Tech Writers and Their Role in Social Media

Being a tech writer used to be as methodical as 1-2-3 … or however many steps the procedure was that your role required you to document. However, the steps are not quite so clear and technical communicators are now tasked with anything ranging from writing white papers or product briefs , implementing content management tools that reach far beyond the docs department, developing training curriculum, and exploring the latest technologies for developing and publishing content. Social media is the next new task on some of our plates, and many of us are trying to determine the connection between our past and present roles as technical communicators and this delivery vehicle of the present and future.


Finding our niche can be as easy as 1-2-3, according to Anne Gentle, an Austin-area renowned social media expert and author of “Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation.” Gentle recently spoke at an STC Austin chapter meeting to show us how we can be relevant in our changing world of communication. The three key things we need to do, Gentle said, are 1.) listen to our users, 2.) find our role, and 3.) align with the business goals.


Listening is probably the biggest paradigm shift in our profession. After all, we’re basically paid to tell people how to do things, right? We may have mined a few call logs in an attempt to generate relevant content, but most of us have never really listened to (and helped) customers real-time. In the Web 2.0 era, though, listening to people and responding is just about everybody’s job.


Gentle provided some tips on how to listen effectively. First, get a larger picture by using listening tools, such as Google’s keyword search, Technorati, or social bookmarking and tagging through Delicious. For a more analytical look at what customers are saying, there are the free tools such as Twitter Search, or the robust tools like Radian 6 that clearly shows how your organization is trending. Secondly, let conversation flow, and don’t interrupt. Most importantly, don’t try to automate conversations.


While we all should be listening to our customers in social media, what is your role? The most visible role, of course, is that of a collaborator or instigator. Those are the folks who generate the original content and customers often play this role. For those of us who can’t think up original content, there are plenty of other roles.There are reporters/observers, who aggregate and curate content from other users. There are enablers, which are those who create a forum for comments by using tools such as JS-Kit Echo, an add-on WordPress, Blogger that easily facilitates comments. Gentle also recommended Disqus as a tool that can be used to moderate conversations and connect online communities to each other.


There is also the role of Sharing, which simply means re-Tweeting, “Liking,” or any other method of rebroadcasting or promoting content. One way to participate in sharing, Gentle said, is to offer your content as a sidebar feed. For example, as a technical communicator, you might be able to work with your organization’s user forum site and get your top 10 FAQs posted as a sidebar.


Lastly, no matter what your role in the Social Web, it has to align with the business goals of your organization. Gentle provided some guidance on goals, where the connection with social media may not be crystal clear. Some uses of social media include:

• Tracking content effectiveness.
• Creating a seamless customer experience.
• Enable customer-to-customer support.
• Decrease support response time.
• Generate leads, increase adoption.
• Collaborative product development (a.k.a. crowdsourcing)

Social media can also be a powerful tool for customer relationship management. By listening to the user community, companies can identify who the key influencers are. So, whatever you can do to listen – and respond – to those folks, the better social press you get for your company.


Yeah, this all sounds a little different than those days where we provided nothing but the facts … and on paper. For those of us from that old school of black-and-white unbiased writing (PR??!! Marketing??!! Eewww!!), some of this social media stuff goes against our basic instincts. However, those are our instincts as professional technical writers; the idea of collaborative information development and sharing is better aligned with our human nature of wanting to be part of a community and helping people.


Gentle said tech writers not already in the social mediasphere on behalf of their companies can get involved by volunteering blog entries, or using web analytics to build business cases for documentation in social media. Writers can also position their efforts in social media as a great way to build relationships with customers.