What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say “XML and content”? If large technical documents and back-end databases pop into your mind, you’re in good company. But many content-heavy groups can benefit from adopting XML. Marketing is one of these groups.
In this webcast recording, Sarah O’Keefe discusses the future of content strategy.
The purpose of content strategy is to support your organization’s business goals. Content strategists need to understand how content across the organization—marketing, technical, and more—contributes to the overall business success.
Whether you’re using relative font sizes for those with low vision, or keyboard functionality for those with motor issues, creating more accessible tech comm content for people with disabilities also makes it easier to navigate and follow for people without disabilities.
Does your company have a strategy for making content available through mobile devices? Are you currently or do you plan to be part of the rapidly growing Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement? Do you have a content management system that makes your content accessible for a variety of purposes on the many mobile devices that are currently on the market today?
In this webcast recording, Sarah O’Keefe discusses various strategic initiatives that require coordination between marcom and techcomm and addresses how to begin to thaw out the relationship.
Social media has transformed the work of technical communicators, but we’re far from alone in feeling its impact:
We’ve seen an increase in the number of clients who need documentation processes that include input from part-time contributors (particularly engineers). XML-based workflows make it easier to handle this sort of input. Part-time contributors can enter their information into forms or can edit XML documents in an editor that doesn’t require them to know a thing about publishing tools.
UC Irvine seems to have picked up on this trend in collaboration: the school’s extension program just announced a technical writing class for engineers:
“This course is designed to provide students with writing skills tailored for the science and engineering fields and to correct common problems,” said Jessica Scully, M.J., instructor of the course. “It covers the importance of writing for a particular audience, and applies journalism skills to help students effectively create a focused and concise document.”
The benefits of such a program go beyond engineering. Improvement in the quality of developers’ writing would likely mean a reduction in the cost of creating a more unified voice in content (which in turn would lead to a smoother localization process). And last but not least, the end users (internal or external) would get better documentation.
This class could also help engineers gain an appreciation of the skill sets technical writers bring to an organization. That being said, it would be unfortunate if a company made the short-sighted mistake of thinking that sending engineers to a class like this would transform them into instant technical communicators.
