Editor’s Note: This was the feature article in this month’s TechCom Manager newsletter, reprinted here with permission. Click the previous link to subscribe to the newsletter.

by Nicky Bleiel

Software companies have been interacting with their users online for many years. It’s common to find forums where users can interact with one another AND the company, as well as with web sites that provide multiple forms of assistance. Since 2004, ComponentOne has maintained HelpCentral, a web site that includes forums, knowledgebase articles, FAQs, videos, documentation, access to tech support, and code samples. Search engines can easily locate the site and its content.

Except for the forums, none of this falls into the social-media category. However, HelpCentral is an example of a one-stop, user-assistance shop that includes user peer-to-peer conversations, with a large helping of self-help information. But, as described by supply-chain folks, HelpCentral is a “pull” system. You have to open the site and to see what it offers, or use a search engine and find it.

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Back in late 2007, early 2008, we published an article by Rahel Anne Bailie, principal of Intentional Design Inc. in Vancouver, BC. In that excellent article, Rahel pointed out that “Internet 3.0″ or Web 3.0 was just emerging.

The article took a look at how content was becoming considered a corporate asset and how technical content, such as technical manuals, would increasingly become valuable assets to corporations in the “new age of content”.

Without a doubt, much has happened since then. The Web has become a social “monster” of sorts. Sharing content has become commonplace. Cloud computing has evolved allowing for centralized Web access to both applications and content. The popularity of mobile devices has exploded. The phrase, “There’s an app for that.” has become ubiquitous.

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I stumbled across this great post by Peter Shankman called Top Eight Ways to Survive Conference Season. In it, Shankman (who travels 300,000 miles per year consulting, advising and speaking) offers his insights on the best ways to get through a conference, now that the summer is over and conference season is nigh.

While his 8 tips are a good start, there are also a number of tips in the comments on the post that make it a worthwhile read.

Conferences can be valuable learning and networking experiences. However, for the unguided, they can also be places to pick up a nasty flu virus and one or more terrible hangovers, especially for the unprepared or uninitiated.

Do you have any tips to offer conference goers – especially newbies attending their first conference? We’d love to hear them! Please leave a comment.

Top Eight Ways to Survive Conference Season
How to Justify Conference Attendance
8th Annual LavaCon in San Diego in September

A common argument among companies and HR departments is whether the technical writers they hire should be well versed in many projects or just in a particular set of projects.  And there are good arguments for both sides of this discussion.

Why Specialization Helps with Technical Writers

Technical writers are already specialists of sorts, helping to create technical documentation for any number of departments.  They are able to create manuals, handbooks and other forms of documentation, such as online help, that instruct readers how to perform certain tasks.

This work is detailed, specific and needs to be well organized.  The technical writer needs to be able to organize not only the material, but also the way the material is presented in order to be utilized to its full intent.  Choosing technical writers who specialize in certain departments (e.g. IT) can be helpful as there is already a base of knowledge from which to write.  They may already understand how certain information needs to be presented and how it will likely be used.

The More Skills the Merrier Argument

On the other side of the coin, technical writers who specialize in only one field or functional department might be limiting their ability to help a company that has more diverse needs and lacks the budget to engage multiple writers.  For example, if the IT department and the marketing department need materials, technical writers who only have backgrounds in IT might have a harder time transferring those skills to another department like marketing.  Certainly, marketing writers have different skill sets from technical writers, especially those technical writers who do not have a broad background of writing experience. Technical writers who have a varied writing background and the ability to shift tone and fully appreciate the needs of diverse audiences can serve multiple purposes in an organization, and thereby offer greater potential value to the organization. 

Specialized or not, technical writers are a valuable part of a company.  By understanding if you need a versatile writer or specialized writer, you’ll be able to choose the best writer for your company’s specific needs, and you will never be “at a loss for words”, so to speak.

What are your thoughts on specialists vs. generalists when it comes to technical writers? Please leave a comment.

Choosing a new employee is one thing, but finding the right technical writer to hire can be a daunting task.

While you might be up to your ears in resumes, the technical writer who is going to best fit a company’s needs isn’t always clear.  While a person might be trained and available to begin work on Monday, there are certain skills that are especially valuable in technical writers to assure they will meet your needs.

3 Key Considerations for a Technical Writer

• Experience
• Efficiency
• Versatility (Can produce a wide variety of documents in various output formats.)

If your company is ready to take on a new technical writer, you need to know that the writer you select will not only produce the work you need to get done, but will do so with skill, expertise, and efficiency.

Their resume should begin with a list of past employers who have already seen the writer in action.  The jobs performed for those employers might include documentation work while on staff contracting as a writer, and even working as a freelancer in the technical writing market.

Efficiency is the one skill that may be most difficult to judge.  However, if the resume indicates your candidate has been able to retain clients over a longer period of time, that’s one potential indicator. Having a demonstrated history of being able to multi-task, especially in juggling multiple projects simultaneously is another.  If prior and current employers have kept the writer coming back for follow-on projects, it’s generally for a good reason.

Demonstrated evidence of versatility is especially important if you plan to use the technical writer’s skills on multiple projects or occasionally ask the writer to contribute to knowledge base, marketing or website content in addition to his or her documentation tasks. Hiring a technical writer who has demonstrated versatility will allow you to entrust the writer with various projects, with fewer rewrites, restructuring, and reworking of the content.

Of course, it goes without saying that if the technical writer you are considering is already knowledgeable in your industry and has experience with the tools you use everyday to produce documents, he or she might seem like the ideal hire. However, a truly adept technical writer has probably had to learn a variety of new tools throughout his or her career, so tool skills alone should not be an overriding factor in making a decision, especially not in a decision whether to offer an interview to the candidate.

Related articles:
Hiring Technical Writers
What to Consider When Hiring Technical Writers

We’d love to hear your thoughts on choosing the right technical writer. Please leave a comment.

Editor’s Note: This was the feature article in this month’s TechCom Manager newsletter, reprinted here with permission. Click the previous link to subscribe to the newsletter.

by Buckley Jeppson

As documentation managers facing tight deadlines and tighter resources, we always strive to make sure we have the best possible team of workers. It stands to reason that when we need to fill a vacancy, we want the most experienced people we can find. But often, we skip over older workers in favor of younger ones. Why is that, and is it a wise business decision? Let’s take a look at why older workers might deserve more serious consideration.

The current economic slump has been especially hard on older victims of downsizing. I discovered this firsthand when the company where I expected to spend the rest of my working years suddenly became a victim of the economy and morphed into a virtual company with no office and only the president and vice president as full-time employees. After months of searching without a serious nibble, I began to approach a few personal friends in other industries for ideas.

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Technical writing isn’t considered by most to be an art form, but more of a way to communicate certain pieces of information as efficiently as possible (which, in a way, is an art form in itself).  Documentation that remains static over the years can get a little flat, if not outright stale.

When you’re writing a manual or just a memo to others, you might want to think about whether the writing has gotten into a rut.  If it has, not only is the audience reading it going to be bored, but they might skip over vital information as a result of assuming you’re presenting information in a particular way.

There are a number of ways in which technical writing can be amped up to be more effective, but also more exciting for today’s readers.  Even if the content is far from exciting.

Whether you hire a new technical writer or use the original writer to revamp the information, you’ll want to look for ideas that will allow:

1. Arrange information in a pleasing manner – While looks shouldn’t count for everything, they do still count.  Using lists and smaller paragraphs will help make information easier to digest.
2. Rethink the order – If the presentation of information doesn’t really work in its current hierarchy, change it up to make it more logical.  This can help create an interest in readers who may have tired of the old presentation or who were unable to find what they were looking for without a lot of aggravation.
3. Provide a fresh outlook and perspective – Over the past few years, we’ve become accustomed to absorbing information in small bites. A perfect example of this is the 140-word character limit in Twitter. You want information to be clear and concise and not to result in tedium when read. Maybe it’s time to add some interesting graphics, charts, or in the case of online documentation, some engaging videos.

Embracing change is a good thing, especially when it comes to documentation that is getting stale or worse yet, getting ignored. By taking a fresh approach with today’s reader in mind, you can make information more readable, easier to digest and more relevant without leaving out important details. 

What are your thoughts on making documentation more readable for today’s audience? Please leave a comment.

Related Article
What Technical Communication Managers Must Do to Prove the Value of Their Deliverables

When a manual or online help system needs to be reworked or rewritten because it’s not working well for the users, completing the project might seem simple on the surface. After all, the past writer(s) who wrote the documentation already know the information inside and out, so refining and reworking the text should be simple. Right?

Maybe not.

The problem with using the same writers to describe software they’ve documented in the past is that they can often write the material from their own point of view, and they might not be considering the users in the audience, whose needs may have changed since the original material was first written.

It’s similar to an HR manager’s description of a job versus a worker’s description of the same position. Both descriptions may be technically correct, but they might not seem the same to someone who’s not familiar with that position.

When documentation needs to be rewritten, there are two important considerations for who will be tasked with the chore of completing the project:

1. The chosen writer needs to be fully familiar with the product – It goes without saying that a new writer will have to become familiar with the product. But if the original writer is available and hasn’t actually used the product or its documentation lately, he or she should spend time learning more about it using a fresh perspective. This perspective should be form the point of view of a new user. Rewrites and updates also present a cross-training opportunity for a writer who has never used the product before. Having both the new and the old writers working collaboratively can sometimes provide the best end result because you get to combine the knowledge and experience of the original writer with the inexperience of the new writer and they can help keep each other in check.
2. The writer needs to have a good understanding of today’s audience – This is common sense, of course, but is sometimes overlooked. If customers aren’t satisfied with the documentation it may be time to get better insight on today’s actual audience for the material. Not every technical writer has a strong grasp of the needs of their audience, so it may be that the original writer missed the mark in this area. It may also be that the original assumptions about the audience were incorrect. In that case, a fresh writer may be the best solution. The writer who is not familiar with the product will be looking for information, and during that process can learn a lot about what is available, what isn’t available, what could be organized better and what is confusing to a new user.

On the whole, technical writers are very good at explanations: It’s what they do. But their explanations need to be written for the audience, not for themselves. Even if the descriptions are technically accurate, they may be confusing to users, especially new users, who are likely to get bored, get confused, or both.

What often happens is that users get to the point where they become so frustrated with the documentation they stop turning to it for information.

Getting, and fully incorporating, user feedback is important. That said, when it’s time to rework or rewrite the documentation, it’s not about getting rid of the seasoned tech writers, having a fresh point of view can have a substantial benefit, not only for end users, but for everyone on the team.

What are your thoughts? Please leave a comment.

With the economy struggling to regain a foothold, many employers are reluctant to hire permanent staff. However, as business picks up, the need for additional workers, such as technical writers, instructional designers, medical writers and other hihgly skilled and experienced professionals also picks up.

Working with a specializied staffing company like Writing Assistance can help you solve your specialized staffing needs without having to commit to the overhead of a permanent employee until you’re sure the employee will work out, your budget can handle it and the economic recovery is on solid ground.

A specialized staffing company offers several advantages through Contract to Hire positions. Here are the top 5:

1. Rent expertise – Bring in an expert that can “hit the ground running” and provide exceptional skills and experience. In addition to the contractor’s expertise, you have access to staffing experts who will offer insight to the writing world including salary expectations, hot or cold market, experience level required to complete the job and current tools being used to complete tasks.
2. Limit your company’s liability – By working with a third party staffing company you limit your co-employment liabilities. The staffing company providing the consultant assumes the employee’s liability and will manage payroll (including unemployment), taxes and benefits.
3. Gain immediate access – Using a specialty staffing firm you access the “best of the best”. Niche staffing firms have large networks of consultants for any industry, location or specialty and recruiters are always networking to build their connections in the industry. They work with the specialty day in and day out and typically can provide qualified candidates within a couple days.
4. Try before you buy – By bringing in a contractor on a Contract to Hire basis you will learn the individual’s work habits and decide if they have the technical knowledge and personality fit to be an employee. There is no obligation to hire or keep a contractor. If you decide they are not a good fit, you end the contract.
5. Thaw the hiring freeze – Instead of delaying a project or having the timeline fall apart while waiting for the hiring freeze to be lifted you can bring in a contractor as a Contract to Hire. This will keep the project going and when hiring is approved you have an expert ready to go.

   What are your thoughts on adding Contract-to-Hire staff? Have you tried it before? If you need contract or contract-to-hire workers in our niche specialty areas, contact us to get started.

It’s really an HR department’s dream to hire a person with more than one skill set – two employees for the price of one.

But when you’re ready to hire a technical writer, are there certain skills they should have in order to be most effective?

What Should Technical Writers Be Doing?

Technical writers are meant to be performing a certain set of tasks, mainly the construction of informational documents, courses and instructional guides.  Now, this doesn’t mean their skills can’t branch out to other writing tasks, but since many businesses now have websites to address, it makes sense that if the technical writer is handling copy for the website, that they might be able to handle the website as well.

Is this really the case?  For many businesses, the website was created by an outside company, who then launched the site and maintains it.  This is an arrangement that allows you to keep the web management separate from the daily routine of work – and it’s an arrangement that should stay in place.  Having an outside firm is much more efficient than simply putting an hourly employee on the task.

The Skills the Technical Writer Needs

However, this doesn’t mean the technical writer should be completely without the skills to understand a website.  Having some basic HTML knowledge as well as CSS will help them to better understand how their text will look on a website.  When they understand this, it will help them to layout the text in a certain style that will show up best.

And in a pinch, they can help the IT department with their text placement on the website.

That said, if you find a technical writer with web design skills, HIRE THEM.  Hire them quickly.   That is a person who can be more valuable to the company than most people who are assigned the writing you need.

What are your thoughts? What skills make a technical writer more valuable?

Related topics
Technical Writer: Which Skill Sets are Important?
Considerations When Hiring a Technical Writer