2 What to write

Selecting a promising topic is the single most important task for creating an engineering blog post that gets read. A catchy title, eloquent sentences, solid code examples, even cool interactive elements—none of that matters if you’re not covering a topic that’s a good fit for both you and your readers. The flip side of that: if you provide an impressive level of technical insight on a topic your readers truly care about, slight imperfections (like a few rough sentences) will likely be forgiven.

How do you find these perfect topics? They’re probably lurking all around your daily work; you just need to start identifying them as such.

This chapter focuses on how to build a healthy list of ideas that you—you in particular, not some generic engineer—should be able to develop into compelling blog posts. We start by providing a memorable litmus test for deciding what types of topic ideas have the most potential. The bulk of the chapter focuses on getting the ideas flowing, sharing all sorts of ways you might find inspiration in your daily work and across broader industry discussions. We close by discussing ways to keep a steady flow of fresh ideas on your radar.

2.1 Prioritizing ideas: The 3 Ps

2.2 Topics, topics, everywhere

2.2.1 That cool thing you implemented

2.2.2 A security incident post-mortem

2.2.3 How your infrastructure survived a traffic spike (or didn’t)

2.2.4 Bug hunting

2.2.5 An open source contribution

2.2.6 A fun weekend project

2.2.7 An interesting design decision and tradeoff you made

2.2.8 An architectural shift you’re making

2.2.9 Frustration and fatigue

2.2.10 Take a stand on some contentious topic

2.2.11 Sweet numbers

2.2.12 Propose using something in an unexpected way

2.2.13 Revisit past predictions

2.2.14 Capability clarification

2.2.15 Capability comparison

2.2.16 Footgun prevention

2.2.17 Why you’re building something

2.3 Increasing your trigger exposure

2.3.1 Social media