Robert Desprez Communications

MY PRESENTATION AT THE UPCOMING WRITERSUA CONFERENCE

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I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to attending—and presenting—at the upcom­ing Writ­er­sUA con­fer­ence in south­ern Los Ange­les on March 13–16th.

I’m deliv­er­ing a ses­sion called “Using Web Ana­lyt­ics for Improv­ing Con­tent” in which I’ll be talk­ing about why tech­ni­cal writ­ers should care about web ana­lyt­ics, key web site met­rics that writ­ers can mon­i­tor, and how to set up web ana­lyt­ics for a web site or an online help system.
I’m equal­ly excit­ed about some of the oth­er ses­sions that are sched­uled. Here are a few:

  • Com­par­ing the strengths and weak­ness­es of Help Author­ing Tools. This com­par­i­son includes Author-it, Doc-to-Help, Flare, Robo­Help, and Web­Works ePub­lish­er. Most of my career I’ve used Web­Works or Robo­Help so I’m def­i­nite­ly inter­est­ed in see­ing how the oth­er tools mea­sure up.
  • Lever­ag­ing user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent in tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. If you’ve been mon­i­tor­ing my blog over the last two months, I’ve writ­ten a cou­ple of entries about social media and tech­ni­cal documentation.
  • Tak­ing advan­tage of HTML5. Par­tic­u­lar­ly I’d like to know if there’s any­thing I can do to incor­po­rate this tech­nol­o­gy into tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion deliverables.
  • Writ­ing tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion for mobile devices. This includes devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Of course, there are many oth­er top­ics, includ­ing a lot of ses­sions on writ­ing, DITA, and oth­er technologies.

WHY WEB 2.0 IS RELEVANT FOR TECHNICAL WRITERS

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In Decem­ber, I start­ed a dis­cus­sion in a few LinkedIn groups titled, “Most tech­ni­cal writ­ers are not embrac­ing Web 2.0.”

It stirred up a lot of feed­back. Most peo­ple seemed to agree, not­ing that they haven’t had time to research Web 2.0 when wrestling with chal­leng­ing projects, such as set­ting up doc­u­men­ta­tion in XML and DITA.

Some mem­bers, how­ev­er, respond­ed by say­ing that Web 2.0 is just a “mar­ket­ing con­cept,” imply­ing that it has lit­tle val­ue for tech­ni­cal writers.

I strong­ly disagree.

Here’s why I think Web 2.0 is rel­e­vant for us:

  1. Social media is not just a fad and it’s not going away. Quite the opposite—more and peo­ple appear to be using it. Here’s one star­tling fact about Face­book: it has more than 500 mil­lion users and peo­ple spend “700 bil­lion min­utes per month” on the site. In case you’re count­ing, Face­book users out­num­ber the com­bined pop­u­la­tion of Cana­da and the U.S. (Check out Facebook’s sta­tis­tics page.)
  2. We’re no longer the gate­keep­ers of con­tent. In decades past, tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tors wrote the tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion for a prod­uct and it was the offi­cial con­tent for a com­pa­ny. These days, we no longer have a monop­oly on sup­port con­tent. Online dis­cus­sions may abound about your prod­uct, and most of it is indexed by Google and is read­i­ly acces­si­ble. It’s not uncom­mon to find that this “unof­fi­cial” sup­port con­tent (i.e. forums) is often dis­played before our offi­cial con­tent in search results. This pos­es a chal­lenge to writers—how do we ensure that our con­tent is eas­i­ly found by all users?
  3. Peo­ple are already shar­ing their thoughts on your prod­ucts. With Web 2.0, online com­mu­ni­ties and dis­cus­sions are some­thing we all take for grant­ed. Online com­mu­ni­ties are rat­ing books on Ama­zon. Vaca­tion­ers are rat­ing hotels on Tri­pAd­vi­sor. And they may be rat­ing your prod­uct and your doc­u­men­ta­tion. In short, dis­cern­ing online users have nev­er had so much con­trol over their pur­chas­ing deci­sions. For writ­ers, we should mon­i­tor if users are writ­ing feed­back on our prod­ucts using tech­nolo­gies like Google Alerts.
  4. Writ­ers are already using Web 2.0. Anne Gentle’s book Con­ver­sa­tion and Com­mu­ni­ty doc­u­ments a few exam­ples in which com­pa­nies are using tech­nol­o­gy like wikis for tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion. The Adobe Labs wiki, for exam­ple, tar­gets devel­op­ers using Adobe tech­nol­o­gy and is appar­ent­ly one of the top wikis for daily-use.

I believe that Web 2.0 is one of the trends that will for­ev­er change how we do our jobs. Ignor­ing it or sug­gest­ing it’s just for mar­ket­ing folks is seri­ous­ly under­es­ti­mat­ing its importance.

TECHNICAL WRITING LISTED AS ONE OF THE BEST CAREERS: U.S. WEB SITE

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Last week U.S News list­ed tech­ni­cal writ­ing as one of the 50 best careers of 2011.

Some inter­est­ing high­lights (at least for me):

  • “Future employ­ment for tech­ni­cal writ­ers looks bright, espe­cial­ly for those with strong Web and mul­ti­me­dia skills, accord­ing to esti­mates by the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics. Tech­ni­cal writ­ing posi­tions are expect­ed to grow by more than 18 per­cent, or 8,900 jobs, by 2018.”
  • “It helps if you’re com­fort­able work­ing as a con­trac­tor, since com­pa­nies increas­ing­ly pre­fer to hire that way.”
  • “The low­est-paid tech­ni­cal writ­ers earn less than $37,000, and the high­est-paid posi­tions earn more than $100,000. In some indus­tries, off­shoring may put down­ward pres­sure on pay.”

In Van­cou­ver, I know of two com­pa­nies who have exper­i­ment­ed with off­shoring their tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ments to coun­tries like India. Although I’m not a fan of los­ing work to oth­er locales, I believe that off­shoring may make sense in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions: for exam­ple, when an estab­lished prod­uct has gone into “main­te­nance mode” and the edits to the doc­u­men­ta­tion are minor.

Anoth­er web site that puts “down­ward pres­sure on pay” is Elance, which enables out­sourc­ing to work­ers around the world.

As any­one on the globe can bid on a job, I’ve seen tech­ni­cal writ­ing assign­ments in which writ­ers are will­ing to work for peanuts (for instance, one writer com­plet­ed 17 jobs and had earned only $475). Hope­ful­ly, sites like Elance will always remain on the periph­ery for the sake of work­ers who are hop­ing to make a com­pet­i­tive, indus­try-stan­dard wage.

Check out the report (link to exter­nal web site).

WEB 2.0 and TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS

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Web 2.0 has rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way soci­ety uses the Inter­net. Whether it’s Wikipedia, YouTube, Twit­ter, or LinkedIn, we’ve moved from pas­sive read­ers to active contributors.

Giv­en this fun­da­men­tal change, why is it that most tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tors are oper­at­ing as if Web 2.0 nev­er occurred? Based on what I’ve seen, most writ­ers haven’t embraced the col­lab­o­ra­tive mod­el that is com­mon­place with Web 2.0. Why? Here are a few guesses:

  • Some of the web sites are rel­a­tive­ly new. Twit­ter, for instance, has real­ly only tak­en off in the last 18 months. Most writ­ers haven’t fig­ured out whether to use sites like this and how to use them in their jobs.
  • Our tools haven’t ful­ly embraced Web 2.0. The tools that tech­ni­cal writ­ers use don’t ful­ly take advan­tage of Web 2.0. RoboHelp’s new­er Help for­mat, AIR Help, does per­mit users to com­ment on a giv­en top­ic but it doesn’t allow writ­ers to mod­er­ate those com­ments. To me, this is “Web 2.0 lite.”
  • Slow accep­tance of social media by tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion depart­ments. Mar­ket­ing peo­ple have ful­ly embraced sites like Face­book, LinkedIn, and Twit­ter. But from what I’ve seen, tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion depart­ments appear to be tak­ing a “wait and see” approach when it comes to lever­ag­ing these technologies.

Of course, there are orga­ni­za­tions that have tak­en full advan­tage of social media—more on this lat­er. But I believe these orga­ni­za­tions are the excep­tion rather than the norm.

Too bad. I believe that incor­po­rat­ing Web 2.0 tech­nolo­gies into tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion could make our con­tent bet­ter, fos­ter more dia­log with our cus­tomers, and change—and improve—our careers.

WEB ANALYTICS FOR TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS

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On Tues­day, Nov. 16th, I’m speak­ing at the Soci­ety for Tech­ni­cal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion West Coast chap­ter on “Web Ana­lyt­ics for Tech­ni­cal Communicators.”

Details of my talk
As tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tors, we’re all in the busi­ness of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. We per­form research, we ask ques­tions about the audi­ence, we draft out­lines, write and edit con­tent, and ulti­mate­ly we dis­trib­ute it.

But what’s often miss­ing is the feed­back from our users. More often than not, we don’t have a clear sense of how many peo­ple are read­ing our con­tent, what con­tent is well used, or downloaded.
Web ana­lyt­ics soft­ware can help. With free tools like Google Ana­lyt­ics, one can quick­ly dis­cov­er the most fre­quent­ly accessed doc­u­ments or web pages, where users are locat­ed (i.e. what coun­try they live in), how long they spend review­ing web pages, the num­ber of unique vis­i­tors to a sup­port site or intranet, or even which online help top­ics are viewed if your help is host­ed on a web server.

What are the ben­e­fits to attending?
Web ana­lyt­ics is free, rel­a­tive­ly easy to set up, and pro­vides insights into how staff and exter­nal cus­tomers are find­ing your site, how they explored it, and how you can enhance the user experience.

When
Tues­day, Novem­ber 16, 2010
6:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. for social­iz­ing and appetizers
7:00 to 9:00 p.m. for the meeting

Where
Down­town YWCA Fit­ness Build­ing, 535 Horn­by St., Van­cou­ver, BC

 

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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