Technical authoring tips on Twitter, from Cherryleaf

@cherryleaf_tips is a new Twitter account from Cherryleaf that provides technical writing tips and articles relating to technical communication. When you follow @cherryleaf_tips on Twitter, you’ll see a new tip tweeted at 11am GMT each day, over a period of 31 days. The messages then repeat, starting again from the beginning.

How many cuddles are you putting into your user guides?

From Fast Company: “Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has discovered, for the first time, that social networking triggers the release of the generosity-trust chemical in our brains. The essence of affection. The cuddle chemical. In other words, oxytocin. If these changes apply in the world of social media, the implications for business — for every brand, company, and marketer… Read more »

Reducing IT support call times

At the Documentation Managers peer group meeting we hosted earlier this week, one manager commented his organisation was aiming to increase the average time for each support call. This was because it believed it could eliminate all the short duration calls – through redesigning the software and better user documentation. What would be left would be… Read more »

Your future as a republisher

Visualisation Magazine has created a diagram showing how you can use Web 2.0 tools to increase the number of readers of your content – “building an online presence”. It shows the extent to which content can be republished today, through free sites, Web feeds and embedded content. It also shows how you can monitor and receive statistical information on its progress. So why keep… Read more »

Why are there so few UK technical authors on Twitter?

At a rough guess, there no more than 20 UK  technical authors using Twitter on a regular basis. Given the Social Web is going to play an increasing role in User Assistance and Customer Support, that’s a surprise. What’s stopping them, I wonder? It may be they don’t understand how to use Twitter, they might… Read more »