Writing Assistance Newsrooom Blog

by Whitney Potsus

Whether the documentation department has a staff of one or a team of 12, visibility within the company is a frequent concern. The reasons for this concern range from personal to professional. You want to be remembered when promotions and bonuses are handed out. You want new challenges to add diversity to your workload, and new projects to add skills to your resume. You want to defend your turf against budget cuts and layoffs during lean economic times. And you want to be more than an afterthought that lives in the back 40 of the cubicle farm.

You’ve probably come to this article looking for specific ideas of what you can do in your organization to raise the technical communications group’s profile. And there will be some of those. But trying to provide specific recommendations for raising your group’s profile in your company is a little like giving someone else marriage advice. Unless you’re sitting in the thick of things every day, participating in the maintenance of the relationship, it’s difficult to offer ideas that are compatible with and cognizant of all the variables in personalities, skills, strengths, and weaknesses, communication styles, schedules, aspirations, and so on.

In here, you will find suggestions to mull over as you try to determine the best ways to expand your influence throughout the company. Because when you talk to other technical communicators and documentation managers, what you often hear is “ Be careful what you wish for…you just might get it .”

Following, we’ll address:

• Taking Time to Focus
• What Solutions Do Customers Need?
• What Twirls Your Beanie?
• Mapping Your Goals
• Cited Readings & Resources

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Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal

Article Summary
Writing Assistance was named to the Twin Cities Business Journal Fast 50 Growing Companies.

by Whitney Potsus

“Lone writers” — those people who work as their employer’s only staff writers — are a different breed, with their own unique set of professional and personal challenges. At the same time a blessing and a curse, the lone writer life offers flexibility, variety, and autonomy, along with feelings of stress, isolation, and burnout.

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