Protecting your brand using technical communication

On BBC Radio 5 live’s Wake Up to Money programme today, Lisa Thomas, Chief Executive of advertising agency M&C Saatchi, said: “We can’t just think about just one advert. We have to think about the brand and the relationship that consumers have with that brand, and be aware that consumers see your brand and your product everywhere… Read more »

Technical communication as a brand

One of the tea break discussions at the Congility conference I spoke at last month was over the need to improve the awareness of technical communicators and technical communication as a profession. I suggested the profession would benefit from having (and promoting) a simple positioning statement that explains the profession as if it were a brand. This… Read more »

What would life be like if there were no instruction manuals you could read?

Illiteracy is, sadly, something that can greatly affect people’s lives. According  to The Literacy Trust, less than one per cent of adults in England can be described as completely illiterate and approximately 16 per cent as “functionally illiterate”. There are various articles on the Web that indicate how people live with their illiteracy: They depend on… Read more »

We explain things

Danielle M. Villegas has just pointed us towards a five minute lightning talk by Rick Lippencott on the future of technical communication, and its value. Rick covers in five  minutes a great deal of the content I covered in my 45 minute presentation at the same conference – it’s worth watching. He summarises the value… Read more »

Measuring the value of Help in desktop applications

One of the challenges for Technical Authors is quantifying the value of what they produce. For example, how can you tell how many people are reading online Help when the software is installed on someone’s desktop computer? One application mentioned in passing as last week’s UAEurope conference, ApplicationMetrics, might be able to provide the answer. ApplicationMetrics… Read more »