In the 2.0 era, all lines of work are impacted by change, and departments and project teams need to face the challenges of a constantly shifting paradigm. Here, the staff at BroadVision will share firsthand their experiences and observations dealing with these changes and challenges. Our guest blogger: Gina Blednyh, Technical Writer and Content Developer.
In an article published last year titled Convergence Technical Communication: Strategies for Incorporating Web 2.0, Nicky Bleiel discussed techniques for using Web 2.0 to help make the user experience a better one. The topic of wanting users to have a positive experience is not a new one for technical communicators. As the mediators between those developing technologies and the audience who must use them, we want users to comprehend key concepts in a manner that results in the least amount of effort and the most success. When we prevail, we add value by reducing the amount of support calls received and by helping to leave a positive impression of the organization with the customer. In the best scenario we contribute to a customer’s desire to return and purchase more products or services.
How does Web 2.0 encourage users to comprehend ideas and more easily find success, though? In itself, I don’t believe it can. Embracing a technology without considering user needs can result in wasted effort. For example, using DITA might not be the best choice for a small documentation team with a tight budget and little need for single-sourcing. Similarly, in the Web 2.0 world, creating a corporate account on a traditional social networking site without planning doesn’t seem like an astute move. Applying Web 2.0 technologies wisely, though, can help your team become more valuable to both customers and management. In the article, Bleiel mentions four best practices to employ; below I describe how we apply her suggestions.
Analyze often. Analyzing our needs helps us to determine what types of Web 2.0 tools to incorporate into our documentation strategy. For instance, does it make sense to use several tools so that we can microblog and create a video? Or is it better to use a product designed to deliver information in multiple formats? Enterprise Social Networking tools today offer many features—several of which can assist documentation teams in offering their audiences many choices. Analyzing our needs has helped us to make wise decisions.
Know your audience. For example, before employing the use of videos, we talk to folks and see if it makes sense to use this delivery mechanism based on audience needs. Maybe a short blog about some product updates makes more sense than a video. Sometimes multiple formats can really help users by offering them a choice in the manner in which to receive information. With proper tools, we found that we can use multiple formats easily to better help our audience.
Keep up with trends. This one might be my personal favorite—it’s a lot of fun to monitor what’s going on in technology. However, I’m not instilling any new wisdom when I write that adopting trends depends on your needs. It seems prudent to know what the trends are, though, so that you can effectively evaluate your choices.
Tie your traditional documentation efforts with your Web 2.0 efforts. We found that a cohesive plan can result in a well-rounded documentation selection for users. For example, we still publish some documents in traditional formats—it makes sense for certain products. For other products, we use a combination of help files, blogs, forums, and so on.
When using Web 2.0, we still want users to enjoy a good experience and to encourage customers to return. In fact, during the most highly competitive market in decades, it seems that helping customers to return is a mandate for technical communicators today, not an option. I think that properly selecting Web 2.0 tools can help with this mandate.
A recent ReadWriteWeb article discusses the massive growth of data on the Internet. It’s a bit astonishing given that, although the Internet’s been around for decades, its popular adoption by the masses is still a somewhat recent phenomenon in world computing history.
As someone who works with content as a technical writer and blogger, I can’t stop myself from wondering what this data proliferation means for my profession. It’s a topic I like to discuss with others and believe is crucial to think about as we manage our workloads and careers in the coming decade. How will our roles evolve? How will we handle this enormous quantity of data when many people today already suffer from the consequences of dealing with an avalanche of information? How do we organize data that is meaningful to us?
Lots of questions, and I don’t pretend to have answers. However, I think that new tools designed for the Web 2.0 paradigm can help with this data explosion. It’s true that Facebook and similar sites have been around for a few years now, but using a product designed for the enterprise that leverages social networking is still somewhat novel; as a technical writer, this is the type of tool in which I’m interested. After using an Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) product for about a year and a half now, I’m a believer that an ESN offers at least some of the answers to the questions listed above.
It’s not just me who believes this, either. A white paper by Sarah O’Keefe titled Friend or Foe? Web 2.0 in Technical Communicationdiscusses some of the challenges that technical writers face today. Near the end of the piece, she has a section where she lists some tips for writers. One that stands out for me is that a “product web site should provide a platform for customer-generated content with user forums, wikis, and the like.” In other words, a site should engage customers. I like this a lot! Customers—whether happy or not—have the ability to post opinions all over the web anyway. I have seen forums where users express their complaints about company documentation in somewhat nasty ways at times. Why not allow these users to give you feedback and also help them to become more satisfied customers? If they become engaged and know that you are as well, everyone wins—and documentation can improve.
However, using an enterprise social networking tool is not just about giving your customers a forum. Using the proper tool can help to organize—and hence help you to synthesize—useful information from many disparate sources. As the data explosion continues, the need to ignore the irrelevant, organize the useful, and then amalgamate what you have into something meaningful to your projects will become harder. Shrewdly choosing tools to help with the process seems like a wise move.
Using a site that leverages the richness of a community in an organized manner—through the use of forums, rating systems, and other features—is an intuitive way to structure both writer-generated and user-generated information. Will an ESN solve all content organization and management issues as data continues to propagate on the web? No way! However, an ESN takes a massive step toward effectively handling data in a dispersed corporate world where those outside of the organization now share airtime with your dedicated content developers.
