Duration: 1 day
Hands-on? Yes (practice exercises)
Delivery: Web conferencing, onsite
Related courses: Learning topic-based authoring
STC Chapters: Please contact Cheri about a version of this workshop for STC meetings and regional conferences.
Technical communicators are often told we are a support group that doesn’t directly contribute to our employer’s financial success. What if you could change that? What if you could develop technical content that is so good your customers would buy it? What if your information products could become a major factor in why customers purchase your company’s products and services? How can you make yourself a company asset by reinventing technical content that is good enough to be a saleable product?
Objectives
Through discussion and practice, you will:
- Define the meaning and importance of a business asset, especially as related to technical content
- List factors that support and prevent the technical content in your company from becoming a business asset
- Evaluate strategies for streamlining business processes, and assess how practical they are in your workplace
- Understand the factors that influence customers to become “passionate users” of your technical content
Outline
Let’s Get Started!
- Brainstorming: What is a business asset?
- How is technical content a business asset? How is it not?
- Assessing your company’s view of technical content
- The goal of “sellable content”: What does it mean? How far should you take it?
- Developing business alignments to support content development
Streamlining Business Processes
- The business goals of technical communication
- Content development: The impact of tools and process
- Content development: The impact of process
- Improving business processes
- The value of content management
- The value of collaboration
Making Use of Content Analysis
- What is content analysis?
- Applying topic-based authoring and specialization
- Recognizing high-value content
- An walkthrough of the process
- Adding high-value content to your deliverables
- The role of standards
- Rebranding look and feel
Developing Passionate Readers
- What is a passionate user?
- Characteristics of “go-to” content
- Developing expertise
- The important of understanding customer learning processes
- Applying these ideas in your workplace
Developing Third-Draft Content Developers
- What makes a good technical communicator?
- What is a “third-draft” content developer?
- A few considerations about types of content development
- The communicator’s professional growth: From procedure writer to business partner
- The “third-draft” (or greater) assessment
- Integrating learning into work
Shifting Focus to Customers
- Getting past the “Catch 22″ of learning about customers
- Technical content as customer service
- Assessing the health of your service
- Strategies for learning about customers
- Immersion in customer culture
- Taking advantage of Web 2.0 services
- Developing community: New opportunities for technical content