BY TOM ALDOUS
While there are a few notable extraverts in the field of technical communication, many technical communicators choose to lament about how little they are valued (vs. widely promoting the value they do contribute). Your work can and does make an impact, and making yourself memorable is easier than you may think.
“Only 1% of consumers feel that their expectations for a good customer experience was always met.”
—Harris Interactive Survey
If a customer has a bad experience with a company’s help desk, chances are they won’t complain to someone who can do something about it—they will simply switch to a competitor. It is easier to nurture existing customers than to find new ones, but not many people know just how significant the difference truly is. In fact, it is almost five times more expensive to acquire new customers than to keep an existing customer. Therefore, if you can develop relevant content for customers to solve their own problems, you can improve existing customer retention and lower the need to acquire new customers.
Does that sound like a career growth opportunity to you? It should. If you can sell a concept like this within your organization and with these statistics, everyone will understand your value and how you contribute to the company’s growth.
Now that technical content is becoming visible at every point of sale, it is becoming vital that content developers shift their focus from “writing manuals” toward creating content that is more marketing driven. In doing so, technical documentation that was once very dry is now injected with brand personality and attention-grabbing qualities that require a different writing strategy altogether. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the need to create content that is necessary to succeed. It’s not just about creating good marketing content; now you also have to establish your own persona and significance through the work you produce.
Our roles are changing, our job descriptions are changing, and even our titles are changing to adapt to this new era of content. What we do to evolve and thrive as content contributors in this new era is what defines the future of our careers.
Marketers do not always know what they need to do, logistically. We have the experience because we have been creating intelligent, structured content for years, and we understand how to produce dynamic content to a multichannel output. These skills, along with many others, will eventually need to be taught to and utilized by marketing. Technical writers can take the lead in this company shift. You have the knowledge needed by marketing and could become an internal consulting reference for your company, increasing your worth tenfold. It is as simple as supply and demand. Where do you stand in the company as the silos are falling down? It’s all about where and how you position yourself.
Executive sponsorship is just as important to making a sale as it is when positioning yourself strategically within your own organization. Think about what is important to executives and then offer what you know will resonate with them. For years, executives have been told and sold the importance of customer experience. They understand the value in retaining an existing customer and the cost of acquiring new ones, as mentioned before. This is a great opportunity to position yourself as a skilled player in making customer success tangible through advanced knowledge of the content creation process, and it gives you the ability to flaunt your significance within your company.
When engaging executives and proving your worth, focus on how the work you do benefits upper management as well as the whole company. Explain how your content creates a better customer experience and customer support environment. Focus on how you can increase customer satisfaction, because we know that if customers aren’t satisfied, they will leave. Explain how you can make a more satisfactory environment for the customer by creating content they want at a time they need it. And show how to support results with metrics.
When approaching executives, remember that the easiest metrics we can gather are often some of the most boring ones. When presenting any metrics, try to avoid how many words you write or pages you publish. Upper management does not want to hear about how many rewrites you endure, how many releases you support, or even how much more work you are doing than before. Instead, provide metrics that matter. For example, always concentrate on metrics regarding customer satisfaction, customer surveys, customer engagement, comparison to industry benchmarks, and how you can serve the company’s goals even better. Pure cost cutting is a hard sell for the executive because it is difficult to continue to cut cost every year. So focus on increasing revenue instead.
Content plays a large role in accelerating time to market for new products. Product documentation must sync with product development so both can deliver at the same time. If either of these groups are behind, it can stall the launch of a new product.
In many cases, products are designed for consumers across the world. Localization is a key factor in opening the door to new markets, and creating content that is easily and inexpensively translated will basically turn the knob for you. If you can create high-quality content that is easy to understand by all, and you can reduce translation costs by even just 10%, you will get the attention of upper management. Combine that with the vision of expanding into a global market to increase revenue, a solid strategy to execute, and quality metrics to tie it all together, and you have a formula for future executive sponsorship as well.
As an executive, what I want to hear from employees is that their goals and values are aligned with the vision for the company and my group. An organization’s future vision is usually all about growth. You must identify where the company is trying to go with this development. As with writing, you need to keep your target audience in mind. Find out what is important to the people who have control over your budget, your career at the company, and your potential raises and promotions. By catering directly to these individuals’ needs and expectations, you are setting yourself up for success and can take control over you career.
The Content Era is constantly changing, but what is not going to change is the constant need for and flow of content. Your ability to communicate clearly, objectively, and appropriately to your audience is more important than ever. You can become a valuable asset to your organization if you provide the knowledge and insight they seek and the skill to help them execute. If and when they finally understand the true value of content, you become even more valuable. Use this opportunity as we enter the content era to kick your career into high gear and make a name for yourself that is synonymous with success.
“The Content Era is upon us.”
—Tom Aldous
Tom Aldous, The Content Era’s founder, spent the early years of his career as managing partner and lead XML/CMS consultant at Integrated Technologies, Inc. (InTech). At InTech, Tom deployed many large-scale XML DITA conversion projects in multiple industries. After 20 years at InTech, Tom moved to Adobe Systems and “owned” the FrameMaker, RoboHelp, and Technical Communication Suites global revenue number. Tom was Adobe’s lead XML/DITA/XSLT/HTML5/FrameMaker expert. He eventually moved to Acrolinx and served as their senior vice president of global operations, were he acquired an additional aspect on content optimization. Tom has recently returned to his roots of consulting, leveraging his 25+ years of experience in the industry to form The Content Era LLC.
Download Full Issue: Intercom Magazine Volume 62 Issue 6
