Content strategy for technical communication

Content strategy in
technical communication
Sarah O’Keefe, Scriptorium Publishing
Twitter: @sarahokeefe

background image
ﬂickr: thelastminute

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Housekeeping notes
❖ Everyone is muted except for the
presenter
❖ Please ask your questions through the
Questions area in the webcast interface
❖ The presentation is being recorded;
attendees do not appear in the
recording


What is content strategy?
❖ “Content strategy plans for the creation,
publication, and governance of useful,
usable content.”
❖ “Content strategy is a plan to get you
from where you are now with your
current content (assets, operations,
distribution, maintenance, and so on),
to where you want to be.”
- Kristina Halvorson

Tech comm needs more
than “web content strategy.”
❖ Localization
❖ Print
❖ Embedded help
❖ Context-sensitive help
❖ Code comments
❖ …


Complicated requirements
❖ Multiple outputs
❖ Regulated content
❖ Coordination with product development
❖ Versioning/conditionality


Content strategy in tech comm

A plan for
❖ Developing
❖ Delivering
❖ Deploying
❖ Destroying
your information


Yet another buzzword?
❖ There’s deﬁnitely hype
❖ Content strategy is
different from technical
communication (or
technical writing)

ﬂickr: anitakhart


Content strategy

Tech comm Community Localization Training

Technical writing Forums Scope Courseware
UI strings Wikis Process e-learning
Videos … … …
…


Our content strategy
methodology
❖ Analyze an established content
workﬂow
❖ Identify business problem(s)
❖ Identify new requirements
❖ Develop solutions to address
requirements


Analyzing
an established workﬂow
ﬂickr: st3f4n

Broken workﬂows
❖ PDF deliverables not meeting user needs
❖ Current workﬂow cannot scale to
address localization and/or new
products
❖ Need a strategy to foster and manage
community participation in technical
content


Audience: What
problems do you see?
❖ Describe your content problems in the
Questions tab
❖ We will display your contributions to all
attendees


More problems
❖ Developing content in Agile
❖ Workﬂow is inefﬁcient and expensive
❖ Current deliverables are of low quality
❖ Need to align content development
better with product development
❖ Complex conditions not supported by
current toolset


Identify business problem
ﬂickr:state-records-nsw

PDF deliverables not
meeting user needs
❖ Users are unhappy (quality)
❖ They call tech support, which is
expensive for us (money)
❖ We spend a lot of time formatting for
print (time), but users still hate it
(quality)


Audience: Describe your
business problem
❖ Describe your problem in business
terms (time, money, quality) in the
Questions tab
❖ We will display your contributions to all
attendees


Workﬂow cannot scale for
localization and/or new products
❖ Customers interpret English-only docs as
a sign that we are not serious about
selling to them (quality)
❖ We have a six-month delay between
English and localized products (time)
❖ We are losing revenue in non-English
markets (money)


Need a strategy for
community participation
❖ Our complex product needs
participation from community experts
(quality)
❖ Building a robust community is less
expensive than hiring additional people
to create content internally (money)


Identify new requirements
ﬂickr: Francisco Diez

Requirement examples
❖ Community participation
❖ Accelerated deployment
❖ Simultaneous shipment in multiple
languages
❖ New output formats


Develop solutions
ﬂickr: Svadilfari

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Developing
❖ Who is the audience?
❖ Common characteristics
❖ How does your audience want to get
information?
❖ What information do they need?
❖ Use cases
❖ Personas


What is the best way to deliver
each type of information?
ﬂickr: clearlyambiguous

The wrong approach
❖ Current knowledge of tools and
technologies
❖ Readily available software
❖ Personal preference


Some delivery options
❖ Traditional paper manual
❖ Web-based conﬁguration tool
❖ Help and embedded help
❖ Web pages
❖ Forums, wikis, and other collaborative
content
❖ Live video, screencasts, animation, podcasts


Break out of the book
ﬂickr: kellymccarthy

Community strategy
❖ Participation
❖ Moderation
❖ Feedback loop


Regulated environments
ﬂickr: jmrosenfeld

Delivering
❖ What is the best format for our
audience?
❖ How do we create this format?
❖ Content management issues


Deploying
❖ How do we get our output to our
audience?
❖ How do we make sure that the audience
has access to the information?


Content destruction
❖ What happens when information
becomes obsolete?
❖ How do we handle archiving and
retention?
❖ What about versioning? How many
versions should be available?


Change management
❖ Consider incremental improvements
❖ Look for ﬂexible solutions that can grow
and evolve
❖ Componentize?
❖ Review every 2–5 years, depending on
your organization’s velocity


Poll: Content strategy
❖ Fab!
❖ Fad
❖ Meh. Whatever.


Resources
❖ knol.google.com/k/content-strategy#
❖ Bibliography of Wikipedia entry on
“content strategy” for book references
❖ www.scriptorium.com/2010/10/
content-strategy-for-technical-
communication/


Final notes
❖ scriptorium.com/resources/webcasts for
the webcast recording (allow three
business days)
❖ Check scriptorium.com/events for
upcoming events


Content strategy for technical communication

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