There’s usability, accessibility, and readability that we’re all well aware of. I’d like to toss in one more to the mix: adaptability. By this I mean the ability to change docs on the fly to accommodate real-time actions in social media or due to user-generated content that needs to be addressed rather quickly.
How adaptable are your docs to handle new-age requirements in real-time?
Here are some thoughts. Based on my experiments over the past few months, I would take a three-pronged approach.
- Twitter
- Blog & Online Docs
- Facebook
People use Twitter and look to it for real-time updates if there are problems. If an app or site goes down, be ready to provide updates. Determine if you need to write a quick procedure or add some tweets yourself. Push out information.
If you haven’t already established feeds, then get busy! What are you waiting for? Establish some feeds if you haven’t already. One for general doc information, another for tech support, customer service, and who knows what else. Someone in the doc group would have to monitor all of them to keep track of what’s happening and respond as needed.
There are plenty of examples out there of using Twitter for docs. It’s also been discussed on blogs for quite some time, including this one. So I’m not going to say anything more about it at this particular moment.
Blog & Online Docs
On a company or doc blog, you can write quick posts. It’s on the blog that you can provide longer explanations and information. Tweets are, after all, limited to 140 characters. And although you can make serial tweets, having blog entries as a follow-up work well.
On a blog, you can also insert a video. Think beyond just text on a screen. The videos don’t have to be polished or perfect. Pull out a Flip camera, make something quick, and upload it. Keep it under four minutes and go.
While all this real-time work is going on, have someone working on doc set updates. Then you can provide links in tweets, Facebook statuses, and blog posts.
This is where your users are, so have a presence there. There are apps that enable you to update both Twitter and Facebook at once so you don’t have to enter information twice. You can upload videos. You’re also likely to get more comments for a Facebook post than in Twitter. You need both.
…………………….
So there you have it. Some ideas on how to make your docs adaptable to any real-time situation that pops up. Undoubtedly there are others. Feel free to comment if you think of others!
I’m going to run another real-time experiment for this on Friday of this week to incorporate these ideas. So watch for that & jump in! It’ll be on the #techcomm hashtag. See you Friday!
Related Posts
2moroDocs
The Changing Role of Writers and Editors
Let’s Reinvent Technical Writing
Real-time: It’s Soooooo Last Second
My First Procedure Written in Twitter
Lessons Learned: Writing Procedures in Twitter
5 Reasons to Write Procedures in Twitter
Note: the last topic was included as a Holy Kaw item on Alltop. It was also picked up on marketing feeds, which I thought was interesting.
External blog posts
Hints and Tips Via Twitter
Twitter for Technical Communicators
Hallo Julie
Great post. I like the idea of focusing on the adaptability of our docs. There are some customers who won’t be able to benefit from the updates after the initial publication, chiefly those who are behind a firewall or don’t have access to the Internet. But for many of us, by far the majority of readers will be able to subscribe to and benefit from blog posts, Tweets and updates as you mention.
Another way of providing updates is to reply to readers’ comments and requests for help, on their own blogs or in forums or wherever the comments appear.
Now we just need the time to do all this. ;)
Cheers, Sarah