25+ Coding post types - Ideas for trending tech blogs

Every programmer has a writer in them. It's just that not everyone has patience to write :)

When we want to write our tech blogs either as a profession or a hobby, sometimes we might get stuck on few questions like

1. What type of coding post or programming post we need to write next ?
2. What are the pros and cons of specific coding post types
3. Any example references for them ?

To answer these questions, in this tutorial we will learn about 25+ coding post types / ideas along with examples that you can implement in your next trending article.

Let’s get started.

There are many types of programming posts people blog about. Here are the best ones to include in your next programming post.

1. Listicles

Listicles are the articles written in list format. Best example for this is the post that you are reading right now 15 Coding post ideas is a listicle. It has list of 25+ ideas where each of them can be explained individually while covering the whole topic.

• Listicles are great for SEO (Search engine optimization) i.e. they can rank better on Google or other search engines. One of the reasons for this is that they can be featured by google snippets. Check the example snippet that google ranks for one of the listicle coding post.

• As you can see in the screenshot, since the article is in a list format, google tries to give answer the search query as an instant answer which in turn helps rank our blog to be on top of google list.

• Other advantage of listicles is that they are great for affiliate marketing. For example if a listicle is about top 10 books to buy, then each book can have its own affiliate link that you can add in content contextually.

• Some cons of listicles are that it can be time consuming to collect the lists depending on how complex the list is. So keep that in mind when picking a listicle topic.

Examples:
Top 10 most loved programming languages of 2022
Top 10 Cloud Service Providers Globally in 2022

2. Text based Courses

Video and text are two powerful ways to learn something. Lot of people take video courses to learn new things. Interestingly many people prefer text based courses as opposed to video. Reason being that videos can be time consuming to watch. Since each of us read at our own speed, text based courses can save a lot of time compared to video.

So if you plan to create a video course of if you have one already or want to start some course, try to write a text based course too. This save a lot of time and can act as input to video courses.

Example: educative.io has popular text based courses related to programming.

3. Text blog for Podcast

Do you run a podcast or want to create one ? Well don’t miss the opportunity to convert your podcast episode into a blog post. Well if you think why, here are few reasons

• You can add supporting docs/images for the podcasts as a blog post where viewers can refer to your blog while listening to podcast.
• Going back to SEO example, having a content for audio can help you rank on search engines which in turn can drive traffic to your podcast. Similarly you can direct your podcast traffic to grow your website too.

Example: How to Repurpose a Blog Post into a Podcast Episode

4. Cheat sheets

Cheatsheets are the quick reference posts. Best suited for programming language syntax, commands, quick tips to remember some key concepts etc. If you haven’t created cheatsheet already, definitely give a try to create one.

• Try to create cheatsheets in a visually appealing format. Biggest reason for that being people start to link to your cheatsheets which can help gain backlinks to your site helping gain domain authority to your posts.

Examples:
Markdown syntax cheatsheet
PostgreSQL Vs MySQL comparison cheatsheet

5. Tutorials

Tutorial posts don’t need an introduction. In these type of posts, we pick a topic and provide a step by step guide to explain a specific topic. These are great for explaining specific topics both in depth and depth.

• Depending on type of tutorial, these posts can be lengthy or short. If the posts are written in detail, it would be helpful to easily create videos out of it, as you have the script ready to be recorded as a video.
• Quick tip: Try writing tutorial sites as detailed as possible and try to cover both in depth and breadth of the article. This helps in better SEO as Google loves in depth articles for page ranking.

Example: Carbon language tutorial

6. How to guides

How to guides are similar to tutorials, just that they solve a very specific problem. Tutorials can be like a mini course covering various aspects of a topic. How to guides has focus on small topic.

Examples:
How to convert Java object to JSON string?
How to read file as string in java

7. Programming solutions

If you are preparing for interviews or want to help people preparing for interviews, writing blog post to simplify and describe a specific problem/algorithm is a great way to build audience to your blog. Lot of coding platforms like Leetcode, Hackerrank, Codeforces have problems that doesn’t have good solutions. Creating solution articles to those posts is a great opportunity to gain traffic.

Example: Coding Interview solutions

8. Solutions to stack overflow problems

Did you know sites like stackoverflow, quora, reddit etc are great places to get blog content ideas? When you look at a question on stackoverflow, you will see lot of answers posted by multiple people. You can take the top questions and create a blog post to summarize multiple solutions as a listicle with detailed examples.

• You can check the traffic stats in stackoverflow or quora and decide to write an article out of it. In that way you can instantly know the potential traffic that are in need of a specific question.

Examples:

[Solved] Carbon language not working execvp llvm-ar file not found error

Reference Stackoverflow post: Some one actually used this post as example in stackoverflow to explain to others
Carbon language brew install llvm error

9. Comparison posts

Comparison between two or more languages/frameworks/architectures/tools are a great way to catch instant attention. For example if you make a comparison post between PostgreSQL vs MySQL databases, it has opportunity to gain audience from both PostgreSQL and MySQL users.

• Comparison posts can be tricky sometimes as you are dealing with fans and non-fans of a specific tool or language or framework etc that you are trying to compare. So have a neutral tone always to avoid conflicts.

• If written well, these posts have huge potential to be shared in multiple domains.

• When you write comparison posts, try to add a side by side table. This helps google to index your site better to show them on featured snippets as shown in the example below.

Examples:
Carbon language vs Rust comparison
PostgreSQL vs MySQL Comparison

10. Guest Interviews

Everyone likes to be featured / interviewed in news or blog posts. Guest interviews are a great way to make connections and gain visibility to your blog. You can interview people about their personal or technical achievements and write a blog post out of it.

Initially when your blog is new, some reputed personalities might not give interviews to you. So start with someone in the mid successful in their careers and as the blog gets some traction reach out to more successful people and feature them in your blog. Once you do that you can ask the person you are trying to interview to share them to their audience which increases your blog traffic and authority.

Example: How a Google recruiter prepared for her own interview

11. Review sites

Other type of blog posts people often search are the review posts. You can pick multiple products solving the same problem and provide your reviews. You can crowd-source your reviews by asking opinions / surveys to your existing audience and include those testimonials in your blog.

Example: Google cloud review

12. Negative posts

One of the crudest ways to gain blog traffic is writing negative posts / reviews. Majority of blogs talk about good things. But less number of posts actually talk about negatives of a tool or technology or solution.

When writing negative posts try focusing on providing actionable feedback while describing the cons of a particular topic. Also include data points to support your negative feedback. In that way readers of the post actually consider the post a genuine feedback instead of thinking of it as a marketing post.

Example: I stopped using Visual Studio Code

13. Biography posts

Biographies are a great way to inspire and influence people. Take a biography specific to your blog niche. For example, if you are blogging about programming in java, include a biography post about James Gosling, the inventor of Java. Whenever people learn about a specific topic they would like to learn more about who developed or invented that particular framework. So give it a try.

Example: Dennis Ritchie, father of C programming

14. Engineering / Architecture posts

Engineering blogs are a great example of architecture posts. When you implement a technology at scale or when you tried something different than what others are doing, writing a blog post for these topics is a great idea. Almost every top technology company has a blog dedicated for engineering. You can get inspirations from these engineering blogs for your next blog post.

Examples:
Twitter engineering blog
Amazon architecture blog

15. Experiences

Writing about personal experiences connects you personally with your readers. Write about your experiences learning something or some of the challenges you faced when doing something. These posts are a great idea to enlighten your audience.

Examples:
Experiences with various ideas

16. News & Trends

Latest news and writing posts related to latest trending topics is one other good idea to guage user attention. Just be aware of the competition when spending time on it as there are thousands of news blogs.

In addition to these effective ideas, here are few more types of coding posts that you can write about

17. Checklists
18. Collection of resources
19. Letters
20. Tips and facts
21. Class notes
22. Handwritten images or notes
23. Simple one page tools
24. Algorithm explanation posts
25. Standards in the industry
26. Surveys / Performance reports

Additional resources:

20 Types of programming posts

15 Inspiring Blog Post Ideas for Developers

Conclusion

There are tons of other variations of articles that you can write about.

When you decide your next blog post, think in a long term on what is more useful for your audience. Put the user first and then work back word to decide on an idea.

In addition to that, make sure you do some SEO analysis on whether users are really asking for the type of topic that you want to write about. Try free Google Ads keyword research tool and get an idea of traffic for specific keywords to include in your post and pick one of the type of posts from above list.

We will cover in depth on how to pick your next topic that can be ranked better in Google focusing on programming or developer content in our immediate future posts. So make sure to subscribe to our newsletter.

Hope this post helps you drive your next trending article. If you have other ideas, make a comment below and help spread the love by linking this article in your next blog post and spread the love by sharing to others. Until next time have a great day.