When you start a tech company, you write a blog. That’s just what everyone does. After all, you’re also reading this on a company’s blog. But many times, it is better for your company not to rush having a blog, especially if you can’t invest time and/or money. I see so many awesome startups who have a totally generic blog that has very little to do with their mission. And it’s because they handed over their precious blog site to a dubious content agency and threw away the key.

You don’t have time to write a blog, so you hire someone random

The usual scenario goes like this: An email pops up in your mailbox. A content agency from a far away country says it will sell you a blog creating service for 600 USD a month. You will get 10 posts a month. And as incredible as it sounds, the agency has technical writers who focus exactly on your field. What luck to have people on board who are the same fans of Kubernetes clusters as you are.

Wrong. You pay for a writer who has never heard of Kubernetes and right now is googling the term. They can’t code and don’t have a clue about IT infrastructure. They never worked in tech, but they believe that “a good writer can write about everything”.

Soon after you sign a contract, shiny new posts start to appear on your WordPress site. You don’t have much time to read through them, but they have a nice cover picture and headlines mentioning something about containers.

Your run-of-the-mill standard post

Don’t you find it odd that those posts don’t have one single line of code or one command? Do you think your customers, who are mostly serious engineers, want to read some generic Wikipedia-like compilations on what Kubernetes is? They already know, that’s why they want to buy your product. And the articles on your blog just waste their time.

At one point, you will make a demand for a very specific topic. Please, my dear content agency, can you create a post about how to autoscale the DNS in a cluster? Of course, they can’t, they have no idea about clusters or even what DNS mean. It will be difficult to generate such an article by ChatGPT and by compiling random sources. So you get an answer from the content manager: Sorry, but this topic is not really in alignment with our SEO strategy. What about more articles on the best morning routing for software developers?

Essential tips for your tech blog

Did you really think throwing a couple of hundred bucks a month to some random content agency will make you a leader in your online bubble? No, it will make it obvious that your materials are written by people who have no idea about your product or tech in general.

Golden rule: If you don’t have good in-house tech writers or reputable content agency at hand, do not have a blog. Invest the effort to write a proper onboarding tutorials instead. Or let your CTO write a couple of posts on LinkedIn. This will have by far more positive impact than soiling your website with generic posts.

For those of you who are serious about building a strong tech blog, I would recommend the following:

1/ Ask your support: Your customer support agents know best what grinds the gears of your customers – therefore have tips for interesting topics.

2/ Get your CTO: Your audience doesn’t want to read shower thoughts of your CRO. If you can sit down with your CTO or your tech lead, do it.   

3/ Make a video intro: With all that coding and video games, our tech community has the attention span of a goldfish. Videos work.

4/ Don’t be afraid to go deep: Not everyone who stumbles on your blog has to understand the article. I dare to say, not even all your customers. Let the audience grow with you, not dumb yourself down to everyone.

5/ Don’t forget to measure: Finding what articles people read the most will help not only your sales, but it can also help your product department. There are easy-to-use tools nowadays, such as Hotjar or Smartlook.

Or forget all the hassle and just hand over your blog to our seasoned tech writers: