Category: Sales & Marketing

Gamification for this post is defined as applying a game, which also grants rewards, badges, or prizes. Can we apply this to technical writing? – Yes.

Gamification applied to an organization’s documents can encourage employees to:

• read their policies and procedures by providing a mechanism for them to check in and out in order to gather points which can then be redeemed within an organization’s store. The organization can provide rewards from something as simple as a better parking spot to gift cards.
• meet project milestones designated in requirements documents, technical specifications, or test plans during crunch time deadlines . The organization can reward them with, hopefully, some well-earned time off.
• participate in training programs and meetings. For this example, you could reward employees with, e.g., free lunches. Due to a lack of time, employees tend to skip training sessions and meetings. Gamification will provide an incentive for those with limited time to attend. Rewards can be given out for every individual, team, or Department who fulfill the requirements.

How does all this involve the Technical Writer?

As a Technical Writer, you could employ the use of Gamification in your, e.g., education or marketing material by being creative when designing these materials. The materials should be stylized and written in a game-like fashion, e.g., educational material should be written to cause the reader to want to read on. Not like a novel, but more in an educational way to make the reader want to learn more. Use your imagination and think of fun things to include.

Some ideas are:

• Include plenty of visuals for depicting examples or include case studies for reflecting what is being taught, mix in various tasks or quizzes, etc. Think of a puzzle and have the reader connect the dots or have a spreadsheet and have the reader fill in missing pieces.
• Include games, or questions and answers and challenges at the end of the learning program to make sure the objective was met and to reinforce the lesson. If the reinforcement quiz is electronic, then the points earned can be automatically added to the total rewards to earn more prizes.

Regarding marketing material and Gamification, an example is to apply QR codes and have the reader download an application from which they could learn more about the product.

What about the Content Manager?

As a Content Manager in charge of a group of Technical Writers, use Gamification to:

• provide incentives to encourage your team to meet milestones or deadlines. Challenge them to think of ways to improve current styles or to create new visual presentations to keep the reader more involved.
• help the team stay focused. When you are continuously writing and lose focus, you tend to get side tracked and sometimes the words seem to express boredom and that is one thing you do not want to do.

The Content Manager should harness team energy via games and challenges.

Gamification is a very popular way to gain more visibility and acknowledgment. If you have the imagination, then add more Gamification to your writing material.

P is for poise. What does poise mean to you? To me it is a calm, positive presence. It is quiet strength. It is a sense of ease and confidence. How do you acquire poise? One thing you should consider is your energy and how you use it. If your energy tends to be high (you speak fast, or loudly, you gesture and move a lot, and you are generally expressive) you may need to temper it, or better yet, balance it with some calmer aspect.

For example, if you gesture quite a lot, plant your feet and don’t move around much at all. The balance between energy/gestures and poise/stillness in feet can be highly effective.

If you talk loudly, balance that with times when you deliberately speak more softly. If you tend to talk very fast, work to insert more and longer pauses. Think “balance” in your energy.

Another way you obtain poise is by your focused thinking. If your mind is racing, you will likely feel and reflect a sense of being frazzled—the polar opposite of poise. Take time to focus your mind with breathing exercises or calming thoughts. Take a moment before your presentation to “center” yourself and let go of distractions or fear. Some people meditate; others pray or use an affirmation. Find out what works for you. Get clear-headed. Then move toward your audience with calm, open energy.

One more way to exhibit poise is when things go wrong. If you read “Oops” you heard some great ideas from my colleague Theresa. If you accept your imperfections, and handle yourself with grace and maybe a bit of humor you will be seen as poised.

P is for Persuasion. Some people think that the purpose of presenting is simply to provide facts to the audience. They forget that every presentation should have at least an element of persuasion; at the very least you are persuading the audience to listen and to respect what you are saying. Most often, you do have a recommendation or a point of view you are advocating. Not sure what it is? Go back and look at M is for Message.

Key questions to ask when preparing a presentation include:

• What do I want to say?
• What do I hope to accomplish?
• What do I want my audience to do, or think, or feel or remember when I am through?

If you aren’t sure what your message is, you can be sure your audience won’t either. So before you simply spout facts and statistics stop and think about the big picture. Your audience won’t remember all the details, so give them a clear, persuasive message that they can remember.

Here are some special tips to create more influence and persuasion in your communications.

• Do not reveal persuasive intent. Words like, “I am here to convince you” or something similar can put the audience in a defensive position. Instead, create a more neutral statement of fact, then back it up with the right argument, and let your audience persuade themselves.
• Tailor your persuasive elements. Know who your audience is and what their communication style is. Do they want facts and more facts? Do they need “proof?” Will a story or case study resonate more with them? Will they want to make a quick decision, or have time to think it over? Once you know their behavioral style you can tailor your communication accordingly.
• Get them talking. As one well-known trainer says, “people don’t argue with their own facts.” You may want to ask the audience to interact with one another, or with you, so that you can hear what they are thinking. Ask them questions, get them involved, and have them share their concerns and questions with you.
• Show both pros and cons. If you only show one side of the argument, the audience is sure to wonder why. Of course your side is stronger, which is why you are recommending it, but be sure you let the audience know you have looked at all sides.
• Give reasons. Even if your reasons aren’t the strongest, giving a reason for action strengthens your request. If you can show a good list of reasons, do it. A good rule of thumb is to have at least three good reasons.
• Use examples. Examples are like stories; they help the audience see the picture. They play to the emotions. They are memorable. If the picture is positive, be sure the audience can see themselves in the picture.
• Use third party evidence. Not just what you say, but what do others say? Third party research, testimonials or evidence can add credibility to your argument. Just be sure the sources you site are unbiased.

Being clear in your purpose, making strong recommendations, and backing them up with solid persuasive tactics can make you a more influential presenter.

I’ve come across certain words and terms that Technical Writers should be familiar with. The following are just a few outstanding key words that I felt were worth reviewing.

Compliance – is adherence or sticking to rules, policies, and procedures. This is very important for the Technical Writers as they need to be excruciatingly correct and precise when writing involves compliances (guidelines, policies, procedures, agreements, etc.) to avoid events such as errors, accidents, organizational catastrophes, etc. Compliance covers requirements for format and content; regulatory compliance, information governance, environmental compliance, compliance costs, coding, designs, etc. just to mention a few. Technical Writers compliant documents present what is expected.

Content (Document) Management– involves developing a content structure. It consists of creating, establishing, and distributing content and most importantly involves organizing content logically to make it easily accessible. It is also associated with knowledge management and information architecture which Technical Writers are involved in.

Cloud (computing) –allows you to upload, share, download and archive documents. The cloud is an offsite (remote) server or data center that people share and which provides a software service. It securely manages your documents (information or data) on a machine. It could also be known as SAAS (Software as a service), PAAS (Platform as a Service), etc., but that’s another topic.

Data (base, integration, set, value, management, metadata, mining, warehouse) – all involve the handling or management of data or information that is critical to a project or organization. How to manage ‘big data ‘is a growing concern for all organizations from small to large businesses as the volume of data keeps growing. Technical Writers help to interpret the information.

Gamification – is applying a game. Technical Writers now need to write about game-based applications which grant rewards to users, i.e., points, badges, bonuses, etc. Gamification is now becoming more and more a part of leaning, social media, and organizations.

Governance (of information, data) –is the controlling of or authority of information. It is a common term among businesses. Writing about the guidelines and policies needed to maintain the authority and regulation of information involve a great deal of work for Technical Writers who have to investigate and interview all the leads to create a structure that is understood and acceptable to the organization.

Hierarchy, Taxonomy, Information Architecture – are terms used to describe how a collection of information is organized (hierarchy), classified (taxonomy), or structured (information architecture). A Taxonomy is a form of Hierarchy and together they help to present the framework of an organizations Information Architecture.

Lifecycle – is the continuous work performed on applications, data, or products from the day they are developed to the day they are put into production or till they are no longer used. While working on a project, the Technical Writer is involved from the beginning starting from the presentation of an idea, to requirements gathering, to development, testing, and finally to the production phase.

Stakeholders – are the people involved in a project, i.e., graphic designers, web developers, business analysts, software engineers, clients, etc. Marketing stakeholders include designers, reviewers, and users. Stakeholders have an investment or interest in the project.

If you would like to see more like this, please leave a comment.

Why did I say that? ‘Oops’ what did I just do? What just happened? When doing a presentation, what do you do after an ‘oops’. You could have gotten too wordy and lost focus, or you went off script and are now lost, or you are experiencing technical problems, etc. So what do you now do? –Well for one thing, do not say,’umm’.

The following are a few tips that I have learned from my co-host Gail.

Be Adaptable – yup, you definitely have to be adaptable and easy going, and be quick, like Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick. Be flexible to any change in your environment and work with it.

Be Brilliant – use your imagination and correct any problems you encounter; including your ‘oops’ statements or technical mishaps. How? Be prepared and have back up plans.

Be Courageous – have confidence in yourself that it’s ok that you fumbled or that something went wrong. Things happen, so just continue and don’t let the incident stop you.

Be Dynamic and say – ‘Wow that was a mistake!’ – This is the time to engage your audience or say, “Oops, well that’s embarrassing” and smile.

Be Energetic – show your energy and interact with your audience. Ask them if this ‘oops’ ever happened to them?—and what did they do? This will break the ice for a bit while you gather your thoughts and then continue on with your presentation.

Be Focused – on your next move, not on what just occurred. Take a breath and smile and continue and ask for assistance if need be.

Be Gracious – smile and say “Oops, I just made a mistake.’ There is nothing wrong in saying that. I feel this is an acceptable time to apologize.

Be Humorous – have a backup humorous slide as a backup for any ‘oops’ that might occur, or a story if there is a technical issue. This will occupy the audience while the problem is being worked on.

Be Yourself in an Introduction – during an introduction, if an ‘oops’ occurs, say something amusing, i.e. ‘ ‘So that must ruin my knowledge and reputation in this field…hehe’ and laugh.

Be Joyful – you love learning and teaching so show them the joy you have in presenting even after an ‘oops’.

Be strong and Kill the rise or drop in your voice because of the ‘oops’. Don’t let the audience know you’ve lost confidence. Instead, stay calm and say that there will be a short break if needed.

Be easy going and Laugh with your audience – they are the ones who want to communicate with you. Let them know you are just human and as such, will make mistakes. If you can, make a joke out of your mistake, or just say, ‘well that wasn’t correct, was it?’….and let it go.

Reword, restate, or rework your Message on what just occurred to make it right. Give the audience the right message you meant to convey to them.

And mostly, Never stop believing in yourself.

Why, because ‘oops’ happens to all of us.

Templates are extremely useful for saving time and providing consistency. They are short cuts to formatting and completing your document quickly and easily. They are short cuts because you no longer have to think about how the material should be set up or what style to use for particular types of documents. Having templates not only improve the appeal of the document by standardizing the look and feel of a document, but also by presenting data in a specific structure and hence preventing readers from wasting time by questioning why the configuration or format has changed again. Use templates for charts, lists, standard operating procedures, logos, etc. Templates can take on many shapes and sizes.

• Templates can be something similar to a form which you complete. It consists of predefined data, but may be missing certain specifics. For example, for IT, you can have particulars about a standard operating procedure or security, but have blank fields for application terms, names, or department labels. The Technical Writer merely has to insert the appropriate information into the fields to complete the form.

• Templates can be long and complex, especially in pharmaceutical and other industries where they have to comply with regulations. Employing the use of templates here is essential. The templates used in this area save the Technical Writer an enormous amount of time and effort when creating overviews, summaries, test plans, etc.

• Templates can be used within manufacturing industries, where documentation describes frequently used standardized hardware, material, operations, systems, or processes. A common example of repeated phrases or instructions can be easily recognized in your common package inserts, especially where safety issues are indicated.

• Templates can be used within applications or the IT industries, where processes, code functions, methodologies, procedures, etc., are reused. The existence of templates ensures accuracy and precision. The Technical Writer does not have to rewrite a methodology when it has already been written and verified. At most, the writer will either delete or add variants to a process or just merge the template in.

• Templates can be used in the HR departments for practices, procedures and most importantly, polices. Certain critical policies have to exist within certain HR documents and these can be simply inserted where necessary.

• Templates can be used when creating a glossary section. If one already exists, all relevant and essential definitions can be copied and embedded where needed.

• Templates can be used within the instructional domain for formalizing the look and feel of the manual as well as the question and exercise sections. These templates can have preset or default documented presentation approaches, styles, etc. that can be reused. The Q and A section can have templates for lists, images, notes, headers, footers, comments, etc.

Do not confuse a template with either a macro or a style guide. Templates are pre-made formats of information. Technical Writers should create their own templates and should not be underutilized. Templates should consist of reusable information, formats, and styles to simplify their work.

What do you think?