Enterprise 2.0 Principles for Technical Documentation

Guest Post by Anne Gentle

Meeting business goals with emergent social software, this is Enterprise 2.0. As a technical writer, do you doubt that Enterprise 2.0 can happen where you work? Consider this. Even the most influential and gate-keeping newspapers now allow comments alongside their strictly styled, investigated, and copy-edited content. A browser sidebar from Google called Sidewiki enables annotation on any page on the entire web. Traditional technical communication may not have enabled readers to talk about the content or talk to each other alongside the content, but the times (and The Times) are changing. 

You Are Here

Across the software industry today, writers are proving their worth by aligning with business values such as education, training, customer support, presales, marketing, or development. We seek our fit into the overall content strategy in any organization. Some of us are the content strategy advocates in our organization. But social media is sometimes a public relations role, or a marketing role, even though our content has a place on the external website and could be strategically integrated into the overall website. Social software can be overwhelming and a time sink without knowing how to narrow down the choices. Without a strategy, it seems like a hit or miss proposition. Make a map from business goals to social software to get there.

Where is There?

Enabling content creation or content curation through social software is no simple undertaking, nor is it the right fit for every organization. Depending on the business goals and key performance indicators for your success, you can discover where "there" is. For customer support content, responsiveness is important as well as customer satisfaction. For education and training, the amount of time a user spends with a learning product, or how often they share it with others can indicate success. Only you know where "there" is for your success factors. Certain qualities for your content will help you achieve nearly any business goal, such as those in the following list.

Searchable

Searchable content can be listed when searching with major search engines and is available on the Internet. Google's home page is the first page users go to prior to finding the answer to their question from your content. Also, once a user is in your content collection, search within a smaller set of content may be critical to their success. Searching is easy, finding is hard. Make finding as easy as possible.

Shareable

Due to the economy on the social web where reciprocity and reputation are highly valued, and the currency is attention paid in links and time spent on a site, shareable content means that users can participate in the exchange of links for motivation or payment.

Sociable

Sociable content is interactive, conversational, engaging, and increases a sense of community or belonging when participating on a site. Sociable content works well when customer loyalty or lead generation is important. 

Syndicated

Syndication means that a user can subscribe to content updates that are important to him or her. Syndicated content puts the user in control of how much information they receive and how they use it, whether it's on a mobile device such as a smart phone or in their email inbox. Syndication can work well in a development or support environment when notification about the latest updates is crucial to the business.

Getting There

To find our place in Enterprise 2.0, technical communicators should understand that social media and collaboration is a part of our job to provide a content offering from their company. By approaching the enormous potential of the social web with Enterprise 2.0 in mind, we can make it manageable and avoid time sinks. Getting to know customers through the social web is a good first step. We can also participate with customers on the social web as appropriate. Finally, building a community or platform that enables content sharing and collaboration is the ultimate reach and influence builder for your content. Content that is shareable, sociable, searchable, and syndicated can go far and wide on the social web, helping customers meet their goals, and companies reach theirs.

 

About the Author: Anne Gentle is the author of the book Conversation and Community, The Social Web for Documentation. She also writes a blog JustWriteClick about Technical Communicators.

Technorati Tags: technical communicator,social documentation,enterprise 2.0

Is Your Technical Communication Career a Dead End?

“You’re position in the company is of little value,” he said indifferently neither in attempt to injure or blame but merely in the tone of stating a situational fact as he’d say to another man, ‘you'll always be worthless you can't help it. It's in your blood.’  Or to be more scientific, your conditioned that way.

The role of Technical Communicator, Product Content Creator, Usability Specialists, etc. haven’t always been the fastest path to the executive suite.  In fact, those that seek those levels of Management typically divert into other roles.  That’s because Technical Communication roles are not seen as strategic. 

Perception is that they don’t contribute to revenue or cut costs.  Most executives don’t even realize the importance of documentation.  It’s just not what they think about when they consider the strategic aspects of a go to market plan.  Sorry, it’s true. 

“Here is the raw, unvarnished truth: If you want to make a life as a technical writer, you must sustain yourself by your enjoyment of writing, because you cannot get any satisfaction from your work any other way. For you there will not be the kinds of rewards that others can expect. Raises, promotions, company perks of some kind – forget them. You won’t see them. Technical writing will always pay significantly less than engineering or a type of work that is more central to the company’s business.” Tom Johnson’s I’d Rather Be Writing (Guest Post by Keith Hood)

So is Keith right? No.  At least not anymore.  There are now many ways to break the paper ceiling.  There’s more opportunity and chance for career enhancements then ever before.  It’s right before you. 

(click here for the large version)

Because of the Enterprise 2.0 tools and solutions available, you now have the ability to turn your product/service documentation into large communities, sources of revenue, a cost reduction tool and centers of learning.  There are companies doing it today.  This is not pie in the sky stuff. 

In fact, as you begin to learn more about this recent phenomenon made possible by Enterprise 2.0 tools, you’ll see more potential than you ever thought possible for your future. 

Your job is to learn more about it.  Learn how other companies are using these new tools and learn how companies are turning to their product documentation to jump start their communities instead of starting from scratch. 

Are you going to climb ladders or allow your career to slide into obscurity?  Do you want to be seen as incredibly strategic to your organization or just another replaceable pawn? 

I know what I’d want. 

10 Questions to Ask Technical Communicators Delusional Enough to Believe They Don’t Need to be on Twitter

According to a recent Edison Research study 51% of active Twitter users follow companies, brands or products on social networks.  That means they are most likely following your brand and your product. 

That means they are discussing how, why, when and where they use your product and service.  And you’re not there? 

Twitter now has 105,779,710 registered users with 300,000 signing up every day.  180 million unique visitors use the site every month.  It’s a giant laboratory and meeting place and it’s likely your product is being discussed.  I’ll bet if you did a Twitter Search right now, you’ll find someone talking about your product, company or something you product solves.  Try it.  

The point is that if you’re participating, you’re learning more about how your products and services are being used.  You become more effective as a Technical Communicator because you’re discovering more about your customers.  You’re also able to socially curate the best of Twitter in order to learn more about your industry, competitors or problems your product solves.

Here are the questions to ask yourself or your Technical Communicator  

1. Out of the 55 million tweets per day, how many are about your product/service or about something your product solves?
2. If 180 million unique visitors use Twitter every month, why aren’t we asking them questions about our product to learn more about how we solve their problems?
3. Why aren’t we building a following on Twitter so that we can ask our followers to help us with market research?
4. Why aren’t we monitoring consumer sentiment about our product or service so that we can take action to rectify or improve negative situations?
5. Since there are ongoing conversations about our product/service, why aren’t we participating in them to build good will?
6. Since we can segment and target users on Twitter, why don’t we convey information about our product directly to customers and prospective customers?
7. Why don’t we provide valuable links to reports, videos, whitepapers about our product to Twitter users? 
8. Why aren’t we asking Twitter followers to help improve our product documentation?
9. Why aren’t you following and networking with other Technical Communicators to learn more about trends, strategies and best practices?
10. Did you know that there are many organizations that provide drip learning through daily tweets about their product or service?  Follower counts increase as a result.

As we enter into this social, Enterprise 2.0 world of business, it’s becoming more and more about customer service. What we do after that is secondary.  The fact that you can publically reply to tweets about your products or what your products solves is incredible. 

You’ve never had that kind of reach before as a Technical Communicator.  Word of mouth is the game now.  Word of mouth is how it used to be, and is now that on steroids.

So how do i get started? Read Anne Gentle’s article on the subject.  Also see Amit Agarwal’s use case on Dell. 

Any objections to using Twitter as Technical Communicators seems trite.  The medium has proved itself.   That some still believe technical communication can still be done with Microsoft Word and a static webpage  is illusory and quite anachronistic.

But as obvious as that may seem to some of us, there are still quite a few people that believe the field of technical communication is still about one-way communication with our customers.  No sharing, no feedback, no curation. 

Which leaves us with one more big question.  Why are Technical Communicators not embracing new Web 2.0 technologies like Twitter?