Category Archives: trends

Where are all the technical writers?

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Editor’s Note: Introducing a new guest blogger to Cherryleaf’s blog: Dr. Tony Self of HyperWrite.

Where are all the technical writers?

Lionel Richie Hello posterI have often wondered why there are so few technical writers in the world.

In my country, Australia, the Bureau of Statistics (ABS) estimates there are over 2,000 technical writers within the total workforce of 11.65 million people. The Australian Government groups technical writers into a category called ”Journalists and Other Writers”. That category of writer has shown little growth over the last decade, and in 2011 represented just 21,400 people.

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there were about 50,000 American technical writers in 2010.

We are living in the information age, yet the numbers of technical writers in countries like Australia and the US are not skyrocketing. Why not? Continue reading →

Advanced technical writing techniques training: Next classroom course (and potential online course)

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Do let us know if you’d be interested in us scheduling another public course for our Trends in Technical Communication – Advanced technical writing techniques course. We need just a couple more people for us to schedule a course date for June. Do let us know if you’d be interested in attending this course.

Interested in an online version of the course?

For writers based outside of the UK, we’re also considering offering this course in a “live and online” format over the Web. Using Google+ Hangouts, the course would be spread over a number of days, rather than delivered as a full day’s worth of training. The price of the course would be the same. The first course would be limited to just 5 or 6 delegates. Do let us know if you’d be interested in attending this course.

About the course

In this course, you’ll find out how Technical Authors in leading companies are now applying techniques from other disciplines (such as psychology, copywriting, usability and elearning) into the information they create.

Using examples of Help pages from a number of applications (including from vendors such as Apple, Facebook, Google, HTC and Mozilla), you’ll learn how to spot where these techniques have been used, and you’ll have the opportunity to practise these in the workshop.

Do let us know if you’d be interested in attending this course.

Panel discussion: Assisting the Millennial User – challenges and opportunities in the decade ahead

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Cherryleaf’s Director of Sales and Marketing, Ellis Pratt will moderating the panel discussion “Assisting the Millennial User – Challenges and Opportunities in the Decade Ahead“, which is part of the free Adobe Day at the UAEurope Conference 2013. On the panel will be Chris Despopoulos, Craig Clark, Dave Gash, David Farbey, Matthew Ellison, Paula Stern and Willam van Weelden. This free event will be held Wednesday, 12th June, 12:00pm to 5:00pm

You can now download our white paper “The changing nature of content”

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Changing nature of content white paper imageYou can now download our Adobe-commissioned white paper “The changing nature of content” via Adobe’s website.

“Some organizations are changing the way they write User Assistance, and are, for some content, not using the generally accepted best practices. Through web analytics and other measures, organizations are reporting a noticeable benefit from making these changes.”

See: The Changing Nature of Content

Changing nature of content free webinar: registration now open

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Registration for our upcoming free webinar, “The changing nature of content”, is now open on the Adobe online events Web page.

You’re welcome to join us at 7pm (GMT+1) on 24th April 2013.

In recent years, technical communicators have focused on improving User Assistance through new technologies and systems, with the assumption that the nature of the content the tone of voice, the writing style ­ should remain the same. In this free webinar, sponsored and hosted by Adobe, we’ll investigate whether the tried ­and tested writing methods from past decades still make sense today. We’ll look at the reasons why some organisations are “breaking the rules” with the User Assistance they provide.

 

Does relationship marketing mean you also need relationship content?

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relationship poster Flickr image by TRF_Mr_HydeLast night I saw presentations at the Content Strategy London Meetup from Rob Hinchcliffe (a community strategist), and Sara Treewater (Content project lead for Citi Private Bank’s Web and Mobile team) in which they both mentioned relationship marketing and how it was influencing content strategy.

If your marketing and sales strategy focuses on developing a relationship with your customers and prospects, it makes sense your pre- and post- sales content (such as user documentation) sustains and builds relationships as well. Joe Gollner has called this “relationship content”. This may mean giving people an opportunity to comment, and supplement, your user documentation. In other words, moving from a monologue to a dialogue.

This can be challenging for organisations, particularly for those where there are compliance and regulatory considerations. However, there may be little choice but to do this. Rob Hinchcliffe said in his presentation that, today, content is everywhere. There are unofficial information sources where Google will direct users, if you do not provide content that’s relevant and useful.

If this relationship goes further, you can gain a significant insight into how each individual customer and prospect behaves, and start to disrupt your industry sector. We discuss this in our latest post on the STC’s Notebook blog (we’ll post a link once the post has been published).

You can now create a free iPad magazine for your online Help, training and support content

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Flipboard magazineFlipboard is a popular app for the iPad and Android devices that presents information in a magazine layout.

Users can subscribe to different topics, with the content pulled in from the links tweeted by their friends on Facebook and Twitter. They can also view Web sites and blogs (if they contain a RSS feed) as an online magazine.

Flipboard has just released version 2 of its application, which enables users to create their own magazines by clipping content from a variety of different Web sites.

In other words, brands can now curate their own selections and publish these in a consistent and elegant looking format. Flipboard will create a cover for your magazine with “pull out” headlines, and it will notify you if other people have commented on the items you have included in your magazine.

According to Flipboard, since its launch, their users have been creating one magazine per second.

For Technical Authors, this means you could easily deliver online Help, training, user generated and support content in an attractive looking format.

According to The Daily Telegraph:

This latest move marks an even bigger, more significant step, taking the principle of a personalised and interactive internet, and bringing that to mainstream content delivery…This move confirms that the nature of content delivery is changing. It’s no longer about capturing crowds of many, but the audience of one. This audience of one doesn’t care about the usual magazine and newspaper release schedules, or about trawling through multiple sites to find the articles of most interest; it wants to read its favourite piece of content when it wants, and how it wants and values the curation of like-minded tastemakers, who provide a means to discover new content and cut through the clutter.

You can already view the Cherryleaf Blog as a Flipboard magazine (in Flipboard, just search on Cherryleaf or http://www.cherryleaf.com/blog/feed/), and you’ll also find a test magazine we’ve created called “The MadCap Writer”.

Let us know what you think of the potential for using Flipboard in User Assistance.

See also: Cherryleaf content strategy services

Webinar: The changing nature of content

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You’re welcome to join us on our upcoming free webinar, “The changing nature of content”, which will be held at 7pm (GMT+1) on 24th April 2013.

In recent years, technical communicators have focused on improving User Assistance through new technologies and systems, with the assumption that the nature of the content the tone of voice, the writing style ­ should remain the same. In this free webinar, sponsored and hosted by Adobe, we’ll investigate whether the tried ­and tested writing methods from past decades still make sense today. We’ll look at the reasons why some organisations are “breaking the rules” with the User Assistance they provide.

The registration details will be posted to the Adobe online events Web page in the next few days.

Next Advanced Technical Writing Techniques Course: 22 April 2013

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Trends in Technical Communication Workshop – Advanced Technical Writing TechniquesYou’ll find our next public Trends in Technical Communication Workshop – Advanced Technical Writing Techniques training course is scheduled for Monday 22 April 2013.

We’ve added some more comments from delegates to the page.

“Excellent over-view and will be useful for practical application. Much food for thought – useful for starting ideas on improving (the) existing approach to Help files.”
“Very thought provoking.”
“I just wanted to say ‘thank you!’ for the excellent training session yesterday. I’m putting those principles to work today as I review the UA for one of our websites. The way I write has changed dramatically.”
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