10 Tips for Tech-Writers

Follow a sensible career path…
STEP 1: Start in a team
STEP 2: Stay only just long enough
STEP 3: Manage yourself
STEP 4: Manage a team
STEP 5: Go contracting (depends on the market)

Knowledge is your lifeblood – learn
the politics of your company. Know who knows what.
Find someone who consistently gives you timely, reliable,
technically accurate answers, and get their name tattooed
on your shoulder! Every company has at least one.
And they may not be in the project manager/product
manager/customer/programmer roles. They are generally
the people who’ve used the product in the real
world, and dealt with real world customers.

Communicate WITH, not AT. Tech-writers don’t
have enough power to get away with communicating at.

Track stuff (take spreadsheet printout and
write it up on the board).

Develop good product and domain knowledge
– The more you can figure out for yourself, the
better off you’ll be (and the more respect you’ll
get from the techies).

Find out who your users are, what they are
trying to do, what they are having trouble doing,
and how they want to be helped. Then provide this
assistance. Help the user do what they are trying
to do. Don’t just tell them what the product
can do… a help system is only helpful if it addresses
the users’ needs.

Treat everyone as a customer. Then manage
their expectations and your commitments. Always ensure
they know what you’re doing. Tell them when you’ll
be finished. And pull out all stops to meet your deadline.

Provide a surrogate user testing mechanism
for the development team – providing usability
feedback.

Work as hard as required to get good quality
doco finished on time and to budget – this is
how you’ll get the satisfaction out of work that
you need.

Have fun with it.

Don’t become jaded and cynical by the high-tech,
harsh, uncaring IT world. Use your smarts, and make
the most of the resources provided. Most importantly
of all, make work satisfaction your number 1 goal. It’s
the best way to stay happy and get ahead.

About the author:
Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He is a director of article PR company Article PR and also of copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com.
Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.
Although not essential, I would really appreciate it if you could notify me when you make the change as well.


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