One blog evaluation website (blogmetrics.org) provides a ranking in different categories of blogs, each in one neat list. One of the categories available that may be applicable to this group provides links to the most popular Technical Writing blogs along with details of how the rankings were calculated. For those of you who are occasionally searching for something–either generic or specific–to examine in the tech comm field, this is one of those sites that just might be a great place to start.
#1 – Digital Inspiration
The #1 blog on the list at the time of this posting is one that is listed as a how-to blog with the stated purpose “to help you take maximum advantage of the software tools and web technologies at your disposal so that you spend more time doing things you really love”. Latest blog topics include:
- Jan 09, 2017 – How to Make Phone Numbers Callable in Google Sheets
- Jan 03, 2017 – Know What Facebook Can See Inside Your Photographs
- Dec 15, 2016 – How to Add a Picture Password to your Google Forms
- Dec 14, 2016 – How to Generate a Report of Bounced Email Addresses in Gmail
- Dec 13, 2016 – An Undocumented Gmail Trick – Search Emails by Date and Time
#7 – I’d Rather Be Writing
Another of the top blogs listed is this one that focuses on topics such as API documentation, visual communication, screencasting and video, information architecture, and content strategy. Latest blog topics here include:
- Jan 06, 2017 – How much code do you need to know to create API developer documentation?
- Dec 20, 2016 – Generalist versus specialist: What should you focus on with knowledge building in your tech writing role?
- Dec 14, 2016 – Updating a single page versus updating the documentation as a whole
- Nov 23, 2016 – New podcast from the Write the Docs community
- Nov 15, 2016 – Recording of an Open Authoring – Collaboration Across Disciplines presentation, by Ralph Squillace
- Nov 06, 2016 – Should you ever apologize for something product-related in your documentation? Looking at Apple’s dongle documentation
#17 – FFeathers
A kind of quirky “technical writing and fiction blog by Sarah Maddox” is another interesting selection. While the blog topics can be a bit off-topic (example: Dec 25, 2017 – “Sarah’s hevvy fruitcake”) there are still a lot of interesting posts to be found here including:
- Dec 31, 2016 – What do you want to know about Tech Comm on a Map?
- Nov 19, 2016 – Modern technical writing, a talk by Andrew Etter about his book
- Nov 13, 2016 – Where do technical writers fit in an organization
- Nov 05, 2016 – Report from Write the Docs Sydney
- Oct 07, 2017 – Musing about Write the Docs and ASTC and STC and more
- Sep 24, 2017 – How to get started with Markdown and where to try it out
Hopefully this smattering of Technical Communication content on the web will prompt you to get out there and look around to find out what’s going on in our industry, what kinds of things people are working on, what kinds of things others are finding interesting, etc. But we would also love to hear from you on this topic.
What TC blogs have you found online that catch your attention? What is it that you like most about them? What is it that you wish you could find more information about? Be sure and post a note here to share and/or inquire as we’d love to hear from you or to help you out with your search for useful content. Happy exploring!
