrahabr is very beneficial. It brings both new customers and improves the specialist’s reputation and credibility both from professionals and customers; allows you to make new, useful dating. In addition, it is simply interesting and allows you to systematize your own knowledge and skills.

A large amount of information about what can and even is necessary, and what can not be written on the pages of a project, you can learn from the rules of Habr himself. And here I will talk about what I personally encountered in practice, and share those nuances that are not written in the rules.

Now let's understand the order. The first thing that each new author encounters in Habré is registration, which has its own peculiarities and pitfalls on this resource.

Registration for Habrahabr: a section for beginners


If you are already a full-fledged user of Habr, then I suggest you just skip this section. And for beginners who are just starting to get acquainted with this resource, information about how to get the right to write articles will most likely come in handy.

Habrahabr is a very popular resource, and in order to get the right to post your articles here, going through regular registration is not enough. After you come up with your nickname and confirm your email address, you become a reader. You can subscribe to interesting topics, add publications to your favorites and form a tape for reading in accordance with your interests.

But if you want to get a full-fledged account, which will also allow commenting on publications, participating in discussions and, most importantly, posting your own publications, you have several ways.

Very often, after registering an account, users get confused about the requirements of Habr and give up the idea of ​​becoming an author on this project halfway through. Although in reality, there is nothing complicated. You just need to understand which option is right for you.

Options for obtaining a full account on Habr:


The article for the Sandbox should be interesting, relevant to the Habrakhabr audience, because the usual rewrite (retelling) of someone else’s publication or the story “How I installed Windows for the first time” will not work here. Write about something really relevant and, preferably, not known to the general public in Runet.

Rating: pros and cons. What are they needed for?


On Habrahabr implemented a user rating system for each material. Also, there is a separate system of likes and dislikes for the user himself (karma).

The more advantages your text gets, the higher the likelihood that it will be in the TOP of articles. Also, the more minuses it receives, the lower the list of articles in the section will be displayed.

Also, the user's personal karma, in the case of positive values, expands your possibilities, and in the case of a large number of minuses, reduces to a ban on publishing articles and limiting the number of comments.

Naturally, everyone aspires to have good personal karma, and it is earned through interesting publications, for which you are thanked only by the plus to the article, but often also by the benefit to karma, friendly comments, etc.

But the benefits of ranking for articles are not so straightforward. Of course, it's nice when your article is in the TOP, she has a lot of readers, she is discussing, arguing about her. But my personal practice shows that not less, but often more real benefits for your business can bring an article that did not get into the TOP. If it is really useful and is displayed in the search engines, then this article, regardless of Habr's ratings, will bring you some benefit.

So, my article "1C - this is bad" turned out to be one of the articles in the TOP Habr. Honestly, I do not belong to a popular author, and for me it was a pleasant surprise. But at the same time, this article did not bring me a single customer for working with 1C.

On the other hand, articles about the implementation of CRM, about ZOHO, whose rating is far from perfect, bring me a steady stream of new customers to introduce these systems.

Why did I start writing articles?


For a long time I was in the community Habrahabr, read interesting materials, engaged in self-development, built a career. Then he thought: why not try to share what I know? I began to write about what I know and know how, shared my experiences, experience; That can be useful not only to me.

I believe that a specialist, if he seeks to stand out among many similar, should not only be a class professional, he should also do something that others do not. And I found my option - I started writing for Habrahabr. It turned out that my knowledge and skills are very much in demand, they read me with interest, and sharing information is a fascinating business, and there are quite a few additional advantages.

They know me as a business consultant, as a specialist in 1C, as a specialist in CRM systems, etc. My customers, due to the fact that I successfully publish on such a serious resource for specialists, trust me more. I am invited to give presentations at professional conferences, which also allows you to make new useful contacts, to get a unique and useful experience. In addition, for me personally, it is simply interesting and very convenient to systematize my knowledge in the form of articles, to share them with others.

Every time when I accumulate a large amount of information, ideas and decisions on a particular topic, I really feel the need to throw out these thoughts on paper. The result is an article, judging by the reaction of the readers, quite interesting and useful. And my very knowledge is structured by me, "fit in the head." And I can leave this topic alone, knowing for sure that on the current topic I will not lose even a bit of valuable information that is already available also in printed form in an article I have written.

Learning to write articles: what to pay attention to?


As I said above, for writing articles usually choose one of the options: the translation of interesting information, the rewriting of relevant news, or write copyright texts. What from this approaches for Habr? What topics will be interesting to readers? Let's figure it out.

Translations of articles and videos

Translations of articles - a fairly common solution, because the English-language sources read, not all. But because a good translation of an interesting article to an audience, Habr will most likely be interesting. Before uploading your translation, it is very important to re-read it yourself and make sure that the finished material is accurate and correct.

If you make any inaccuracies, then there will definitely be a person who also watched this video or read the source from which you translated (or was not too lazy to follow the link to the original after you posted the translation). And in case of any inaccuracies, your article may receive a lot of drawbacks from readers, which does not contribute to its popularity.

This usually happens this way. An attentive reader who is proficient in the original language of your article reveals an inaccuracy and writes about it in a comment. Some users, after viewing the announcement, immediately look at the comments to determine for themselves whether it is worth spending time reading all the material. At the same time, they see one or even a few comments, where they write about translation inaccuracies, low text quality, and leave, having previously put a minus to your text.

Author's text: choose a topic

If you think that you have something to share with people, and therefore decided to write the author's text, it is very important to choose the right topic. Remember that on Habré your readers in the majority are IT specialists, programmers, technically literate people. But because the guide from the series "How to install and configure WordPress" and other similar lay out not worth it.

When choosing a topic for an article, ask yourself the question: “And if I read it, would it be interesting to me?”. It will not work here, as when creating a seo blog, to write any unique text on an arbitrary topic, or as in LJ, where you write whatever you like and do not always take into account the interests of readers. With this approach, your texts, and, perhaps, and you personally, will get a lot of minuses, and, as a result, you can generally lose the right to write for Habrahabr.

It is very important that the content offered by you is interesting for readers, carrying something new and consistent with the subject of the project. So, for Habr, you can offer texts only for IT topics, and you should write at the level “IT people for IT people”. But on the Megamind, where various business problems are discussed, you can write about software so that you can be understood by a wide audience, including ordinary users. Also there you can raise issues that are not related to computer technology.

Volume of articles: how much can you write?

When you write articles for Habrahabr, you need to take into account the peculiarities of the resource and audience. I must say: there is no point in saving on the volume of the text. Personally, I recommend writing articles of 3-5 thousand characters and more.
Remember that projects from Habrahabr are communities where informational, mainly technical articles are posted. And the topics that you raise, you need to disclose in detail.

As practice shows, on this resource, readers are willing to delve into the bulk texts. So, I personally laid out many times articles that reached 20 and even 40 thousand characters (20 pages of text!). And they all found their readers, received a sufficient number of comments and advantages for useful material.

Moreover, many times I received letters of thanks from the readers for e-mailing the topic, giving as much information as possible. But never once did anyone criticize that “there are too many letters” in my texts. On Habré, people can and are not lazy to read and appreciate the information content. Personally, I really appreciate this feature of the Habr audience, in which it is pleasantly different from many other resources.

I also noticed that short texts, in which, at best, the author manages to describe the problem and very briefly identify options for solving it, are not popular on Habré. If the stated topic is not sufficiently disclosed, the article is criticized and receives disadvantages from readers.

That is why it is necessary to write as much as it is necessary to open the topic and give the readers maximum of information. Do not be afraid to write large texts.

Learning to write headlines

Headings should be, of course, beautiful. You can even make them provocative or intriguing. So, one of my most read articles got the headline: “1C is bad. Or why they don't like 1C programmers. ”
But if you allow yourself such statements, you must in the text of the article in sufficient detail and reasonably justify their position. Otherwise, you just do not understand.

Also, do not write articles on "Writing your own Gif" or "Writing your WordPress with blackjack and girls." These phrases for today are considered to be extremely beaten, they are already tired of everything, and your article will simply not be noticed or, alternatively, they will disappear because of the title alone.

Thus, the title may attract attention, but should not be flashy. He can intrigue, but then it is necessary to disclose in great detail the topic in the article. Best of all, the headline is understandable, attracts attention, and briefly explains what you will tell about in the article.

We check the text: spelling, punctuation, style

The structure of your article, its design should also be approached very carefully. It is not enough to write something about something useful for the Habrahabr community. You also need to submit your material so that it is easy to read.
Also, many readers pay attention to literacy. So read the text carefully before publishing it on Habré. This rule should work everywhere, because the text is literally readable from the point of view of spelling, punctuation and style. But in practice on the Internet these nuances are often not paid due attention.

On Habrahabr, you may be a fiasco simply because you have posted an interesting, useful, but illiterate text. Even if there are few errors, there will definitely be a person who writes something like in the comments: “You have mistakes in this and this sentence, these words are written wrong, correct”.

There is an unspoken rule, and not only at Habrahabr, that comments regarding spelling errors, typos, punctuation errors, are written in private, using personal messages. But, unfortunately, this rule is often ignored.

As a result, due to errors in your text and a captious critic in the comments, your article may also receive many drawbacks from users, including those who read only the comments feed. And therefore it is better to check the text carefully.

Pictures and video in text

If you need graphical explanations (charts, graphs, charts) to understand your text, you need to post them. And it is very important that these pictures are of good quality, so that the reader can see all the necessary symbols and numbers.

Also it is worth thinking about illustrations, if your text is very long. But only in the event that you really have good illustrations that will help to open your topic.

In all other cases, to increase the simplicity of perception of a long text will also help headlines, lists, some selection in the text. But if you have beautiful thematic illustrations, do not hesitate to post them. Figures do not interfere with reading, but make the text not so boring and monotonous for visual perception.
But with the video the situation is different. Practice shows that on Habré to upload videos, in most cases, it makes no sense. If you have written a good full-fledged article or translated an English-language video accurately and competently, then most readers will not even watch your video.

On the other hand, if your article doesn’t cover the topic enough, then the video may come in handy. But then the value of the article itself in the eyes of readers will noticeably fall, which will necessarily affect the rating of this text.

What are the reasons for this attitude to the videos?

The fact is that the video cannot be viewed “diagonally”, in order to penetrate into what is being told there, it will take a certain time, and neither speed reading skills nor the ability to search for just the necessary information will help here. At the same time, video recordings very often contain a lot of superfluous, and the description of some technically complex things is better perceived in text form, when a formula or a piece of code can be viewed calmly, many times, without the announcer’s comments or searching for the required frame and viewing it in “pause ".

How do i write? My personal experience


At first I tried to write articles on my own. Just as you, most likely, and represent it. He sat at the computer, opened a new document, invented a topic and tried to write a coherent interesting text.

As it turned out, nothing good comes out of it. Instead of writing an interesting article, revealing in detail the topic, I spent a lot of time thinking about how to submit the material, how to structure the text, what approach to choose, etc. In the end, it took a lot of time, there were few results.

Then I changed the approach to work. I realized that I can reveal any topic qualitatively, if I talk about it out loud. I am perfectly able to explain any topic orally, and there are no difficulties that prevent me from concentrating on the point when trying to write on my own. And then I posted an ad for freelancing and chose a copywriter, with whom I now work.

Who is a copywriter?

Here I want to explain who a copywriter is for me. You know or can find the classic definition of copywriting yourself. And I would like to focus on those qualities that were important to me.
Many, I think, have seen the series Mad Men, in which the plot is built around an advertising agency. And there are such experts - copywriters. That's exactly the copywriters who are shown in this series, for me are real.

What is their main feature? These are not just people who can write. These are people who understand a certain question or are ready to penetrate and to understand the subject deep enough to understand you, to understand the essence of what you are saying, and to clothe your idea in some attractive form.
A copywriter, from my point of view, should be able to understand your idea, understand everything that you are saying, and write about it in such a way that in a beautiful and convenient form for readers to reveal the essence of what you told.

How do I work with a copywriter?

So, I have an idea for a new article, after which I contact the copywriter, we choose a convenient time to work. And then with the help of remote voice communication (Skype, phone), I open the topic, in fact, I dictate the article with my voice.

In the process, the copywriter asks me questions, clarifies some points, maybe even offers some ideas of his own. We discuss all the nuances. After that, during a certain period (1-2-3 days), the copywriter performs the primary work, creates an article based on the information I dictated, and sends it to me for verification and possible corrections.

For further work on the text, I personally use the service Google Docs. Here you can download a document to collaborate on it, add notes, resolve issues and even discuss them online in the chat.
You can work on a document in the same way, use any other variant of organizing collaboration with documents, or even send a Word document with edits and notes by e-mail. The organization of the process depends entirely on your tastes and abilities.

The main thing to understand. After the copywriter has written the text, some improvements are almost always required. The more you have managed to uncover the topic, the better the copywriter understands your chosen topic, the fewer adjustments you will have to make. But completely without this stage can not do. Some of the inaccuracies are caused by the copywriter’s fault (misunderstood, didn’t hear it, etc.), it happens that when you tell the voice with your voice, you raised some question, and when reading the text you understand that this information is excessive in this case. Or, on the contrary, when reading you understand that you have missed some important things that need to be added. All this is part of a normal workflow.

Thus, the copywriter creates a full-fledged competent article, works professionally with the text, draws up my thoughts so that the text is easy to read, thinks through the structure, gives the material, puts all the commas (which, as I wrote above, is also important).

Then I read the resulting text. I make some changes, I suggest to add or reduce certain fragments. We are already working together to develop this text online. After that, he is completely ready for Habrahabr.

Thus, the task of a copywriter is to put my words, my ideas into a beautiful, easy-to-understand form.

There is a big difference between oral text and written speech. In order to understand and fascinatingly tell, and in order to be interesting to write, we need completely different words, a different approach, a different presentation. There is even such a thing - the printed word.

That's it in the printed word, I, as it turned out, is not strong. My strength is a colloquial word, I am a good speaker, a storyteller, and to write a good interesting article I attract a professional to work with the printed word.

The text is written: what next?

After the article is written and fully developed, it is time to transfer it to Habré. The first thing I do is choose a hub, in other words, the thematic section in which this article will be placed. I have no special recommendations here, I just need to focus on the topic of the article.

Also need to register tags. Personally, I don’t focus on them particularly, of course, I’m filling them in, but I think that these tags are not as important for search engines as the text itself.

The text should be placed very carefully, use the formatting (lists, subtitles, various options for highlighting important points). A neatly designed text looks much nicer, and therefore better perceived by the reader.

After you make sure that the test looks like you would like, that all the pictures you need are in place, the text blocks look attractive, and the text is read, including “diagonally”, you can press the “ Post "and wait for the reaction of the community.

How not to write articles: learn from the mistakes of others


I have a rather large experience of writing articles for Habr, and therefore, I think my practice will perfectly complement the reading of the Habrahabr rules. And you will be able to avoid many mistakes.


*** On Habré there is such an opportunity: once you can reload the account. If you have posted a rash text or with the help of some comments you managed to get a large number of minuses in your account, you can reset all values ​​of pluses and minuses once, i.e. "Reload account"

Why write articles for Habr? What does this give?


Why I and many people whom I know, aspire to place the articles on Habrahabr? What advantages does it give? What do we get?


Specific examples of articles and advantages as a result of placement on Habré:


And these are only benefits that I know about. Plus, of course, my articles constantly bring me new clients, new interesting and useful acquaintances, new experiences.

I print on many sites, and therefore I have something to compare with. And my personal conclusion is: it is worth typing on Habré. This is an excellent platform, with a very good, friendly, intelligent and very interesting audience, with excellent search rankings, and also, which is also important, with adequate competent moderation.

I hope that my article helped you and inspired new initiatives. So, I wish you success and look forward to new authors and new interesting articles in the Habrahabr and Megamind tapes.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to thank my copywriters Irina and Yevgeny for their work.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/256203/

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