During my job search, I’ve been publishing at least one blog per week. After reading many sample blogs and creating my own, I’ve come up with four basic things that you can do to make your blog posts pop. In addition to having great content, it’s important to have eye-catching images and demos to ensure your blogs are read.
ADD AN IMAGE
Underneath your title, upload your own image or use a stock image from Unsplash, which are available directly through Medium. When you click on the plus sign to add a new section, choose the search icon (instead of the photo icon), and you can search through all of Unsplash’s images. It’s so easy and makes a big difference.
^ See? Images always make blogs better (now I want ice cream…)
CREATE CUSTOM GIFS
There are many free programs out there, but I’ve really enjoyed using Gyazo. With your free account, you can store up to 10 seven-second gifs or “captures”. (You can always download gifs to your computer and delete from your Gyazo account). Below is an example I included in a recent blog on using Material-UI.
ADD CODE WITH GIST
I only came across this recently, but Gist is a great way to share your code. It’s based in GitHub, and you can create public or private gist repositories. You can easily embed your code in Medium by simply pasting the url and pressing return.
TAGS
Choose tags that are popular for a better chance of being picked up by a Medium publisher or curated by Medium. When publishing your post, you can see the amount of posts that use those tags. For instance, “React” has 41,000 whereas “Redux Thunk” only has 223. Personally, my blogs have been picked up when I’ve tagged them with “Software Engineering,” “JavaScript” and “Data Science.”
I hope these tips help your blogs stand out!
