Industry Articles
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 Steve Capri
Whether you work on a technical-writing team responsible for your company’s e-marketing activities or not, chances are this ever-changing channel will eventually cross your path—if it hasn’t already. And although you might not be someone who designs marketing strategies, you may already be designing and developing marketing content, including email campaigns.
It’s not uncommon for technical writing and marketing teams to co-develop printed or web-based marketing collateral. Likewise, e-marketing deliverables deployed through email blasts bring even more dimension to the mix. Like all other marketing materials, email blasts require excellent writing and design skills. But more importantly, they require a thorough knowledge of how to collect and manage recipients, track statistics, and plan for ongoing campaigns. So as this channel continues to mature, it’s incumbent of technical writers and marketing folks alike to at least gain a basic knowledge about the DOs and DON’Ts of e-marketing practices and procedures.
So whether you’re new to or experienced with e-marketing, following are some guidelines to consider.
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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.
Luanne Oleas
The projects, they are increasing. The number of writers is decreasing. Jobs are floating across oceans. Agile, thy name is fickle. What’s a good writer going to do? You have to change. Adapt. Be ready for anything, because chances are, that’s exactly what’s coming your way.
One of the hardest principles slipping from our grasp in these tense times is the quality factor. It used to be one area where the technical writer could be the master of his or her fate. Developers revised your content, project managers overruled your phraseology, but you, as an experienced writer, could still make the final product shine. Now? Not so much.
Part of the problem could be that your Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are no longer sharing your water cooler. In fact, in this year’s budget, they nixed the water cooler, too. Your reviewers could be thousands of miles away, which can make motivating them difficult. OK, impossible. Well, almost.
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As a documentation team manager, getting visibility for your team within the organization can be a challenge. Technical writers and doc teams aren’t generally seen as profit centers, so they are often relegated to second-class status.
Whether your documentation group is a solo technical writer or a team of 12, poor internal visibility for your group can mean it gets overlooked when promotions, bonuses and other company perks are handed out. It can also mean that team members may be more susceptible to staffing cutbacks.
This article by Whitney Potsus discusses ways you can get your documentation group some visibility. It contains a number of tips along with some good resources to get you on the right track.
Read: Raising Your Documentation Team’s Visibility
More from Whitney Potsus
The Life of a Lone Writer
Are You Dealing with Professional Burnout?
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.
Val Swisher
If your company is like most these days, you have been tasked with creating more (and more) content with fewer (and fewer) people. In the never-ending quest to cut expenses, many companies have laid-off content developers. At the same time, in the quest to drive revenue, companies are shipping more products, in more languages, and at a more rapid pace. That begs the question, “How do you get more out of the same resources when you create content?” Resources are both the people who create and edit the content, and the content itself. When it comes to increasing operational efficiency, companies can do several things to enhance their content output without adding more resources.
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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.
Kerri Barber
Jobs, jobs, jobs! The headlines are everywhere and seem to be the core topic on everyone’s mind. If you are a manger who is lucky enough to add to your staff, you may feel like a pageant winner right about now. Once the celebrating subsides, you are left with a tough decision to make. Exactly what kind of employee are you looking to hire?
There are certain characteristics inherent to every candidate search, but none is more influential than total cost versus overall experience ratio. You may be thinking that now is the time to get a great deal on valuable talent. In many instances, you may be right. But ask yourself this: Has the job market really become a mirror image of the current housing market? Are there some great MBA candidates and stellar employees available at a reduced salary band? Yes and no. All things being relative, you will still have to weigh your options according to your needs and take a leap of faith. However, there are some surprising data points emerging from our current economic conditions as well as a few key ideas to consider before you begin searching for your next team member.
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No matter what you may be paid as a technical writer, one thing is clear: technical writing is a valuable skill for the hiring company.
When a writer is able to lay out complicated information in a user-friendly way, not only are those using the information better served, but there are financial benefits as well.
Imagine having an outline for how one might follow a complicated procedure in a medical facility. With a technical document in place, there are clear understandings about what equipment is to be used, when it is to be used, and how it is to be used. If an entire medical system follows the directions, there is a reduced chance of wasted supplies and labor.
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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: Pam Swanwick and Juliet Wells Leckenby
Every manager struggles to balance writer workload and project capacity. A simple spreadsheet-based system can help you objectively evaluate assigned tasks, task time and complexity, special projects, and even writer experience levels to more accurately assess individual workload and capacity. The result is a simple but useful representational graph.
In addition to measuring current team capacity and productivity, this method also provides objective metrics to better estimate future project capacity and to support performance evaluations for individual writers.
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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.
Buckley Jeppson
On October 13, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Plain Writing Act of 2010, a law that aims to make federal government writing clearer. This article summarizes the new law, briefly explains the nature of Plain Language writing, and outlines the implications for technical communicators.
Efforts to implement Plain Language into government writing started back in the Clinton Administration and were heavily evangelized by then-Vice President Al Gore, but this is the first time legislation has mandated a change in the way government communicates with the public.
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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.
Scott Abel
No matter where you look these days, some vendors are touting how their new software products can help technical documentation departments magically “collaborate” their way to tremendous savings. You may be considering a purchase of one of these collaborative authoring tools. If you are, be forewarned that your return on investment may not be as spectacular as anticipated.
It’s not that there aren’t tremendous savings to gain by working in a collaborative manner. There are software products that can help your documentation group work more efficiently, making it possible for you to save significant time and resources. The real problem is closer to home. And it actually has nothing at all to do with software.
The real problem is that most technical documentation groups do not work as a team. Just because you co-locate a group of people in one big room, or somehow join them together under a common departmental umbrella, does not make them a team. Not even close.
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One of my favorite articles on this site, Dealing with Professional Burnout by Whitney Potsus, attacks professional burnout: recognizing the warning signs, dealing with it and how managers can help.
Professional burnout can strike anyone regardless of their profession – tech writer, corporate trainer, freelance writer, website marketing specialist, butcher, baker, candlestick maker – but it’s not always easy to detect until the damage has been done.
This article looks at the signs of professional burnout and dealing with them head on – alone and with the help of others. It also provides resources you (or someone you care about) can use to break out of a rut.
Read: Dealing with Professional Burnout
More from Whitney Potsus
The Life of a Lone Writer
Raising Your Documentation Team’s Visibility
