How to write the best post on Habré. 7 answers, 7 tips

On January 1, at 6 am Sunday, I got the idea to share with the Habra community how to write articles on Habr so that they fall into the Best. For a day, a week, a month, and if you can hack 3000 passwords or make a comic in the spirit of Freelance vs. The office is the best of all time!

Who am I not to advise to drink ? - You ask. Without going into phallometry, I just love writing about IT, and I make a living with .NET development. For what Microsoft (although not only for this), gave me an MVP swing and it motivates me to write further.

But officially, it all started with Habrahabr in 2011. When I, zadolbavshiesya disassemble Hindu C + + - vermicelli, reported in a sandbox post about redundancy C + +. At the same time, not counting on feedback or invite, and what is called - just speak out. What was my surprise when after a couple of days I was not flown by one, but by 3 invites. The post itself took off in the top of Habr having received 275 pluses and is still in “ C ++ / Best” so far.

So I took the path of amateur IT-blogging. Then there were attempts to create their own thematic blogs about mobile development, start-ups and IT-business. But there was no time to constantly post and there was no PR, and accordingly, the traffic was also one and a half people a day. Therefore, he continued to post where there is already an audience. There were posts on Zuckerberg Call (VC.ru), AIN.ua, Geektimes.ru, somewhere else wrote how to drink to give. In total, I have more than 50 publications on IT.

Therefore, I consider authorized to share tips that will help you write high-quality content and get more feedback from readers. Be it ranking, karma, favorites and views. And as a result: real karma, ↑ total contribution to the IT community, ↑ popularity, ↑ credibility, ↑ traffic to your site.

What should be the best post on Habr?

1. Valuable

What brings people value? First of all, saving time or money. If your post or tutorial can be applied in practice, and at the same time save working time, which means saving money for managers, and improving productivity for an ordinary worker, then you are right there.

Of course, $ and time is not the only value. If the content is entertaining, it contains humor, then it will provoke a dopamine release from the reader and improve mood. If the information is unique, then habrauzer will share and recommend the post to others. What more.

2. Unique

What does unique mean? In short - the harder it is to find or obtain the information contained in the post, the more unique it is. That is why now the best post on Habré is “The source database of well-known companies has been received”.
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Uniqueness is your own development and / or this description of your personal experience. The more experience, the more unique information you can give the reader. After all, you aggregated information from many different sources in your brain, and your real experience is unique in any case.

Its collection of tools, technician, life hacking, services, videos , articles, and so on - this is also a good unique content. And adding to your list, what else can be found on the topic, but was not tested by you personally, then two hares are killed at once. 1st: You will learn more about your subject area. 2nd: Completeness of selection generates hundreds of additions to favorites and sharing in social. networks.

3. Relevant

That is, to meet the interests of the target audience of the hub, and more importantly, to correspond to the time . The article about the release of Python 3.6 on the release date is OK . Feature Description C # 7 in 2017 is not OK . For especially zealous, you can take into account other parameters of the target audience. For example, a study on the audience Habr is here .

For those who are too lazy to follow the link, see the mini-summary on the Habr CA :
Gender M / F : 72% / 28%
Age (year of birth) : Start of growth: 1986, Peak: 1990-1995, Recession: 1996.
Geography: Approximately equal distribution, a little more than Belarus, a little less Kazakhstan. Ukraine 2nd, Russia 3rd. Maybe changed. But for the post it has the lowest value, unless we are talking about local events in this country.

We get the conclusion that the spherical Habra reader in a vacuum is a 25-year-old man.

Note: the table is based on Data Mining from VK groups a year ago, so data on Central Asia is more likely for reference than for practical analysis. I myself hammer on all kinds of research before writing a post, because for me the main inspiration and value that information will bring. But marketers and professional copywriters are a different matter.

4. Contain more visual content.

Ideally, the post should contain pictures. For example infographics, charts, MindMaps, ironic images, humor .

British scientists have found that a post with a catchy picture in a hat collects more views and advantages than just text.

Visual information is perceived easier, better bumped into memory and not as annoying as the brain text. Not for nothing is there a saying: “A picture is better than a thousand words” . Inside the post, also try to dilute the text with images. Google Images is much better than nothing, but I personally don’t want to buy a rare image on photostocks, like depositphotos . And if the creative and rushing, then you can order your designer on fiverr for $ 5 or upwork . For $ 0, you can google different pictures and compose them in the editor that you own. For example, I have enough Paint.

5. Contain numbers

Figures, as well as pictures, cut into memory better and often serve as a pretext for holivars. Especially when it comes to money (and girls, ok). Also, any statistics is a weighty argument in disputes that overlap with advice about the value that a post gives. For example, you can use site statistics from similarweb or open seo stats . They display complete SEO information about the site, including the approximate number of visitors, location, server, software, and so on. Captain's advice: google and wikit proofs on the topic being described. The numbers can not be persuaded.

6. Contain humor, irony

Although the blog is technical, to improve the perception of the post you will always come to the aid of a funny quote. I have a special folder in Dropbox: pictures and quotes. And when I surf on social. networks, forums, somewhere else, I save the picture in this folder or write out a favorite quote.

Where to get? First is Habr himself. Look through the best posts, there you will certainly find the subject, and catch the idea that you can use for your topic. In addition to Facebook and VK, where almost every group posts a quote + picture 25 times a day, there are IT forums such as dou or rsdn with the section Colleagues Smile .

7. Be simple in perception.

By default, readers of IT blogs are intellectually developed above average. However, it is better to avoid long sentences and long compound words. Simply written - the reader's brain digested faster, more people understood. Remember that “Brevity is the sister of talent”.

Tips and lifehacks

1. Thursday is the best day to post.

Why?

a) Traffic on weekdays, higher than on weekends. For experienced bloggers - this is not news. And to the rest I will say that there will be no proof, this is insider information (from another IT blog). Although you yourself can compare the performance of your posts in the section Publications → Statistics.

b) Voting for the post takes 4 days from the date of publication. That is, the post will cover the audience for Thursday, Friday, receiving the maximum traffic, as well as those people who read Habr at the weekend. Plus for the first two days - the post gains the maximum number of views, and has a chance to fly up to the top of the week.

c) The end of the working week, productivity falls and I want to get distracted. The brain finds a solution: “Enter Habr!”

d) A lot of companies publish on this day to get into the top of the week in 2 days, and hang there for another 2 days on the weekend. The usual publication time is in the region of 14-16.00 Moscow time.

2. Collect interesting content in one place

It is worth doing to add humor, irony, a catch phrase or proof to your post. When surfing, scroll the FB / VK tape - save the picture. We saw an interesting message on the profile blog / forum - save to favorites. A grandiose thought occurred to you - write it in your phone.

I think many of you do that, but nevertheless, the favorites are scattered in 100,500 places. It makes sense to have a document in Office 365 or Google Docs , where to save links to all the sources where you collected the content.

For example : a folder in Chrome bookmarks, links to favorites on Habre / Reddit, folders in Dropbox / Yandex Disk / VasyaCloudStorage with pictures and quotes, email folders, etc. In order to know where to look for additional links, pictures, quotes when writing and post layout. Pictures are better not to copy one to one, but to take an idea, a template and make your own.

3. Posts Lists

Posts-lists is one of the top-options perceived by readers of any community in Ur. Read in the statistics of publications, in the favorites column, you already have an “Excellent” mark.

Examples : 60 films about ..., 20 books for ..., 10 ways ...., 100 libraries for ... when I spoke , 400 free services and so on.

Do not make a list of books if you have not read them yourself. Unscrupulous SMM players usually do this, collecting all of Google’s issue in one post. The list is worth making if you yourself have used, read, watched something about what you are writing with a mini review.

4. Estimate audience reach

Old-timers and Habr's Legends know which hub, which index and which coverage. If you're new, see the number of subscribers to Hubs in each category. But do not expect that the greater the coverage, the greater will be the rating of the post. If we say you are new to information security (where the largest number of subscribers), and post incompetent information - grab the minuses and angry comments. Therefore, it is better to have one quality and highly specialized post in one hub, than to try to fit your post at the same time under 5 hubs.

5. About the perception of IT-person

Advice is more likely for enthusiasts than for those who earn content marketing. Personally, I earn .NET development , and marketing and blogging is for the soul.

So here. We write to the IT blog, and it is logical that it is read by IT people. Competence, experience and skills in this area are valued much higher than the cunning tricks of marketers who can work on another Central Asia. You can score a post to the top with clinging headlines, mental triggers, headers, keywords, links and other SEO-optimization, but the more you see this in an article - the more it loses in value. Give more than you want. And then people themselves will recommend your post in the social. networks and your friends.

6. Accelerate the process of writing an article.

I'll tell you about my personal workflow, as I write articles.

a) SUDDENLY the idea to write an article comes along, and with it also inspiration. Usually this is an early morning on a weekend when the whole family is sleeping, everything is quiet around, there is a car of free time in front, and you are so relaxed in the bath and Her Majesty descends from unknown space. That is why, when most normal people sleep or remove Olivier from the table, I write this post at 7 am on January 1, Sunday.

Let's return to the accelerated workflow when writing an article.

b) The idea is, the experience is there, it remains to scatter everything and then arrange. When experience is there, then it is necessary to act according to the principle of the NTCCP . Immediately sit down and write your thoughts in a notebook, simultaneously planning the structure of the post. Having typed a critical mass of text, I transfer it to Google Docs . Why? Firstly, a notebook with large amounts of text is inconvenient at all. And secondly, the Word-format will be useful to us later when exporting to HTML. Along the way, I am doing the formatting, highlighting keywords, placing subtitles.

c) The third step is spell checking, formatting, minor editing and search for images for registration (optional). Pictures for the word are saved in \ Dropbox \ Public \ Habr \ Title Articles, so public URLs for them are already available, without hassle with habrastorage. However, dear admins Habra, before publishing an interesting post in their groups in the social. networks, will replace these links to habrastorage, simultaneously formatting the post to shine.

d) And the last step, copying the entire document to wordtohtml.net , putting the <cut /> tag where appropriate , and getting a ready-made layout.

Next, insert the layout in the habr-editor, edit and view the received.

7. Do not listen to advice, listen to yourself.

And in conclusion I would like to say. Dear enthusiasts and all those who hold a wonderful IT-community called Habrahabr. Especially the youngest part of it. Do not follow the advice straightforwardly, stupidly repeating what is written. Including in this post. Think with your head how to do better. Listen to yourself and write in your pleasure !

PS Maybe even more views?

Ok, you wrote a quality article and it began to ply. The dynamics is good, so you can share with friends on FB / VK / Twitter, noting those friends to whom your post will be really useful. In addition to the fact that the post will appear on their page, they can recommend you to other friends and so on. The principle of virality .

If the padding during the day continues to grow and reaches the section - the best for the day, feel free to post a link to the article in specialized forums and blogs. Especially those in which you often hang out and you have a certain rating there.

PSS What else to read?

I recommend reading English books and blogs on the subject. Firstly, it keeps the prefrontal cortex in good shape, by switching from the native language to English. Secondly, the western Internet business has gone far ahead, and you will gather many innovative ideas that have not yet reached us.

Where to get these books? On Amazon, search for “blogging books” keywords. Here's what downloaded in my Kindle Reader on the topic:

• A Blog Today (Blogging Guide Book 1) - How To Make Money.
• Free Tools for Writers, Bloggers and Solopreneurs - free or freemium services for writers, bloggers and self-employed.
• My Blog Traffic Sucks! 8 Days a Week - about an increase in blog traffic
• How To Make A $ 1,000 Blog Day With A Blog - About Monetizing Your Blog