How important is video to Technical Authors?

Internet Psychologist Graham Jones addressed this question in his most recent weekly email. He said: Video is everywhere online. Indeed, YouTube is now the second biggest search engine, according to recent figures. When people can’t find what they want on Google, they turn instead to YouTube to find an answer, before they head off to… Read more »

The wonderful, horrible life of User Generated Content

User Generated Content (UGC), that is user documentation written by users, is growing trend in the world of technical communication. However, although there are enormous benefits from UGC, we’ve found it can lead users to miss professionally written user documentation. The consequence of this can be that users search and navigate down blind allies in a… Read more »

The Economics of Content Strategy

One of the recurring themes at recent conferences on technical communication has been content strategy. You see speakers commenting that writing skills are valued less, and so Technical Communicators should look to become more strategic and managerial. In this context, content strategy is a focus on improving efficiency and productivity of content creation, management and… Read more »

Will online video replace the written user guide?

TED’s Chris Anderson says the rise of Web video is driving a worldwide phenomenon he calls “Crowd Accelerated Innovation” – a self-fueling cycle of learning that could be as significant as the invention of print. He claims What Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication…Information often can be taken in… Read more »

Technical writing company creates single source cost reduction calculator

We’ve added a further simple online calculator to the Cherryleaf Web site. This one is for calculating the potential savings in support costs derived from a single sourcing content management system. See our Single Source Cost Reduction Calculator page. We’re also developing a more comprehensive spreadsheet to help you measure the value of documentation. Contact… Read more »