Robert Desprez Communications

THE POWER OF SAYING I DO NOT KNOW

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Knowl­edge is pow­er, as the old cliché goes.

For any­one who has worked in high-tech, it shouldn’t come as a big sur­prise when I assert that mas­ter­ing cer­tain tech­nolo­gies can mean a pay raise or more respon­si­bil­i­ties. Employ­ees that “don’t keep up” or who don’t appear to pos­sess the lat­est tech­ni­cal knowl­edge may not be con­sid­ered seri­ous or ambitious.

Most peo­ple work­ing in IT tend to be men. In my opin­ion, most men in high-tech pride them­selves on their tech­ni­cal prowess and are reluc­tant to admit that they don’t know all the answers. I have attend­ed many meet­ings in which you have two or more strong-willed guys argu­ing about some tech­ni­cal detail. Tem­pers inevitably flare and posi­tions become entrenched.

Inc. mag­a­zine recent­ly pub­lished a short arti­cle called the “The Pow­er of Say­ing ‘I Don’t Know.’” Here’s an excerpt: “In today’s ultra com­pet­i­tive work envi­ron­ment, many peo­ple feel the need to be ‘super work­ers’ and have an answer to every ques­tion. But, it’s not always a good thing if you have peo­ple who work for you that are afraid to admit they don’t know something…”

In con­trast to many IT work­ers, I believe that many tech­ni­cal writ­ers and instruc­tion­al design­ers are will­ing to admit gaps in knowl­edge. After all, our jobs require us to research often basic infor­ma­tion for new users. With that in mind, we have to ask sub­ject mat­ter experts some pret­ty rudi­men­ta­ry yet spe­cial­ized ques­tions because we need to relay that con­tent to users. Our jobs require a healthy dose of humility.

Of course, I’m mak­ing gen­er­al obser­va­tions. But I’d haz­ard a guess that a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of IT work­ers want to feel like they know all the answers. For writ­ers, this will­ing­ness to admit we are not “all know­ing” may be one dif­fer­en­tia­tor from our peers.

Why I do not love Twitter

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I don’t love Twit­ter. There, I’ve said it. Why?

First, because it con­tributes to a del­uge of infor­ma­tion that is so preva­lent in our soci­ety. Newsweek mag­a­zine recent­ly pub­lished an inter­est­ing arti­cle about how many of us are suf­fer­ing from “infor­ma­tion fatigue.” As a soci­ety, many of us are exposed to more and more infor­ma­tion. Social media, e‑mails, adver­tise­ments, junk mail, tele­vi­sion, radio, and news­pa­per and mag­a­zines offer us an unpar­al­leled amount of news and enter­tain­ment. But all these choic­es can lead to “infobe­si­ty” (see my relat­ed blog post). Most of us think that more choice is a good thing but when peo­ple are faced with too many choic­es they make no decision.

Here’s one exam­ple cit­ed in Newsweek. “In a 2004 study, Sheena Iyen­gar of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and col­leagues found that the more infor­ma­tion peo­ple con­front­ed about a 401(k) plan, the more par­tic­i­pa­tion fell: from 75 per­cent to 70 per­cent as the num­ber of choic­es rose from two to 11, and to 61 per­cent when there were 59 options. Peo­ple felt over­whelmed and opt­ed out.”

Those peo­ple who sol­diered on and attempt­ed to make a deci­sion often make poor­er choic­es. Researchers found that peo­ple exposed to too much infor­ma­tion “reach cog­ni­tive and infor­ma­tion overload…They start mak­ing stu­pid mis­takes and bad choic­es because the brain region respon­si­ble for smart deci­sion mak­ing has essen­tial­ly left the premises.”

Sec­ond, the stream of Tweets is relent­less. Accord­ing to the Newsweek arti­cle, researchers also found that “recent infor­ma­tion” ham­pers our abil­i­ty to make good deci­sions. “We pay a lot of atten­tion to the most recent infor­ma­tion, dis­count­ing what came earlier…We’re fooled by imme­di­a­cy and quan­ti­ty and think it’s qual­i­ty,” says Eric Kessler, a man­age­ment expert at Pace University’s Lubin School of Busi­ness. “What starts dri­ving deci­sions is the urgent rather than the important.”

Third, I don‘t love Twit­ter because most of the posts are, well, bor­ing. I don‘t care about what peo­ple had for lunch.

Fourth, lack of time. I don‘t have a lot of free time after work­ing full time, par­ent­ing, attempt­ing to exer­cise a few times a week, and keep­ing up with friends and fam­i­ly. I hard­ly watch any tele­vi­sion. So I don‘t under­stand how peo­ple have time to fol­low more than 700 indi­vid­u­als on Twit­ter. I used to think Twit­ter was the social media plat­form for teenagers. But accord­ing to a sta­tis­tic from last year, more than 45 per­cent of Twit­ters users are 18 to 34 years old and 24 per­cent are 35 to 49 years old (website-monitoring.com from May 2010).

To sum­ma­rize, I think Twit­ter has val­ue when it‘s used in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions (check out the recent blog post I wrote about inte­grat­ing Twit­ter with tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion). But in gen­er­al, it con­tributes both to the del­uge of infor­ma­tion (most of it not very inter­est­ing or use­ful) and to the con­tin­u­ous real-time onslaught of infor­ma­tion that is con­sid­ered recent. Hav­ing said all that, I am going to try to use it more in 2011 to reach out to oth­er tech­ni­cal writ­ers. Just don‘t expect me to love it.

FIVE WEB ANALYTICS METRICS FOR TECHNICAL WRITERS

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By using Google Ana­lyt­ics tech­ni­cal writ­ers can dis­cov­er what con­tent they write is pop­u­lar, how long users read their con­tent, and where their cus­tomers live. This blog post is a sum­ma­ry of the main points I dis­cussed at my recent pre­sen­ta­tion at the Writ­er­sUA writ­ing con­fer­ence in Long Beach, California.

What is Web Analytics?

First off, web ana­lyt­ics enables tech­ni­cal writ­ers to see how users access your intranet, sup­port web sites, and even help sys­tems that are host­ed on a web serv­er. Some writ­ers that I’ve talked to seem to think that web ana­lyt­ics is com­pli­cat­ed to set up and use. Actu­al­ly, set­ting it up is pret­ty sim­ple, assum­ing you’re com­fort­able with adding a bit of Google’s code to your HTML page. Ana­lyz­ing your data is also pret­ty sim­ple for our purposes.

Why It’s Important for Technical Writers

I believe web ana­lyt­ics is impor­tant for two reasons.

First, it pro­vides insights into how your users are find­ing your site, how they explored it, and how tech­ni­cal writ­ers can enhance their expe­ri­ence. Most of us work in orga­ni­za­tions where there are lim­it­ed resources and a large of queue of work. With web ana­lyt­ics, you can quick­ly dis­cov­er the num­ber of peo­ple review­ing your con­tent for a giv­en peri­od (month­ly, quar­ter­ly, or even dai­ly), and which doc­u­ments are pop­u­lar and which doc­u­ments are large­ly ignored.

Sec­ond, with web ana­lyt­ics, I think that it’s quite pos­si­ble that our writ­ing will be monitored—even scrutinized—in cer­tain orga­ni­za­tions that are inter­est­ed in see­ing the effec­tive­ness of each doc­u­ment and sup­port top­ic we write.

Tris­tan Bish­op, a blog­ger and senior con­tent strate­gist, wrote about the use of web ana­lyt­ics and how it will change our jobs:
“It won’t be long before you’ll know which of your top­ics are mak­ing a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence, which need some help and which can sim­ply dis­ap­pear. It will soon be painful­ly obvi­ous which team mem­bers are writ­ing the high-impact top­ics, which are writ­ing the unin­tel­li­gi­ble top­ics and which are writ­ing the irrel­e­vant top­ics.” Ouch.

What Can You Measure

For a free tech­nol­o­gy, it’s amaz­ing what you can dis­cov­er using Google Ana­lyt­ics. You can mon­i­tor the num­ber of vis­i­tors com­ing to your site or help sys­tem for a spec­i­fied peri­od, the num­ber of new vis­i­tors ver­sus return­ing vis­i­tors, the aver­age length of time users spend on your site, the key­words they use in a search field, the coun­try they live in, the brows­er they use to access your con­tent, and much more. In fact, if you’re inter­est­ed, you can keep tabs on dozens of met­rics. But for tech­ni­cal writ­ers, I think there are just a hand­ful of met­rics you might want to keep an eye on.

  1. Over­all traf­fic vol­umes. This is impor­tant because it gives you a sense how many peo­ple are read­ing the con­tent you write and sup­port. You can start per­form­ing com­par­isons of this month’s traf­fic ver­sus the pre­vi­ous month’s traf­fic. Are num­bers going up? How is it relat­ed to sup­port calls?
  2. Vis­it dura­tion. In gen­er­al, the longer a per­son spends on your site, the more like­ly he or she will return. In con­trast, if a per­son stays only a few sec­onds, you may deduce that there is noth­ing of val­ue to the user.
  3. Bounce rates. Strict­ly speak­ing, a bounce occurs when a vis­i­tor looks at just one page of your help or web site and then leaves the site quick­ly. If a vis­i­tor comes to your intranet or sup­port site and then imme­di­ate­ly clicks the Back but­ton, it’s con­sid­ered a bounce. If your bounce rate is high (expressed as a per­cent­age such as 50 per­cent), you may be draw­ing the wrong type of per­son to your intranet/site.
  4. Search key­words. Using ana­lyt­ics, you can track the most com­mon key­words that users search for while using your sup­port web site or help sys­tem, pro­vid­ing insight into the con­tent that cus­tomers want. So this may help you understand:
  • What are cus­tomers look­ing for and strug­gling with?
  • What are the most com­mon phras­es when peo­ple are searching?
  • As a writer, do you need to change the way you describe a pro­ce­dure or con­cept so it’s more in line with the way cus­tomers think of it?
  1. Top pages and con­tent. Know­ing what vis­i­tors are seek­ing out can help you tai­lor con­tent for them and help you prune the con­tent that isn’t being used. This may help you focus your efforts when it comes to under­stand­ing the best way to spend your time.

Setting Up Google Analytics

Google has done a good job of explain­ing how to set up web ana­lyt­ics on your web site or online help. For more infor­ma­tion, see http://www.google.com/analytics/discover_analytics.html

Oth­er resources worth reviewing:

Web Ana­lyt­ics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik
Kaushik’s blog: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
Web Ana­lyt­ics Demys­ti­fied by Eric T Peterson
Author Anne Gentle’s blog entry on web ana­lyt­ics:
http://justwriteclick.com/2010/09/01/web-analytics-for-technical-documentation-sites/
Google Ana­lyt­ics by Jer­ri L. Ledford

LABOUR MARKET TO GET TIGHTER, PREDICTS DICE.COM

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The news from Dice.com is that tech tal­ent poach­ing will increase this year, accord­ing to hir­ing man­agers and recruiters.

Here’s an excerpt:

“In a recent Dice study, more than half (54%) of hir­ing man­agers and recruiters antic­i­pate that tech tal­ent poach­ing will get more aggres­sive this year, while, just three per­cent of respon­dents expect a let-up. That expec­ta­tion is ampli­fied when you look at hir­ing man­agers toil­ing in the tech­nol­o­gy or con­sult­ing indus­tries, with 62 per­cent say­ing tal­ent skir­mish­es will get more aggres­sive, against one per­cent in the less aggres­sive camp.”

This lat­est report is U.S. based. In British Colum­bia, the BC Tech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion (BCTIA) report on labour trends released last year pre­dict­ed that high-tech com­pa­nies may face a short­age of work­ers again, sim­i­lar to the sit­u­a­tion we expe­ri­enced in 2007 and 2008.

In my opin­ion, the Dice report may end up being true in cer­tain mar­kets, like Sil­i­con Val­ley. But I’d be sur­prised if there are “tal­ent skir­mish­es” across the U.S. and Cana­da. In B.C, there appears to be a steady stream of jobs, though I don’t see a short­age of work­ers occur­ring, at least in 2011.

 

MARRYING TWITTER WITH USER DOCUMENTATION

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I just got back from the Writ­er­sUA tech­ni­cal writ­ing con­fer­ence yes­ter­day in Long Beach, Cal­i­for­nia. As I expect­ed, I attend­ed many real­ly inter­est­ing sessions.

Here’s one great idea. Sarah Mad­dox, an Aus­tralian tech­ni­cal writer, works at Atlass­ian, the com­pa­ny that devel­ops JIRA (bug and issue track­ing soft­ware) and Con­flu­ence (web-based cor­po­rate wiki soft­ware). She and her team cre­at­ed wiki doc­u­men­ta­tion that com­bines tra­di­tion­al tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion, social media, and links to relat­ed blog posts. Here’s a screen capture:

 

This screen cap­ture shows a sam­ple of Atlassian’s wiki doc­u­men­ta­tion, which includes a Twit­ter stream at the bot­tom of the page.

If users tweet on a giv­en top­ic, they’re reward­ed by giv­en an online badge that they can add to their own blogs or social sites.

Sarah and her col­leagues at Atlass­ian have pulled off a rare feat—content that mar­ries tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion, social media, and even viral mar­ket­ing. Because users who decide to tweet are offered an online badge, oth­ers might see the badge on anoth­er site and then tweet as well, which could lead to more and more users con­tribut­ing to the dia­log via Twitter.

This project won the most inno­v­a­tive idea at the Writ­er­sUA “peer show­case.” I think it’s a great idea and well deserved.

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About Me

Robert Desprez I have worked as a Vancouver technical writer for more than 20 years, working at Kodak, Boeing, Teck Resources, and FortisBC. In addition, I have worked as a writing instructor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Contact Me

Robert Desprez Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc.
North Van­cou­ver, British Columbia
Canada
Phone: 604–836-4290