What’s happening with the ISTC’s marketing?

I’ve had some time in the last few days to initiate some the ideas mentioned in my post Marketing the technical communication profession. This relates to improving the marketing of the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators. Most of the work we do for clients is confidential, so it’s a pleasant change to be able to talk about a project as it’s progressing.

Improving the ISTC’s website

The ISTC’s web team has been developing an update to the ISTC’s website, and this is due to go live in a few weeks time. I’ve been shown the new look and feel for the site, and it looks really good. They are also working on changing the back-end integration with the members’ areas and the payment systems. This is a major project that needs to happen “behind the scenes”. I’ve asked them for the plans for adding an events calendar to be moved up the to-do list, and you’re likely to see this appear on the website in the near future.

Looking at the content on the website, it’s actually very good. It’s clear and well written, as you might expect from a body representing professional communicators. Having said that, we have made a few tweaks. For example, did you know the ISTC offers five key services to its members? I knew there were different ways it helped its members, but I didn’t know there were five. We’ve amended the text to state that. See About the ISTC.

From a usability perspective, the process for applying to be a member of the ISTC and subscribing to InfoPlus+, its free newsletter, is a little clunky. I’ve been talking to the ISTC admin staff to understand how they’d prefer to receive these requests, so that any changes work at both the front and back ends of the process. We can change these without any impact on website redesign plans, and it’s likely we’ll add new forms and buttons in the next week or so.

The site’s navigation, in particular the top menu bar, will need some reworking. This will take some thought and planning, but it’s likely to be structured around:

  • Promoting the technical communication profession
  • About the ISTC
  • The services the ISTC offers its members
  • Joining the ISTC
  • Events

I plan to have discussions with my colleagues inside Cherryleaf, as well as inside the ISTC, so that we can develop a structure that works well for the different types of audience.

The Social Web

We’ve started on improving the ISTC’s presence in the Social Web.

The ISTC now has a channel on YouTube, containing three playlists: A day in the life of a technical communicator, videos from the ISTC’s Business Affiliates, and videos from the Technical Communication UK 2014 conference.

The Twitter hashtag #whytechcomm has generated some great descriptions from technical communicators about what they love about their job. Some of these have been included on the ISTC’s web page about careers in technical communication.

We’ll use Twitter hashtags again in the future to get more content from members.

Promoting the profession

I want the ISTC’s marketing to improve in the way it promotes the technical communication profession. Promoting the profession should lead to more demand for Technical Authors, which should benefit the ISTC, its members, as well as the companies such as Cherryleaf.

We’ve updated the What is technical communication? page on the ISTC’s website, and we’ve added some extra pages on this topic. These include:

  • Case studies from the A day in the life of a technical communicator articles that have been published in Communicator magazine.
  • “The CEO and the technical communicator” graphic novel we produced a while ago.
  • An embedded playlist of the “A day in the life of a technical communicator” videos.
The CEO and technical communicator graphic novelCommunicator magazineA day in the life of - Helen Harbord

The future developments

As the ISTC work is pro bono, we have to grab opportunities to work on this project where we can. However, our Q4 projects are starting to ramp up, and this means spare time may become scarcer as we move towards the end of the year.

In many ways, the new content needs to come from the ISTC members. Having created places where individual ISTC members can tell their story (such as the “Day in the life” videos and the Twitter hashtags), it’s up to the members to create the content. The ISTC is run by volunteers, and it is very much about the people who make up the membership. By including more content from the members, I hope this “people aspect” will become more apparent to everyone.

Note: A version of this post will appear in the next edition of the ISTC’s Communicator magazine journal.

2 Comments

Shona Isbister

Are there any plans to update Communicator magazine? I received my first copy as a new member recently, and whilst I thought the content was good, it was a little let down by the layout and overall presentation. I think Tech Comms has a PR issue in that it can appear to outsiders as being a little old-fashioned and nerdy, a wee bit behind the times, when actually it can be an exciting profession with lots of opportunity to communicate using cutting edge technologies and produce some really slick, modern content. I think Communicator could be refreshed to express that (even changing the colours to something fresher and more modern would improve its overall look. As well as being published in a digital format.).

Thanks for the update by the way, it’s good to know what’s going on.

Ellis Pratt

Hi Shona. I don’t know – it’s not part of my remit. I like Communicator, and it has won APEX awards. I can forward on your comments for consideration.

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