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Everything you need to know to become a technical writer- A step by Step Guide

Are you new to technical writing or thinking how to become a technical writer or learn technical writing? You must be wondering where to begin.

This post is mainly to answer the most frequently asked question when I get a call from aspiring technical writers or content writers.

  • How to become a technical writer?
  • How to get into the Technical Writing Industry?
  • How do you get into Technical Writing?
  • Trying to transition to Technical Writing, what do recruiters look for?
  • Technical Writing Tips
  • What is Technical Writing?
  • How to switch from content writing to technical writing?

If you are a writer and dream to become a technical writer and work with the world’s most important technology companies like Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon, Thales, then this blog post is for you.

If you are a writing nerd like me, you must have heard about this profession.

But, if you’re part of the other 99.9% of the world who isn’t super excited about this profession,” you’ve probably missed this news.

Technical writers are the second most paid writing professionals first is, of course, ransom writers. Growth projection is 20% in India and 11% in U.S.A (from the Bureau of Labor Statistics).

The prominence of technical writing in the IT sector can be known through this article too. Read it here

TechComm
Technical writing in NEWS

 

As a single writer, you can build a career as a full-time technical writer from the comfort of your home after work, during your afternoons, and on your weekends.

I don’t think that I’m overly dramatic when I say that technical writing is your shot at the life of your dreams.

“Writing is the painting of voice.”- Voltaire

Trust me — I would know. Till now I have shaped up the careers of many writers through our course and many other initiatives.

I want you to have as much fun at work as these guys, and I do. So, today I’ll introduce you to this world with my technical writing guide.

Note: Even if you’re already knee-deep, you can still learn a ton of new things.

If you’re interested in a particular topic, feel free to jump ahead:

  1. Overview
  2. Definition
  3. What do technical writers do?
  4. Who can become a technical writer?
  5. Where can technical communicators be placed?
  6. What are the important skills to be a successful technical writer?
  7. Resume of Technical writers
  8. What would be the average salary of technical writers?
  9. What is the career path of technical writers?
  10. How to start as a technical writer?

Overview

A perfect blend of language and technology is technical writing, wherein technology is made easy for people to understand through creating user manuals, online help, and documentation for future reference and proper functioning of the software. In short, it is the information development process.

learntechnicalwriting

Image source

Definition of Technical writer

If you’ve read my blog posts on technical writing, you already know that it’s different from other writing.

Not every technology writing is automatically technical writing.

Few definitions of technical writing are:

Before taking up a career in technical writing we should know the whole scenario of technical writing as a career, and this blog post will help you in it by discussing all the major questions that whirl the mind before focusing on the definite track.

  1. According to Wikipedia

“Technical writing is any written form of writing or drafting technical communication used in a variety of technical and occupational fields, such as computer hardware and software, engineering, chemistry, aeronautics, robotics, finance, medical, consumer electronics, and biotechnology. It encompasses the largest sub-field within technical communication”.

  1. According to US Bureau of Labor Statistics

“Putting technical information into easily understandable language is technical writing”

Want the drop-dead simple version of it?

Technical writing is an effort/process of simplifying the use of the product to help users to use it effecientely and effectively. Technical writers can take help of words, images, infographics, GIFs, videos to do so and chose different media to publish and deliver which is easily accessible and searchable.

It’s anything that you do to delight and help your customer to use a product. The customer can be internal or external.

This is a classical definition of technical writing now technical writers are more into the Information development process and wear different hats according to need.

 

History of Technical Writing

To become a technical writer it is good to know the history of the profession. In U.S.A more than 46,000 technical writers are employed and the first Association of technical writers (STC) was founded in 1953. In 2009, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics recognized Technical Writer as a profession.

The rich history of technical communication goes back to the period of Aristotle around 322 BC. His works were considered as the juvenile form of technical writing, however, the first published English technical writing document was of Geoffrey Chaucer in the 14th century.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, a period from 1760 to 1840 the need for technical writing increased. This need was a result of requirements generated for skilled resources that could handle the machinery.  It became necessary to illustrate to the workers how to use the machine in a simple language that can be understood by non-technical resources too.

Documentation became mandatory because it was becoming a Napoleon task to teach each worker verbally about the functioning of heavy machines.

The need for technical writers volcanized even more during the First World War and Second World War. The heavy weapons were to be used by soldiers not the technicians, so it became important to provide them the manuals to use it in the war field.

Most crucial fields like medicine, aerospace technology, military, computer technology saw advancement in that period and it accelerated the need for technical writers to explain and document the processes.

This led to gain technical writer’s professional acclaim, and it emerged as an official job title-TECHNICAL WRITER.

The postwar period was also not less rewarding. Writers were needed across different fields to register the processes as there was a rapid growth in the transport system, universities, libraries, etc.

The computer was losing its privilege of remaining in the hands of specialist only. Universities and large businesses were keen to make use of it for optimum results.

First computation technical document was the instruction manual of BINAC computer written by Joseph D Chapline in 1949.

Opportunities for technical writer increased even more when in 1947 transistor was invented. This invention led to the expansion of the computer in small businesses and in individual hands.

Computer becoming more common generated a pool of opportunity for technical writers as they were needed to explain the use of devices and to keep a written record of it.

In the 1980s, consumer electronic products entered the household and gave another kick to the requirement of technical writers.

In the present era, the computer has become the toy of every other hand. Digital communication has made things a lot easier than before. The writing format is also changing accordingly.

Hypertext, XML, graphics and many software tools are used by technical writers for the documentation purpose. The techniques have improved and it’s getting better day by day.

Though India has over 10,000 technical writers there was no association until 2017, to let them come under one roof for better learning, networking, and knowledge sharing for mutual benefit. Few societies of other countries, however, worked in India.

The majority of technical writers are employed in Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, and Delhi-NCR.

STC-India chapter was started by Gurudutt Kamath in 1999.

In 2017,  Information Developers Foundation was formed- first not for profit Indian society for technical communicators.

IDF has a sole motto to expand and strengthen the technical communicator community in the best possible way covering all the basic needs of technical writers ie. from training to placement and from network expansion to show your presence.

(Source: Wikipedia and STC)

What Technical writers do?

Technical writers are the person who develops the information provided in a simplified language to make it easily understandable to the people they are intended to. A technical language is difficult to understand by a common man. Technical writers convert them to make it easy for commoners to follow the instructions.

Technical writers are the optimized amalgamation of technology and English (language) to convert the complex into simple for the benefit of producer and the user both.

Contrary to popular belief, technical writers don’t just write user guides or manuals, but also contribute to the development lifecycle of the product. To understand the complete cycle of work read about Documentation development lifecycle.

Technical writers write user manuals, online help, white papers, APIs Doc, etc.

They do the documentation for a product or services for the internal user to end-user of the product.

Tech writers use tools to develop the information provided in a simpler language such as RoboHelp, Framemaker, MadcapFlare, SnagIT, etc.

How o become technical writer

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Qualifications required to become a Technical Writer?

This can vary from geographies to a hiring company. Typically any graduate with a flair for writing and technology can pursue technical writing. Good English is mandatory (or the language in which you will be communicating). For a more explanatory view, a list of eligibility criteria is given below.

Few companies give preference to B.Tech/BCA/MCA/BE students.

Recently-graduated students with a Bachelor’s degree in Arts, Science, Technology or Commerce.
MBA graduates can especially benefit.
Working people who need to switch their careers because of no career growth in their present job.  A majority of this category belongs to the

  • Content writing
  • BPO sector
  • Medical
  • Transcription industry
  • Journalism
  • Technical Support
  • Software Developers
  • Software Quality specialists.

– Individuals who have stopped working for some time for family and relocation reasons and now wish to get back to professional life (has
proven very beneficial for mothers who have given up their careers to start a family)
– Self-motivated individuals who believe in sharpening and updating their skills for their professional growth.
– (We have even had entrepreneurs take up this program and hugely benefit their organizations.)

Information Developers  Foundation Students Job Profiles and Qualification

Delegate’s with different jobs and qualifications join  Information Developers for the better prospects and bright professional future.

Information Developers Students profile
Information Developers Students profile
Qualification of technical writers

You can see that students from different careers and domains are joining technical writing.

Where Can Technical writers get placed?

 Technical writing is crucial for every industry that needs documentation. As perceived it is not limited to the IT industry only.

The industries that hire technical writers are

  • IT industry
  • Manufacturing sector
  • Aerospace
  • Defense sector
  • Service industry
  • Customer support etc.

Some of the companies Hiring Technical writers

From the partial list of companies hiring Information Developers student, you will get a clear idea about companies hiring technical writing. In general product, companies hire more technical writers than service companies.

  • Oracle
  • Microsoft
  • Adobe
  • Google
  • Amazon
  • Caterpillar
  • JCB
  • HCL
  • SAP
  • NOKIA
  • HP
  • DELL

Resume of Technical writers

The first and most important thing about the technical writer or content writer resume should be error-free.All types of errors like spelling, grammar, formatting, consistency, etc. Do not copy and paste and the section of the resume and do not try to fake it.

Few companies consider your resume and cover letter as a sample of your work.

  • The CV should be easy-to-read, well laid out, and not over-crowded.
  • It should be customized for the job you are applying to.
  • You should highlight the relevant skills you have for the job.
  • It should be a concise document with no grammar or spelling mistakes.
  • It should not be exaggerated and read honestly.

For more detail, you can read both blog posts about the resume.

10 Kick ass Resume writing tricks for technical writers

FREELANCE TECHNICAL WRITER RESUME

What is the average salary of a Technical Writer?

According to a survey done by Economic Times in 2017 Technical writing is among the emerging high payout jobs in India.

Check survey here

The average salary also fluctuates according to the city and country you are working.

Typically starting salary of Information Developers students are from INR 3-5 lac/annum.

In the U.S.A according to Labour of Beaureu static average hourly rate is approx $36/hour and mean annual wage is $74,445. You can read more on the website. You can also refer to the Indeed website.

Every year STC-India conducts a salary survey. You can download the detail from STC-India website.

 

What is the career path of a technical writer?

In the IT organizations, the career path of a technical writer is similar to other development team members.

  • Intern technical writer
  • Associate technical writer
  • Technical writer
  • Senior technical writer
  • Lead technical writer/Principal technical writer
  • Documentation manager
  • Senior Doc manager
  • Director

Similar titles for technical writers

Like any other profession, the IT company title and designation can vary.

  • Technical Communicator
  • Technical Author
  • Technical Content writer
  • Content Developer
  • Information Developer
  • Information Architect
  • Information Engineer
  • Information Designer
  • Documentation Specialist
  • Documentation Manager
  • Career growth for technical writers

A technical writer starts off as a technical writer, become a senior or principal technical writer and after having an experience of around 10 years they move towards the management side.

They can be the scrum master, Documentation manager, or content strategist too.  They normally manage other technical writers and analyze their writings and suggest better ways from their experiences.

The highest paying advanced career path is of content strategist though the requirements are very few in the industry they are the creamy layer if calculated on the scale of earnings.

A week in the life of a Technical Writer

My week typically look like this.

  • I start my day by updating JIRA.
  • Attend daily scrum.
  • Write new features and maintain existing documentation.·
  • Work closely with developers, product architects, and product owners to create technical documentation with a high focus on clarity, completeness, accuracy, and usability.
  • Obtain product information from agile meetings, specifications, supplemental material, and discussions with project engineers.
  • Participate in peer review processes to improve documentation quality.
  • Contribute to develop and maintain existing documentation processes, standards, checklists, and templates.
  • Suggest screen labels and error messages with a focus on improving the customer experience (UX).
  • Create graphics to supplement the flow and presentation of the content.
  • Help in translation and localization processes.

You can watch the video of Amruta Randa to take a feel of typical technical writer day.

Typical Job description for technical writing

General Information

Job title: Consultant – Senior/Staff Technical Writer

Job Family: Development

Region: Global

Role: Mid –Senior Level (L2)

Number of Positions: 1

Position Summary

A mid-level position, responsible for providing front-end technical support to customers and proactively enabling customer self-service.

Job Overview 

For reference, I have taken this example from LinkedIn.

As a Technical Writer at XYZ, you will be responsible to support XYZ Global development team by working on software documentation for system administrators and users. XYZxcels in developing product related to Backup and Storage domain and the suitable Writer needs to have a good understanding of terminology and process required to understand database and back-end work in software development.

Work Experience

• Experience for Senior Staff Technical Writer: 5-9 years

• Experience for Staff

Technical Writer: 2-5 years 


Location: Noida

Mandatory Skills: 

1. Good technical understanding of SDLC and DDLC.

2. Minimum 6 months experience in using MadCap Flare tool for documentation.

3. Excellent knowledge and experience of authoring in HTML and XML editing tools.

Description of General Work:

• Working independently as well as part of a large distributed team.

• Handling one or multiple products/projects depending upon the requirement.

• Research and write documentation for new or existing products.

• Work closely in Agile project development with development, product management, quality assurance, user experience/design, training, and support personnel.

Preferred Skills 

University degree or Technical Writing college diploma in relevant field.

• Excellent oral and written communication skills.

• Knowledge of how to create and use graphics in technical documentation.

• Knowledge of MS-Visio.

• Knowledge of authoring tools, such as Framemaker or RoboHelp

• Experience with bug tracking tools, such as JIRA.

• Ability to write and design minimalist information.

Experience of working in an agile development process.

Best books to learn Technical writing for beginners

Any day Microsoft Manual of Style (MSTP) is a mother of all the technical writing books. Microsoft Manual of Style and The Chicago Manual of Style is a must for you. Get MSTP now. Just click on the image and get it now I repeat if you are serious about your career.

  

Few more good books for technical writers.

Thank you to Amruta Ranade (Cockroach lab, U.S.A) and Gyanesh Talwar (Adobe) for giving a valuable recommendation on our Facebook group.

     

 

How to start as a full-time technical writer?

By now you must have a fair idea about technical writing and it is time to take action.

  1. Read the job description carefully.
  2. Do gap analysis also you can go for SWOT analysis to understand what you have and what you need to learn.
  3. Start learning. Google is your best friend to start slowly and be focused.
  4. You can attend local meetups, attend webinars, and watch Information Developers recorded webinars.
  5. Join the online forum on Facebook. IDF Facebook group is 1000 members strong and growing every day. Post your query.
  6. Update your resume.
  7. Prepare a sample work.
  8. Contribute to open-source documentation like GitHub. To know more, you can watch this video.
  9. Start applying for an interview. Hopefully, you will get an interview call. If you crack the interview world is yours.
  10. God forbid if you are not able to clear your interview to find a mentor (You can consider me). 🙂
  11. You can also join a course designed by me with the support of other super senior professionals. For more detail, about our course, you can visit the course page or call me directly on my personal number 7840841999 now.

I provide this training live online, so geography location is not an issue. The only thing I need is a learning attitude.

After training, you can apply for the job of a technical writer and can become one with a good starting salary. This worked for all it will work for you also, only focus and hard work are required.

 

Suggestion from the Industry experts to the technical writer aspirants:

This is taken from the Information Developers Foundation Facebook group.

Amruta Ranade Focus your learning on “technical” and “writing” skills, not tools.
Sumit Batra. Try learning the basics of Technical Writing and the rest will fall in place.
Ramesh Aiyyangar
Rahul, Congratulations! on planning to write a blog for beginners. My simple suggestion to beginners would be to start a blog on Technical Communication<TC> and start writing. Write a post every day about TC. This will ensure that you read, reflect, research, analyze, learn, and write whatever you learned about TC in your day-to-day activities. You will keep yourself updated and relevant. This will also increase your job potential. You will have a lot of fun while you write. So, the best way to be successful as a TC is to write, write and write. Amruta Ranade<tagged in the original post> is also a student of TC and has started her own blog. She shares some excellent posts regularly. The right<write> way to success.
Sangeeta Raghu Punnadi Always “Technical: understand what you are “Writing”.. If you don’t understand, how will the end user understand!

Rinni Mahajan  “To be a good Writer, you ought to be a good Reader first.”

“While writing keeps your audience in mind. Before starting as a Tech Writer ensure that this is what you really dreamt of doing.”

Punit Shrivastava Writing is like hunting. To evolve as the best lion/lioness in the field, learn about the hunting area (domain) properly, understand the situation (product+standards) thoroughly, attack (write) only when the object (concept) is within range (well understood).
Kartikeya Baid Dwivedi Complete, accurate, understandable and findable information is the key. Always remember these tenets.

Shubham Singhal In starting I most of the time struggled with the content part. What to include and what to avoid. There was a feeling of incompleteness and fear of lacking any important information. I used to scratch the content and start again multiple times. So here is what ai did:

1. Used copy and pen to write down all points that should be present in the document.
2. I searched for a document on the internet that I found very similar to my requirements.
3. Created my document very similar to that document.

Automatically my document was well structured and completely informative.

Jigyasa KulshresthFocus on your writing skills, go to the basics of writing and try to understand what writing flair is. Read at least 3 times what you write. Writing tools are not rocket science, can be learned easily during the job.

Conclusion

By now it must be clear to you that technical writing is one of the growing and highly paid writing professions. The majority of technical writers work with product IT companies. Age and qualification are not the barriers only your ability and openness to learning and good command over the language is an essential skill.

If you want to master the skill of technical writing feel free to call me on 784084199 and let us start. If you want to know more about my training visit the training page.

TECHNICAL WRITING COURSE AND ITS IMPORTANCE

Information developers provide the best Online Technical Writing Courses in Bangalore. Technical writing is a distinctive and varied subject that interacts with the most cutting-edge technologies available today. Being proficient in all the most cutting-edge technology gives one an advantage over other professional career alternatives in this creative and artistic industry. He has left his impact in a variety of industries, including biotechnology, robotics, consumer electronics, finance, and computer hardware and software. Technical (specialized) information is conveyed through it, typically in the form of user manuals, instructional materials, informational guides, and many more. These could be printed, portable documents like PDFs, or internet guides. User guides and technical writing serve as an organization’s public face and a reflection of its professionalism in the customer-centric business models of today. An expert writer who plans, develops, maintains, and updates technical documentation, such as user manuals, white papers, design specifications, and other materials, is known as a technical writer. A professional technical writer will often edit and format the work of engineers, scientists, and other experts who also produce technical writing. A technical writer is someone who conveys data on a technical subject, targeted towards a particular audience for a particular purpose. A skilled technical writer must be able to communicate information succinctly, clearly, and in a language that is suitable for the audience’s needs.   Increase Your Knowledge Technical communicators work in a demanding, interesting area that puts to the test their capacity to change with the times and pick up new abilities. A career in technical communication will be fascinating for those who appreciate learning new things. A career in technological communication also enables you to learn programming and web design abilities, broadening your knowledge and elevating your value as an employee and job candidate.   WHO CAN GO AFTER A JOB IN TECHNICAL WRITING?      Any engineer or graduate Those who have any IT experience Healthcare transcribers Call Centre Managers Computer programmers Professors, Teachers, and Lecturers Research students   When you have finished this course Almost Every Industry Has Jobs Technical communicators are typically employed by the industry you are considering for a career. Technical communicators work in virtually every business where people must comprehend and apply technology, including IT, computer science, engineering, medical, environmental studies, electronics, government, media, publishing, and the aerospace sector. They play a crucial role in the technology civilization of today.   Where Can This Job Lead? Technical writers can rise to roles as project managers, senior technical writers, or information designers. Technical writers may become senior technical writers, information designers, project managers, or even system architects in larger organizations. Promotion frequently comes with greater responsibilities and compensation increases. Designations The most popular job title for this occupation is technical writer. Other names used include information developer, technical editor, web editor, policy and procedure writer, proposal writer, publications specialist, documentation specialist, and information designer. Market trend or future trend      The high tech business is booming (typically!) and there is a huge need for technical communicators, which is being driven by the computer industry. Technical writers are truly in limited supply in the United States, India, and Canada, and the situation is quickly worse in other nations as well. As a result, firms are willing to hire beginning writers who want to break into the industry.   CONCLUSION Information developers provide the Best Online Technical Writing Courses in Bangalore. Information developer is the best platform for the training of Technical Writing. Therefore, for individuals who want to apply their writing skills, technical writing is one of the finest paying careers. Technical writing should have the same explosive expansion as the computer, telecommunications, and other high-tech industries. 

An A-Z Guide to the Foundations of Technical Blogging: Technical Writing for Beginners

Technical writing can be a good career choice for you if you enjoy both writing and technology. If you love technology but don’t particularly enjoy coding all day, there are other options you might consider. Information Developers provides the best Technical Writing Course Hyderabad. If you enjoy teaching others, participating in open source projects and mentoring others to do the same, or simply enjoy breaking down complex ideas into digestible chunks in your writing, technical writing might be right for you. Let’s get down to the basics and discover what you need to know and take into account before beginning a technical writing project.   Technical writing: What is it? Technical writing is the art of explaining things in great detail so that readers can grasp a certain ability or product. These instructions, often known as technical documentation or tutorials, are written by technical writers. User guides, online help articles, or internal documentation for programmers and API developers may fall under this category. Technical information is presented in communication in a way that allows the reader to utilize it for the intended purpose.   Why Technical Writing Is Beneficial Lifelong learners are technical writers. You must be knowledgeable in the subject matter you’re writing about because the work requires explaining difficult topics in clear, simple language. or be open to learning more about it. This is fantastic since you will gain expertise in that field with each new technical document you research and create. Additionally, technical writing improves your ability to empathize with users. It enables you to focus more on what readers or users of a product feel than on your own thoughts. Contributing to organizations is another way that technical writers might earn money. Here are some companies that pay you to write for them, including Stack Overflow, AuthO, Twilio, and Smashing Magazine. In addition to all of this, you can participate in paid open source initiatives like Outreachy and Google Season of Docs as well as donate to open source communities. You can also pursue technical writing as a full-time career because many businesses require those talents.   Skills a Technical Writer Must Possess Recognise and utilize proper English It is essential to acquire a solid command of English’s tenses, spellings, and fundamental syntax before you ever attempt writing. A poorly written post with errors in grammar and word choice won’t be read by your readers.   Understand how to speak simply and clearly about things It’s not necessary to be able to explain a procedure to others in detail just because you know how to create a feature. It takes empathy and the ability to educate or communicate concepts in a way that is appropriate for your target audience to be a successful teacher. I think that authors are created, not born. And the only way to improve your writing is to write. Before you put pen to paper, you might not realize that you have the ability to write. And writing is the only way to find out if you have any writing abilities. I therefore urge you to begin writing right away. To flex your writing muscles, you can choose to start with any of the platforms I outlined in this section. Of course, having some experience in a technical subject is also quite advantageous.   The Process of Technical Writing Assessing and comprehending who your readers are Your target or anticipated audience is the most important thing to take into account while writing a technical essay. It needs to be your top priority at all times. An effective technical writer bases their writing on the reader’s context. Let’s use creating an essay for novices as an illustration. It’s critical to avoid assuming that they are familiar with particular ideas. You could begin your article by describing any prerequisites. This will guarantee that your viewers are equipped with the knowledge they need to understand your content before they start reading it. To make it easier for your readers to find the information they require, you may also add links to helpful sites. You must learn as much as you can about the reader of the paper in order to know for whom you are writing. It’s critical to understand whether your audience is knowledgeable on the subject at hand, is unfamiliar with it completely, or falls somewhere in between. Additionally, your readers will have their own wants and needs. You need to know what the reader will be expecting from the paper when they start reading it. Before you begin writing, ask yourself the following questions to better understand your reader:   Who reads my work? What are they lacking? Where are they going to read? When are they going to read? How come they will be reading? How are they going to read?   These inquiries also encourage you to consider the reading experience of your audience, a topic we’ll cover more fully later on.   Consider user experience The user experience is equally crucial in technical documents as it is throughout the internet. Now that you are aware of your audience and their requirements, consider how the paper will meet those requirements. It’s very simple to overlook the reader’s intended purpose of the content. Take frequent breaks from writing and read the document as the reader would. Do you know if it’s reachable? How will it be used by your readers? When are they going to use it? Is it simple to use? Writing something that is both valuable to and usable by your readers should be your aim.   Create a Document Plan You can then conceptualize and plan out your paper while keeping in mind who your users are. There are several steps in this procedure, which we’ll go over presently.   Do extensive study on the subject You must conduct research on the subject you are writing about as you are planning your article. You can access a tonne of things to read and gain deeper insights from

5 tips on how technical documentation is your product marketing asset

Connecting the dots between technical documentation and product marketing content In this article, you will learn more about what technical content writing and marketing content writing is all about and what is it not about in today's market trends. You will see how technical content serves as your product marketing weapon. We will also discuss is it good to consider merging technical and marketing content to one content accessible to customers.   Please reach out to me on sadhana.technicalwriter@gmail.com. While we pitch into the discussion of how technical documentation is your company's secret marketing weapon, let us understand in the current industry trends, what technical content is all about and what is it not about. What technical content is about? Technical content focuses on providing useful information about how to use the product, what's new, use case driven, and how the product addresses user's pain points. Technical content is no more about: Restricted access and made available only after product purchase. A step-by-step instruction to complete a straight forward workflow. Traditional documentation where the goal is to make the product usage simple. Limited to customer Administrator's reference. From decades, technical documentation remained as content that is accessible to customers after product purchase. While marketing content is published and available to customers right from product pre-launch phase to ready to go live. However, over the years this tradition is changing. Technical documentation is becoming the key content that customers are referring to prior purchasing of the product. The trend of the technical document being limited as PDF format and with restricted access is changing. Technical materials are made available in HTML form and on all platforms for ease of access. Seeing from the content marketing view, customers are no more relying on marketing materials as the reference before pre-purchase but are more interested to check out the product technical documentation. Why technical documentation serves as marketing weapon? Great technical documentation reflects the quality of your company's technical support. If the documentation is good, then customer experience is most likely to be positive. This encourages the customer to purchase the product. Technical documentation seems more trustable by customers than marketing materials, often as a result of over-promising marketing messages. On the other hand, technical documentation is straight forward and contains information about marketing content does not tell you how to setup and how it works. Customers are using documentation to do their primary research about the product before purchase. Documentation is becoming a critical aspect of pre-purchase research. Documentation includes details of warnings, legal disclaimers which give customers insight about how the product fits in for their business, view about complexity, scalability, and how the company provides support services to them. When your focus is on delivering technical content that addresses customer's needs, pain points, and how the product adds value to their business, it is more likely that customers are interested in buying your product. Ideally, technical content is getting customers to buy the product, thus serving as a marketing weapon. How to improve attention and importance for technical documentation the same as marketing materials Technical content is your product's marketing weapon, it becomes important to deliver product documentation that is not only of high quality but also that makes the content visually delightful. Few of the key points to consider improving technical documentation in terms of marketing material are: Improve the layout, pay attention to look and make it attractive. Make technical documentation available as HTML and designed to access over tablets and mobile devices rather than limiting to PDF format. Make use of SEO, similar keywords to what is used in the marketing materials. Take it to YouTube. You see marketing videos made available on YouTube, to ensure that documentation responses to this trend by creating &quot; how to & quot; instructional videos or replace content with videos wherever possible and make it available on YouTube as well. Use a conversational tone. This makes documentation more user-friendly and easier to translate to other languages. Should companies combine marketing and technical content together? While we figure out whether to combine marketing content and technical documentation, let us understand in the current industry trends, what content marketing is all about and what is it not about. What content marketing is about? Content marketing focuses on providing useful information that addresses user pain points. Content marketing is no more about: What or how the company is doing with the new product release. How the new product is doing in the market. A traditional marketing content where the goal is to get the customer buy the product. Limited to product offerings or sales pitch reference document. Why companies must consider combining marketing and technical content? In today's trends, marketing content is focusing on addressing user pain points which is what a technical documentation does. However, marketing content lacks details about how to setup the product, how the product works, and how the product fits in for the customer's business that is addressed in the technical content. Customers are turning towards technical content instead of marketing materials as a pre-purchase research document. Off likely, there is a fewer audience for marketing content and more focus is on technical content in the current trends. Also, we see that technical content is eventually becoming a marketing weapon. Considering these factors, it is ideal to offer customers with combined technical and marketing content and with focus on delivering content that the customer is looking for in the documentation. The content delivered must help customers as a pre-purchase guide as well as technical details about how to install, use, addresses business needs, and support materials. Prioritize delivery of the content in timelines with product release and marketing timelines and host it in the location that is easily accessible for customers. Importantly, the merge of marketing content and technical documentation achieves uniformity in the content. The documents appear as if they are all generated from a single source. With a lot of focus over the years on unified customer journey, it becomes very important

Top 4 way to find good Mentors

Startup Guru/ Entrepreneur mentor/ Growth Hacker and many more fancy titles attract my attention when I was trying to find a business mentor for Information Developers Foundation. When I dig deep, unfortunately, I found most of them has practically no experience in running own venture so It was difficult for me to consider them as a coach for my organization. Very interesting Incidents-   One day in a Scum gathering in Bangalore I meet my old senior colleague and after a candid conversation, he slipped me his flashy visiting card with big designations- "Agile Coach/Change Agent/ Enterprise growth hacker". Curious me, asked him when and how? He replied, after laid off he did CSM training and since then he is providing this growth hacking training. So, training world is full of educators who never worked in real time or quit the industry way back and providing training. Let us take this example-   Have you ever googled any recipe? For example – if you search what is the ratio of water and flour to make perfect dough, you will get a result 1:2. But some chefs would write:-its 1:2 but the quantity of water can be little more or less depending on the quality of flour.   That’s the difference between an educator and a practitioner. Minute very minute but that makes the difference.   Practising technology is different from learning in the classroom. In this blog post, I am going to discuss the reasons, why I personally prefer to learn from practitioners rather than educators or businessman (unless I have to learn business). This is my hard learned lesson. I believe we need to develop an ecosystem to bridge the gap between industry practitioner and learners. Apart from the zeal of learning it is very important whom and how you select your mentors. The curriculum, fancy website, impressive videos, state-of-art facilities etc can have an advantage but the matter most is who is going to deliver. Book and curriculum matters but who is delivering matter the most.   Reason no.1 Having the knowledge of a tool or skill and its implementation is what you are taught in a learning session. The concept you get through an educator is exactly the way the guide or the theory refers.   Everything gets clear and, in a review, test you get the highest percentile.   You might be thinking, then why not to learn from them.   The difference is here- The theory you learn is framed according to a favourable or certain situation that normally you face in an organization. The case studies are the ones that are frequent to an organization.   What if a unique situation comes before you or you get into another problem. A practitioner can tell you about those probable problems that you might face. As he is facing those issues and is well versed with the real-life scenarios he can help you how to think out of the box and deal with a situation.   A theoretical knowledge gives you the base to drive perfectly on a smooth path but practical knowledge equips you with a skill to drive on bumpy roads as well.     Reason no.2 You can do the time estimation of any work more precisely if you are guided by a practitioner. Forget the mathematics question we used to solve through unitary method. That’s what we learn from an educator. It's not that it doesn’t work, but sometimes the conditions are different. You will have to understand the pressure, the need, the resources, the bugs arising between and the factors influencing your project. The project development on which the dependency of your project lies should also be kept in mind to make a perfect time estimation. A practitioner can give you all the minute details that may come your way and the ideas to handle it more precisely.   Reason no.3 Have you ever tried learning a recipe by googling it? There would definitely be a great difference between the taste of the recipe made by a new cook and an experienced one.   The difference is just because of the experience of handling real-life situations. Though the knowledge passed on is the same but doing it with real experiences makes it better. A practitioner will show you real case studies, let you work on the projects and understand the details. Learning is always better when we do it ourselves than studying it. A practitioner is in the active life of facing such situations but an educator is viewing it from the other end. For a better clarity you do not need to mug up the knowledge but to educate yourself. Reason no.4   Cracking the interview is the crucial step you need to clear after any training. An educator can teach you the knowledge but that is not what exactly is asked in an interview.   Take an example: For a job of critical responsibility why not a company hire the university topper in the domain but prefer an experienced candidate having years of experience in the domain, and he may not necessarily be the topper.   Just because of the fact that he knows how to deal with real situations, how to handle different resources involved etc.   A practitioner will tell you the interview tricks better because he is facing it regularly himself. How to find good Institute? Mentor matters than brand- Ask who is going to take your classes. Look for the Social media profile of mentor-like LinkedIn, Facebook etc In the profile look at the relevant teaching and corporate experience. The mentor must have a good balance of both. What students are saying about on LinkedIN Placement If your training needs placement assistance. Try to find the real people who got placed. What after finishing the course Can you call or ping your mentor when you need him most like before any interview, before applying for the job? Ask if you can repeat the course

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