I was wondering recently why no one responded to one of our Architect's community posts seeking for customers' feedback on our product improvement idea, and so I took a closer look: The title is catchy and stands out in the list of posts, so that’s good.
As is often the case with technical writing, I found the writing style to be the main detractor. Below I am sharing some pointers that would help.
- The post is overly verbose. Half (or more) of the content could be chopped without hurting the post objective. By shortening this post more busy people would take a plunge and read it.
- Formatting techniques can be employed to improve the readability.
- Paragraphs would help. Without them everything looks like one big blob of black on white characters. It’s hard to "park" the look on any particular part of the post. Nothing jumps out.
- Questions could be grouped into concise bullet lists.
- Headers can be used to break down the post into 2-3 sections, e.g. Background; Challenge; Our Questions.
- Bold or underline font could be used to highlight key concepts (just don’t overdo this so it does not look like a glittery Christmas tree).
- A picture could
help to spice up a post and attract attention.
All of the above pointers are also applicable to writing emails and
blogging.
