The Technical Writer's Existential Plight

After two weeks of plague, I have dragged myself from the miry depths of sickness to produce a new article. While recovering, a philosophical quandary took a firm lodging within my brain. previous post, the heroic acts of writers often go unsung in the corporate world. An area where this phenomenon is of particular concern is among the ranks of technical writers.
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One of the prevailing trends of late in this particular corner of the writing world is a policy of erasure. Technical documents should be toneless, impersonal, instructions absent personality. For instance, a blog post I read recently suggested that some of the policies taking hold within the industry are causing the proliferation of an "assembly line" approach that attempts to remove writers from the equation whenever possible. What could cause such a promotion of subalternity? The post's author suggests that it is something initially meant to assist technical writers: the topic authoring system.

To give a two-bit summary, topic authoring and more technological implementations of it, such as DITA, are methods for creating content repositories that allow for the easy reuse of pieces of written information, dubbed topics. These organizational systems make it so that there is a reduction in the redundancy of content since writers can simply pull in information that has already been created. Sounds great, right? Well, in theory, yes, but as I've indicated, there are drawbacks as well.

Under the law of topic authoring, no longer are writers to be concerned with narrative. Instead, each snippet of information should be self-contained and able to stand alone so that any document can incorporate it with ease. This, when implemented in a haphazard way, causes chaotic guides cobbled together from myriad sources that vary in tone, structure, and approach. For this reason the holy, impersonal statutes delineate certain varieties of topic that prescribe unyielding templates for information types, such as procedures, explanations, and references.

You may ask why I take issue with this. To put it in a phrase, these standards promote absolutism. They strive for a unified whole that, through the uncertainty of language, is rendered always already incomplete (see my electronic music article for more on this). Okay, great, but what's the alternative? If you'll permit me, I've got a few ideas.

First of all, we need to cease the overdefinition and erasure of the writer within and from the writing process. Even the STC, one of the preeminent organizations in the technical writing field, seeks to alter their title away from "technical writing" to "technical communication." In principle, this seems broader, but in actuality it removes the agency of the writer. The act is no longer in their hands. They are now simply cogs in a great, inexorable machine that churns out instructions. Instead, I think writers should embrace the power their name represents. They are the directors of language's play. If we place the same creative value on technical writers that we do on other writing professionals, such as copywriters, the results might be surprising.

Once this initial shift in philosophical perspective happens, a more effective harmonization between technical writers and other professional divisions can be established. The breaking down of these artificial walls will allow a dialog across the many corporate areas dealing with the written word. When the lines of communication are flowing, synchronicities in thought can be achieved that will improve company-wide branding and stylistic recognition.

Only one key realization is needed to bring this to fruition: technical writers are marketers too. Their words contribute as much to the success of a corporate endeavor as front end advertising processes do. If customers have a unique experience even when looking for solutions to difficulties with a product, they will have an even more vivid recognition of specific brands and will be more likely to return for more service. Remove status, remove fear, leave only the words. Then, we can understand value beyond what reductive structures define for us.

On Writers, the Unsung Heroes of Corporate Culture

Yesterday, I came across an intriguing article by Cord Jefferson on Gawker regarding the fair compensation of writers. It laid out a few thought-provoking points regarding the debate between whether or not asking writers to provide free content is a fair request. Being somewhat concerned with this particular quandary myself, I thought I'd explore it further in today's post.

To me, this is a good springboard from which to launch a campaign of awareness. Whether you realize it or not, writers are all around you. Laboring in the shadows, these talented individuals are, if you'll permit the metaphor, the wheels on the bus of business. You could still start the engine without them, but it would sure be hard to get anywhere.

Another unfortunate truth contained in the image above is that, like wheels, writers often bear a lot of the weight of corporate success without being considered as pretty or visible as the paint job, hood ornaments, or grill. This is a situation to which I can relate. When I was employed as a technical editor, I saw many brilliant individuals in my department working with a tireless sense of duty. Their creativity and commitment drove many successful documentation releases, without which the products that our company sold would have been incomprehensible. Despite this fact, however, technical publications is a field that often gets overlooked. These departments often fail to receive the hallowed title of "revenue generator," and therefore often face budget cuts that leave them unable to pursue improvements that would increase customer satisfaction.

So what does it take to be a revenue generator? Well, based on the explanations given in the link above, it takes having a tangible impact on the profit of a company. Okay, so by extension, wouldn't that mean that technical publications do generate revenue because they make products understandable to users? There, my friend, is the rub. Yes, they do, but not in a flashy way. People consult technical documents often at the pinnacle of their stress levels. They can't find the answer on their own, so they need help. As a result, it's not considered something people want to read, like marketing materials or business proposals. The mistake that often results from this correlation is the thought among executives that these resources aren't always necessary and are often more frustrating rather than helpful. Sure, this assertion might hold water in some cases, but the alternative is a far more confusing realm.

As an editor, I saw my fair share of technical information written by non-technical writers, whether these be product managers, engineers, or any other functions. There are occasions upon which these endeavors can work, such as when the audience aligns in understanding with the profession of the author. That said, without someone dedicated to exploring what customers need to find out and where they go to do so, much gets lost in translation. Research into the types of people using products, the way they use the products, and the places in which they expect to find valuable information about the products is invaluable. That's how technical writers generate revenue. Each day, through the very nature of their work, they gain an insight into how customers think.

Now, this isn't the only literary profession subject to the Invisible Writer Syndrome. As Cord Jefferson points out, journalists often get the short end of the stick in terms of the compensation they get for what they do and are often taken for granted in this age in which news just appears out of the ether. In fact, if you look in most departments at a company, from Marketing to Operations, you'll find various types of writers providing content that keeps the whole thing rolling.

This is not meant as a complaint. I celebrate my chosen profession and revel in the creative backflips it allows me each day. Think of it instead as a call to action. Notice those quiet scribblers tucked away in corner cubicles. Realize that just because they are not at the head of a board meeting or the face you see at business conferences does not mean that they deserve less than those that are. All those company blogs, Facebook updates, Twitter posts, proposals, and manuals come from somewhere. Look in that direction, and shine a light on the individuals there. You'll be glad you did.

Engagement: Applying Social Action to Business

There was a certain prevailing notion about business that I and many others from my generation experienced as we ascended the rickety and treacherous ladder to adulthood: it is by definition amoral. Profit is the holy grail, and any people, animals, or environments in the way of that goal were to be swept aside. Well, another part of adulthood is also sweeping aside the preconceived notions fostered in the boiling cauldron of teenage angst, so with that said, I'd like to put forth a proposition. The strongest businesses are those that can actualize and engage their intended audience. Social action is as large a deciding factor in the marketplace as it is when rallying for causes. People need to feel involved. With the advent of social media, we are all connected for better or for worse. There are no more numbers, only names. That's a liberating thought, isn't it?

As a result of this movement, it's no longer easy to get away with inundating potential customers with impersonal spam. Instead, it's necessary to learn about and nurture the connections you wish to make (see my lead nurturing article for more on that). An effective marketing campaign in the modern corporate landscape should take more cues from non-profits and social change efforts than it does from risk analysts and financial planners.

An emerging company that embodies this new mode of thought is Dailybreak. They market not only a product, but an experience as well. How? Through interactive snippets of content called challenges. These unique digital packages encourage consumer participation, what Dailybreak calls, aptly enough, social actions. Whether through a bite-sized game, a photo contest, a public vote, or an abundance of other options, Dailybreak pulls people in and makes them feel as though they are a part of something. This may sound familiar, as it is a very similar model to the one that Kiva uses, which I discussed in an earlier post. Social responsibility influencing corporate culture. Who'da thunk?

Anyway, I find Dailybreak's approach so fascinating because it can be applied almost anywhere. Just find the interactions most appropriate to your particular line of interest and off you go. The best part is that there's no way to be disingenuous here. To follow such a model necessitates a deep understanding of your audience and a genuine interest in connecting with them on a personal level. The old methodologies of simple trickery go out the window in this scenario. Corporations now have to be responsible in order to even attract customers.

Bravo, I say. Bravo to the Age of Information. As Neal DeGrasse Tyson put it, "We are all connected to each other biologically; to the earth chemically; to the rest of the universe atomically." The more that business assimilates this truth, the more ethical practices will prevail and the more people will get what they need instead of just meeting a series of transient, fleeting, implanted wants. Keep that in mind the next time that you advertise, and I wish you the best of luck in finding those in the world who need what you have to offer. They're out there, I promise.

More than a Sale: Lead Nurturing's Role in Marketing Success

As it seems that I grow increasingly business-minded of late, I thought that I would share some information about another marketing practice that I've been reading up on: lead nurturing. This concept is a bit more abstract than those I addressed last week, but is also intriguing due to its philosophical elements. You see, lead nurturing is not just some predetermined set of statistics or programs. Instead, it involves a sophisticated mix of relationship building and persuasion. That's right, my friends, it's not just about tracking some emails or blasting out notifications to a list. To do it right, you need to cultivate the idea that I've mentioned time and again in these pages: connection.

As usual, I've gotten a bit ahead of myself. First, we should walk together through the valley of fundamentals in order to reach the peak of understanding. What is a lead? Well, it's really quite straightforward: it's you. That's somewhat of an oversimplification, but it conveys the gist of things. To elaborate, a lead is a person or group that is already interested or could potentially be interested in becoming a customer. Leads can come from many places, such as a customer signing up for an email list, downloading a trial pack of software, or accessing free learning resources, among others. For obvious reasons, marketers covet these relationships because they can, when given the right impetus, lead to further revenue and brand exposure. This, as you may have guessed, is where we get into the nurturing part.

As I've indicated above, obtaining a lead is only the first step. After initial contact, a marketer must grow, or nurture, the connection in order to persuade the lead to become a customer. Proper use of this strategy bears tremendous reward. In Marketo's Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing, the author mentions a statistic from a DemandGen report, which asserts that nurtured leads result in an average sales opportunity increase of 20 percent when compared to non-nurtured leads. That's a definitive margin if I ever saw one.

Okay, sounds great, sign me up, but how do you do it? How do you grow a customer relationship that way? This is where we get into the abstract bits, so buckle your seat belts. Mounting an effective lead nurturing approach takes a careful combination of automation and analysis with a personal touch. The first part is concrete enough; there are some great solution providers out there like Hubspot who can set you up with an array of powerful tools to analyze your audience and craft automated alerts and responses to get the initial lead in place. However, it's the second bit - what is done with that information - where having a spark of creativity can pay huge dividends.

Folks, we've got to fire up that imagination engine again. Sure, you can know what kind of a target market you have, how many people have visited your site, who has downloaded your trial software, and a million other pieces of similar information, but that doesn't mean people are buying what you're selling. For that to happen, you must enter the surreal landscape of relationships. As the aforementioned Marketo guide says, lead nurturing is like maintaining a long-term relationship in your personal life, and that means you've got to give to get. If you don't capture people's interest and stay present in their minds, you will lose leads as fast as you get them.

With that said, I'm going to run through a fictional case study as an example of how you can imagine your way to good marketing practices. Say you've got an email list that tells you who signed up to view a product demonstration on your website. There are some valuable facts you can glean from this list. First of all, these people are probably exploring several product options if they're watching demos, which means you need to prove that your product is worth more to them than the competition's. You can hope that the awesome video your team put together does the job, or you can act to reinforce the message.

With planning, automation can help you out a bit. Using an email service provider or marketing automation software, you can author an email ahead of time that thanks people for signing up and gives a few follow-up details about the product that flesh out what they saw in the demo. In my opinion, though, the most important element to include here is a method for the audience to give feedback and reach you with other questions. Don't bank on your extra facts filling in all the gaps; you can't anticipate all the vagaries of the human thought process, and if you tried to your email would be far too long. Instead, make it clear that you value what your audience has to say. If they feel important and cared about now, they'll trust you more later.

Along with planting the seed of trust, make sure you reinforce your credibility. Respond promptly to any feedback and questions you receive, and be honest. Procrastination is a killer in this scenario. If people perceive your question line as a bottomless abyss into which queries disappear without a trace, they will no longer believe in any of your claims. Thank them for criticism, and pass on useful critiques to your team. This can be stellar method for getting in product testing while also nurturing leads. Answer questions in a succinct way, and point the questioner to further resources (make sure you have these ready to go). Above all, don't automate this if at all possible. As I said before, the personal touch will be noted.

The foundation above paves the way for more intricate lead nurturing techniques, such as offering free trials of products, requesting surveys of customer needs, and, at the latest stage, engaging the sales team to pitch a purchase plan to the prospect. Remember, you need to prove your worth first. The magic of the interwebs affords us the ability to research companies and products in-depth before buying anything, so premature sales pitches almost always scare people off. Be deliberate and unique. Think about what you can do for the leads you are following. To once again reference a past blog post, it's not about manipulation. More and more as technology improves, the old ways of suckering someone into buying something then running are invalidated. What will make you stand out is your passion and your ideas. Connect to, nurture, and help others, and then your success will be limitless.

For more information about lead nurturing, I suggest checking out Hubspot's blog posts. They've got loads of useful information that can deepen your understanding of the concepts I've sketched out here. Like Wistia, they provide both the resources and the opportunity to learn about what they sell. Also, Eloqua has some amazing best practice tool kits that lay out these ideas in very easy-to-consume ways. My words here are only a starting point; after all, I still have much to learn myself about this fascinating discipline. Continue exploring, and I'll see you next time.

#TweetFiction, Video Marketing, and General Excitement

This week has been one of the most eventful in recent history for me. So much discovery, exploration, and imagination is flooding my mind that I simply have spill such wondrous brain contents here. In terms of authorly-type activities, the ideas have been flowing, and to start I'd like to articulate a concept upon which I've been musing of late: #TweetFiction.

Similar to the flash fiction of luminaries such as Warren Ellis, #TweetFiction further condenses the concept to work within the scant 140-character confines of everyone's favorite social media platform. Thus far, it seems that about two sentences is the average workspace afforded. I've published four or so entries on my Twitter feed as concepts pop into my head. This is a wonderful brainstorming tactic, as it galvanizes the ol' neural connections and, in my case, leads to springboards for longer form fictional endeavors.

Being interested as I am in connection and perspectives, I'd like to extend an invitation. All ye writerly types, flood the Twittersphere with your dazzling creations. Pass it on, share the wealth, and provoke thought in a region of the web so often perceived (unfairly) as a source of irrelevant trivialities. Whether you're a fan of the real, fantastical, or scientific, this format offers a way to send out polished nuggets of verbal excellence to the world. Consider this the beginning of your manifesto: creativity and expansion. After all, isn't life boring if it's all defined for you?

Continuing on the track of creativity, I've recently become acquainted with an industry that has me quite excited: video marketing. Ranging from whimsical to instructional, these pieces of content highlight the importance of the emotional resonance that I spoke of in my last post when it comes to selling products and services. In our Big Data-centric society, the visual content is often of even higher importance than the verbal message. As Eddie Izzard put it, "It's 70 percent how you look, 20 percent how you sound, and only 10 percent what you actually say." Now, this isn't to say that verbal content should go out the window; my point is more that the visuals should match and amplify the message.

One of the best examples I've found of this amplification lately is the work being done by Wistia, a video marketing group out of Somerville, MA. They've managed to push for change in the marketing industry in ways that inspire others and spark conversations about where the industry as whole should head. Most important in my mind, however, is their generosity. Not only do they offer masterful solutions to clients, they also have numerous free resources available to the general public. One of their newer efforts is the Wistia Learning Center, a portal in which the company expounds upon the various aspects of video marketing. Whether it's the nuts and bolts of production techniques, the cerebral process of concept design, or the analytical intricacies of measuring video success, Wistia has it covered. Their easy-to-digest content is enlightening and integral to the building of success in the industry. Additionally, they offer free hosting for three videos to anyone who makes an account so that both the resources and opportunity to learn are within reach. Check them out if you have time.

Well, this brings us to the end of another scintillating installment. I hope to see #TweetFiction and videos popping up across the untamed vastness that is the Internet. Remember, construct your lives one moment at a time, and always broaden your perspective.

Revitalization and Notes Toward a Marketing Career

"How did Gandalf get ahead of us?"
"He comes and goes at will. He is a wizard, you know."
- The Hobbit (1977)

Jobs are much like wizards; they come and go at will, but (hopefully, at least) they always show up when you need them. My recent departure from RSA has caused some contemplation in this regard. The unexpected does not send you a calendar update on Microsoft Outlook, it simply happens. However, while it may be uncomfortable, it opens up a host of new, previously unexplored realms of opportunity. These are the things that, in my humble opinion, it is most productive to focus upon.

The chiefest sin of becoming entrenched in a daily routine is the impulse toward inattention. As my significant other says, "You can't just let life wash over you." This is a sin to which I have fallen prey over the last year in particular. Many of the facets of life that I most enjoy have fallen by the wayside as I encased myself in a firm wrapping of petty day-to-day concerns. One of those facets is this blog. The sounding board has suffered from a failure to resonate for over a year now. It's high time I remedied that situation.

As a first step, rather than keeping it all contained in the grey matter between my ears, I'd like to discuss my plans for the future upon reentering the murky waters of job searching. As I said in "I Swear to God I Can Copywrite" back in prehistoric times, marketing is the career area in which I think I can make the greatest impact. In terms of having a channel for boundless creativity, you can't get much better. The myriad products and services floating around in the ether of our global community all need direction, expansion, and targeting. Whether it's a video game, an automobile, or the latest breakthrough in cancer treatment, the only way for it to become useful is for it to be known.

Now, I know many may accuse me of lionizing a career that is essentially a glorified, electrified form of peddling, but if you look a little deeper, "take the deeper dive" as the managers I've had are fond of saying, you will find a vibrant community of individuals as imaginative as any science fiction writer. After all, marketing is the science of connection, something that has fascinated me since my MA studies. Think of it not as simple selling; that's not the point. The actual motive is a far more complex process involving the interweaving of emotions with people, acts, and objects. Ask yourself: what makes me treat a Roomba like a pet that happens to like eating my dirt? Why is it that the kind of computer I use signifies a certain set of personality traits to others? Marketing at work, folks :).

Now, my intention here is not to have everyone go off in a half-cocked, paranoid state a la the movie Branded thinking "the corporations are eating my brain." True, these powers have been and can be used for nefarious purposes, but there are other ways as well. Caution is called for, yes, but consider this: social and political causes need marketing too, as do products legitimately attempting to progress the well-being of humanity. For instance, despite the fraught nature of the individuals involved in its inception, the Kony 2012 campaign did succeed in highlighting the crimes being committed toward children in Africa and grabbed the attention of the global community in a very tangible way. In fact, three of the four goals established for the project were met in the same year in which it started. That's a pretty solid result any way you look at it.

Another sterling example is Kiva. Realizing that the biggest barrier to philanthropic activities is convenience, the people behind this organization created an online micro-lending platform that allows for instantaneous small donations to various individuals across the world. The best part? It's a loan, so the money will come back to you, and you can use it again to help more. All this from your comfy chair at your first-world computer desk. I can't think of a better use case for market targeting.

In short, marketing can change the world. It's a process that follows the best possible portions of the deconstructionist vision: using the play of language to engage as many points of human connection as possible. Through this enterprise, we can not only create successful businesses, but also expand our perceptions and raise global awareness of the infinite subject positions inhabited across the earth we share. In this spirit, I encourage you to learn about others; learn what they need, what preoccupies them, what they think and feel. It's not about manipulation, it's about actualization and proliferation. In this way, we can all be marketers.