WAYS TO USE TECHNOLOGY TO CONNECT WITH USERS

Most tech­ni­cal writ­ers have lit­tle idea how their deliv­er­ables are used, if at all.

We strive to ensure that the con­tent is tech­ni­cal­ly cor­rect, that the deliv­er­ables adhere to the com­pa­ny style guide, and that the items ship before or on the agreed-upon deadlines.

After suc­cess­ful­ly ship­ping, mean­ing­ful user feed­back is hard­ly a del­uge, if there’s any­thing at all. More real­is­ti­cal­ly, it is a trickle—some anec­do­tal feed­back that a user liked some­thing we wrote, or an e‑mail that the sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive thought it hit the mark.

Web 2.0 makes it eas­i­er to con­nect to users. Any­one with an Inter­net con­nec­tion and a com­put­er can cre­ate a YouTube video, add some con­tent to a Wikipedia page, write a blog, and so on. For tech­ni­cal writ­ers, this means it’s easy for our users to add com­ments on our help top­ics or web pages.

Here are two rel­a­tive­ly simple—and free—ways you can use tech­nol­o­gy to con­nect with your users.

Feed­back Forms and Commenting
At http://wufoo.com/examples/, you can add many types of forms to a web page or help top­ic with­out hav­ing to code any­thing. Using an embed­ded Con­tact Form, your users do not have to leave the site and you do not have to dis­sem­i­nate an email address that could be a tar­get of spam mail.

Anoth­er site worth vis­it­ing is http://disqus.com, which enables your users to add com­ments to a web site or online help top­ic. Sim­i­lar to a blog, your users can respond to a help top­ic that you’ve writ­ten and you can mon­i­tor and respond to the feed­back by e‑mail using your com­put­er, iPhone, or Android phone. Dis­qus also enables users to click a but­ton when they like a top­ic or web page you’ve authored, with­out requir­ing them to add a comment.

If you’d pre­fer not to add HTML code to your online help or web pages, you can also use Adobe Robo­Help to enable com­ment­ing as you long as you use the company’s Adobe AIR out­put for­mat. To learn more about the details of this option, vis­it tech­ni­cal writer Sarah Maddox’s blog.