Category: Sales & Marketing

I am seeing there is still a great interest in people wanting to become Technical Writers. For that reason, I am going to review some steps to become one.

If you are currently employed:
• write about your job and what the requirements are for that position.
• write about all your daily tasks and how long it takes to perform the job.
• begin to write even if it is about a simple process or procedure that you perform daily.
• create mappings or diagrams depicting those procedures.
This is a good way to see if you really would like to become a Technical Writer because when you begin to write about your functions, you can see that it is not an easy task.

To improve your skills, take classes to develop and improve:
• your writing and grammar skills, as documents have to be clear, precise, and error-free.
• your communication skills for not only conveying instructions verbally and within documents, but for also improving your listening skills.

To search out writing opportunities, you could:
• begin by reviewing a list of potential jobs and their requirements. Find and focus on those companies that interest you and see what types of documents they produce, review their style of writing, and see if you can be of help to them. Also, consider other writing opportunities and see if you can begin to work as an intern.
• look into communication as well as presentation positions as these also involve a lot of writing. From that experience, you can then call yourself a Technical Communicator. Also look into analysis, coordinator, translator, and training positions as they all involve communication and writing skills.
• look into freelancing positions to make sure you would enjoy being a Technical Writer. These positions will allow you to experience what it is like to have to stick to set deadlines and simultaneously be flexible enough to adjust to changing requirements. In other words, it will show you how adaptable you are.
• become a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in a particular field by taking classes for any technical skills that really interest you, and write about it.
• start off in a writing group to meet others and network. With today’s social media advantages, join groups on and off line and communicate\meet up with others.

The skills for a successful technical writing career are similar to those for success in any career. Be focused, logical, organized creative, persistent, know the product, and apply the new platinum rule ‘treat others the way they would like to be treated’. If you do not get along with your clients, users, or SMEs then you won’t be successful. Make sure you understand each other and that you are all on the same page when beginning a new project and especially when writing globally.

As a Technical Writer you will be writing among other documents, Requirement, Technical, and Functional Specifications, as well as being an Analyst, Usability Expert, and Designer. This is a very multifaceted career if you enjoy writing.

If you have more to add to this review, please leave a comment. Thank you.

A Technical Writer needs to create a Knowledge Community. How and why we need a Knowledge Community you ask? Being a Technical Writer can be difficult when trying to obtain knowledge. Whom do you consider for contacting, where do you look. How do you decide if you should gather knowledge verbally face-to-face or in meetings, by sending out emails, or by checking past documentation (of any kind such as newsletters, marketing or training material); if there are any.
The key to creating a Knowledge Community is through collaboration. Collaboration will allow you to create plans, meet others, become more innovative, share information, learn, and more.

Creating Plans
This allows us to be more organized and efficient. Collaborate in order to set timelines, to define scopes for projects, to maintaining accuracy, to set up contingency plans, to define security issues, to define marketing strategies, and most importantly to define policies and procedures.

Meeting Others
This allows us to meet others with whom we can share our concerns, status, and information, as well as meet with others whom we thought we never needed. Collaborate to meet others either by meeting face-to-face or by catching your knowledge holders whenever an wherever you can; even at the coffee station or vending machines. Collaborating and working with colleagues allows us to meet with SMEs, developers, product managers, stakeholders, etc. to gather any new and necessary information.

Becoming More Innovative
This allows us to be more creative in developing our content as well as developing new ideas. Collaborate and use your interpersonal skills to work with colleagues to gather information to become more innovative. Collaborate with, e.g., stakeholders who have an investment or interest in the project. Use your excellent communication skills to understand your stakeholders in order to develop creative unique content, specifications, methodologies, processes, etc.

Sharing information
This allows us to work better as a team. Collaborate in order to have an exchange of knowledge. The more collaboration and information sharing we do, the more knowledgeable we become, resulting in more exposure to different thoughts and ideas. This can all lead to faster problem solving, as well as new opportunities, insights, visions, etc.

Learning
This allows us to become more knowledgeable and proficient in gathering and sharing of information. Working in groups is always better than working alone. Collaborate and use your technical and analytical skills to understand and organize complex technical information. Learning leads to more experience, skills, and positive outcomes.

Creating a Knowledge Community
Collaborating allows us to create a center or a core of communication that can be used to harness information gathering. It will allow us to bring colleagues together to share and learn, to be more confident and skilled, to define data, to improve decision making, to share experiences, for continuing education, to improve communication, etc. This Knowledge Community can be created internally or globally. This can all be done as long as collaboration exists among colleagues. It can be like a one stop shop for information.

If you have created a Knowledge Community or have had experience with one, please leave a comment. Thank you.

Everyone gets stressed out at work no matter what your job function. As a Technical Writer, you too will probably have situations at one time or other where you get stressed out as well. In order to avoid communicating less or ineffectively, take a break or slow down for a while. Here are a few other ideas to get you through the rough times.

Be Positive – the work will get done. Staying positive reflects on your coworkers and your team, so this will show them that everything is under control, and hence more productivity will occur. Remaining positive also allows you to communicate more effectively and precisely. It allows you to remain calm and to express yourself better. Use this technique in meetings especially when the Technical Writer has to gather relevant information from those that oppose what you are doing (as not everyone likes to share pertinent information) or when you have to get an extension on your part of the project for when unaccounted problems occur.

Be Organized – know what your schedule is. Create your own project plan (or To Do List) and include extra time for unforeseen incidents. Create a ‘what if’ road map that shows what path to take for certain situations, such as, what if a team member calls out or is unavailable, or what if the delivery date is moved up, or a rewrite is necessary because of a drastic change in an application you were writing about.

Be Focused – keep the end goal in mind. Make sure you are retrieving the right information by asking all the relevant questions you need to for gathering your data. For example, ask about previous procedures and processes and who was in charge of those so that you can refer back to them if needed. Next, create an outline. When you are ready to begin writing, create a mapping and see if you need to update or include any other data.

Be Available – let others know how you can be reached in case of changes that might affect the outcome of the project or if approval is needed for, e.g., approvals or updates to tables, charts, images, etc., that are to be included in a document.

Be Mindful – know what has to be done. Begin your necessary documents as soon as you can to stay ahead. You can also plan ahead by creating contingency plans for any unexpected delays and bottlenecks. Also, make sure that all known problems are resolved. When planning out documentation projects, such as, analyzing project requirements, identifying types of documents required, selecting resources for writing and gathering data, and setting milestones, also make sure you have the right tools available and the budget required to complete the project. And lastly,

Be An Editor and review everything. Make sure you have written the right amount of information for the right people. For example, has the documentation been written for the novice user or management.

If you have other ideas to add about how to lessen stress, please leave a comment. Thank you.

Trying to communicate technical information to various cultures is not as simple as others may think. For a technical communicator, it requires more than just training, because being moderately acquainted with cultural differences is just not enough.

Likeminded

A previous post that I had written on communicating globally, noted that ‘Individuals need to understand the culture; their language, ethics, principles of value, moral codes, etc. …’ I still think those are very important attributes. However, being ‘likeminded’ should also be added to the list.
What is important is not only being able to communicate the ‘right words’ clearly and correctly, but to also be able to be ‘likeminded’ with the audience so that they can really understand what you are saying.

For example, within technical documentation, writing ‘Click the box.’ may have an individual trying to tap on any box on a monitor screen, whereas writing the instruction ‘Put a check mark in the box beside the appropriate….’ might have been more easily understood. It is important that the communicator be able to relate to, understand, and recognize how the audience accepts those words in order to ensure that the information is transferred correctly.

Empathy

I would also like to include just one more critical item to the list, and that is ‘empathy’, because it is important to understand how the individual will perceive the information, and that can be defined as having empathy. How someone responds to words depends on how they are related to or connected to those words.

For example, saying to someone that you think they are ‘working too hard’, could actually be misinterpreted as a criticism and not a nice comment on their good work ethics. They may mistakenly interpret it as they are working too slow. The individual may be very sensitive and insecure about themselves and so may take the statement the wrong way. To get around this, it is a good idea to smile when a statement is made and follow it with another statement about the individual, such as, ‘Your work is so good, you don’t have to work so much or so hard’.

Outcome

The above were simple examples. But more importantly, to ensure that everyone is on the same page, connecting by being ‘likeminded’ and having ‘empathy’ for your audience is as important as other items previously listed. This is really important especially when creating requirement specifications at the onset of the project (as those documents are an agreement between management and their client describing the background of a project as well as how and what is needed to complete the project). Hence if you do not explain a project correctly in the beginning, then any succeeding specifications (technical, functional, etc.) will not be correct.

As an added note, your audience has a stake in understanding what is communicated, so be understanding and be aware of the above factors mentioned before you make a statement or convey your information. These factors lead to less misinterpretation when writing or speaking to your audience. It also makes us aware of possibly different expectations as well.

If you have other thoughts on relating to the audience, please leave a comment. Thank you.

‘Why?’

• A Technical Writer possesses a lot of technical knowledge such as in software and data skills, including investigating, researching and being a middleman between the target audience, management, technical personnel (I.e., programmers, engineers), and others. Being a Technical Writer means being able to gather, communicate, and translate essential and necessary technical information between different groups of people.
  -As mentioned, Technical Writers (TWs) have a different set of skills than other writers, – they are more technology oriented. Their skills are constantly evolving. Today, TWs have now also emerged as Content Writers, Managers, Web Content Writers, and Web Managers.
• A Technical Writer needs to be able to find their SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) and collaborate; create relationships and work with them to accomplish their writing task. They must know and understand their target audience and their preferences, such as finding out what they want and need, and the format (be it video, print matter, charts, or training sessions) they would like for absorbing the information.
• A Technical Writer is involved in organizing and analyzing information and data, logistics, methodology, testing, specifications, development, and much more. How TWs generate their information is not easy. Depending on their position and or task, they may also have to write as speakers, sellers, instructors, commentators, or even researchers.

As mentioned, Technical Writers (TWs) have a different set of skills than other writers, – they are more technology oriented. Their skills are constantly evolving. Today, TWs have now also emerged as Content Writers, Managers, Web Content Writers, and Web Managers.

Other writers (non-technical) will create text containing less technical or industry related content. They may be in the field of news, selling, or commentators using avenues such as videos, presentations, marketing, white papers, or even blogging to communicate their interests or topics. In other words the content can be whatever information they need to relate to others – there may or not be a particular target audience.

But Note:

• The basic ideals and requirements are still the same for the TW and other content writers. They are knowledgeable in their specialty fields (manufacturing, pharmacy, education, development, business, etc.) and they know how to write – clearly and concisely; whether it’s on the web, through text, or any other media. No matter which role is taken, the writer has to have a key understanding of what the audience needs and to tailor it to them. The writer has to be able to be a good listener, focused, and be able to adjust their writing accordingly. Also, they should like the topic they are writing about.
• In the end, the difference between a Technical Writer and any other writer depends on the job qualifications and position. As either writer, you may at one time or other have to write in either format. What really matters is that you like to share valuable information and can write in a manner that everyone understands.
• And, as always, communication is the key in the field of writing.

If you have a different view, please leave a comment.