I spent the past two days at the Content Marketing Strategies conference. It was held at the beautiful and stately Claremont Hotel Club & Spa in Berkeley, California. The conference was organized by dlvr.it and there were many fabulous speakers.

Here are some my takeaways from an amazing first day of the conference:

• Putting a label with the content hashtag and wireless settings on the back of each attendee badge is a brilliant idea. Whenever I needed to connect a new device (iPhone, iPad, MacBook), all I had to do was look at my tag. Note to self…
• A big challenge for content marketing professionals is preparing content for global audiences. This was stated a few times. But, no one really talked about the challenges and any solutions. I think this is an extremely important topic and I am going to continue talking about it.
• Content marketing is like being vegan. You need to be all in. (I guess you can’t be a little bit vegan, can you?)
• 77% of internet users do not engage with online ads. It is important to change from push marketing (where content is simply pushed to the reader) to pull marketing (where the reader actually engages with the content). Unfortunately, there are often obstacles such as corporate culture or the big old organization chart.
• The key to attracting and retaining customers lies in the stories that you tell. Stories can be entertaining, educational, or provide utility. Content that provides utility are things that help someone perform a task, such as a mortgage calculator.
• Charmin created a utility called Sit or Squat to help people find and rate public restrooms. I am not joking. There’s even an app for that.
• Content audits are an important first step in developing a useful content strategy.
• There is a new C-level executive called a Chief Content Officer. The role of a Chief Content officer is  to “oversee all marketing content initiatives, both internal and external, across multiple platforms and formats to drive sales, engagement, retention, leads and positive customer behavior” (Thanks to Joe Pulizzi and the Content Marketing Institute for the definition.)
• Reuse and repurpose content for a greater impact – just like turkey leftovers after Thanksgiving.
• Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should do it – create and publish content, that is. Before you create and publish any content, ask yourself why you are doing it, what is your mission?
• Silos exist in the content creation realm. Too many people creating in silos and not communicating. This is the same problem as the silos that exist between content creators and translators.
• Storytelling is extremely important. The company with the best story wins. However, do not attempt to create content unless you have the knowledge and authority to communicate it. An example of great story telling and brand content marketing is the Green Giant blog from General Mills.
• The more content you have, the more likely it is you will get customers from your website. You must create content, curate content, reuse content, and repurpose content. Content, content, content!
• To be really successful at content curation, you need to think beyond your own brand, include content from your competitor, and not shy away from controversial topics.
• Bill Gates coined the phrase “Content is King” in 1997. Al Gore created the internet (okay, that’s not true.).
• Clynton Taylor of Jump Associates makes the most amazing visual notes when people speak. And then publishes them immediately. How does he do that?
• Tatiana Natzke of Social Tribe created a fabulous Prezi that highlights day one of the conference through tweets.

One of the persistent problems in the world of adaptive content is our inability to see how our content will be rendered on different types of devices until the conversion to each device type is complete.

For example, if I create content that is destined for the web, iPad, and Kindle Fire, I really cannot see what that content is going to look like on each device as I write it. Instead, I can only see the content in my editing tool (which, too often, is some random editor embedded into my CMS system).

If I am astute enough and organized enough to use my metadata properly, I should be able to select out pieces of my content to display on the web, another group of pieces from the same content to display on my iPad, and a third group of pieces from the same content to display on my Kindle Fire.

But, how that content is going to look on each device? I can only guess.

In my dream authoring tool (software developers, listen up!!), I can change interface paradigms with the click of a button. For example:

See how it will look in a .pdf. (pretty straight forward)

CLICK!

See how it will look on my website.

CLICK!

See how it will look on my iPad.

CLICK!

You get the idea.

I want my WYSIWYG back. I want to see what I’m going to get, on every type of device, as I create the content. That way, I can modify the content to make it look brilliant on every device, as I write it.

Tina Turner is known for her long legs, audacious ways, and for belting out the song “What’s Love Got to Do With It”. If Tina Turner is the product, and the song “What’s Love Got to Do With It” is the content, I’d argue that the content  is outstanding. This song is #309 on the Rolling Stone list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. This got me thinking about what it takes to create standout technical content.

Creating standout content takes time, money, and skill. How much time, money, and skill is relative of course. It really helps to know what kind of category you are competing in. If you compete in a hot category, plan on spending more time and money developing stand out content. Why?

Competitive pressure.

What’s hot and what’s not? Here’s what I see, based on our work with 2,000+ skilled content developers and 200+ companies across the US.
 

What’s Hot

• Data analytics
• IP security
• Big Data (Hadoop, MapReduce, NoSQL, etc)
• Mobile/GIS (iOS, Android)
• SaaS-ified apps
• Data Center optimization/virtualization/cloud
• Open source
• Social media
• Advertising
• Games/Entertainment

What’s Luke Warm

• SQL/Data warehousing/Business intelligence
• Enterprise applications (non-SaaS)
• Search
• Development tools
• Content Translation/Localization/Internationalization technology
• Medical devices
• Biotech/Pharma
• Storage (SAN/NAS technology)
• Networking (including videoconferencing) – non-cloud

What’s Downright Cold

• Finance/Insurance
• CRM
• Semiconductors/EDA
• PCs, tablets, smartphones (hardware)
• Peripherals
• Manufacturing (most)
• Government
• Healthcare
• Law
• Utilities
• Infrastructure (transportation, etc)
• Education
• Publishing
• Graphics (hardware, software)
• Clean/green tech

In terms of skill sets, the following skills are in short supply among content developers:

Skills in Short Supply

• HTML5, EPUB3, or iBooks Developer. IOW, eBooks conversion and delivery services
• XML, XSL, XSLT, XSL-FO, DITA, DocBook, structured authoring tools
• Arbortext Editor (formerly “Epic”) and XMetaL Author, and (to a much lesser extent) Structured FrameMaker, Author-it, and MadCap Flare
• Video production (iMovie, etc) and/or screencasting experience (Captivate, Articulate, etc)
• Wiki implementation experience
• Interface/user-experience (UX) design, especially for mobile applications

What does all this mean? If you compete in a segment that’s relatively hot and need to hire content developers with skills on the short-supply list, plan on spending more time and money securing the resources you need to create content that stands out from the crowd. Can every piece of content rock on … like Tina Turner? That depends. But for your most strategic and time-sensitive projects, please call on Content Rules. We’ll help you develop stand out content and develop your own place in your company’s “Hall of Fame”.

And the award for most outstanding content created on a tight budget goes to …

If you follow my blog, Facebook page, or Twitter stream, you know that every now and then I find an organization that I really feel strongly about. Usually, the organizations that attract my attention are the “quiet” ones – the ones that don’t get a whole lot of media hoopla, but do powerful work in the communities they serve. Translators Without Borders is one that I’ve written a lot about. The Trevor Project is another that I write about on Facebook almost every day. It’s time to add another to my list: TechWomen.

TechWomen is an organization sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs (ECA). It is the brainchild of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The goal of TechWomen is to empower women and girls in developing countries by connecting them to women who work in the technology sector in the United States.

I have been involved in technology for over 25 years. When I first began, there weren’t very many women – it was truly a “man’s world”. And, some might argue that it is still largely the domain of men. But here in the United States, we like to believe that women have almost-equal opportunities in the technology arena. Women in developing countries face struggles and prejudices that I can hardly imagine. The barriers of entry for these women can be set extremely high. This is just one reason why TechWomen is so important.

There are two aspects to the TechWomen mentor/mentee relationship. The first is the transfer of technology information, both technical and situational. By working side-by-side with their mentors at Silicon Valley-based technology companies, the mentees have an opportunity to learn about technology and about organizational structure by spending time in a real-world setting. They also get to share their knowledge with people here in the U.S.

For example, there was a mentee who was paired with someone from a large, well-known software company based in San Jose. During her tenure at the company, the mentee was able to describe some of the nuances of screen swiping for different types of languages. I had never considered the impact of right-to-left languages on the physical aspects of swiping an iPad screen. What a great opportunity for the engineers in the U.S. to learn and understand these types of global considerations.

The second aspect of the learning is cultural. Both the mentees and their sponsors share information about their cultures and heritages, fostering close and lasting relationships that stretch well beyond the workplace. This is really grass-roots diplomacy and cultural exchange at its finest.

The U.S. Department of State is currently looking for women to be mentors for 2012. To be a Professional Mentor, you must be:

• A woman who works in technology and/or a technical field in the San Francisco Bay Area
• Available to work with a mentee for a three-week mentorship, September 10 – 28, 2012
• Able to host a mentee at your company’s site
• Able to coach that mentee on a project of mutual benefit for the mentee and your company

To be a Cultural Mentor, you must be:

• A woman who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area
• Able to support a mentee during her stay in California, September 5 – 30, 2012
• Willing to participate in dialogue that creates opportunities for mutual understanding

If one of these descriptions fits you, please consider taking part in this important program. To apply, just click here. First round applications are being accepted through May 15th.

This post was written by Andrew Davis, Manager of Talent for Content Rules.

As a former tech writer who recruits truly technical tech writers in Silicon Valley, I sympathize with the predicament of anyone needing to hire tech writers with software development expertise. I am the first to admit that most technical writers’ resumes are aspirational when it comes to the software development tools and technologies they claim to know. Candidates with truly deep understanding of current software technology are very rare. (I know a handful and have no problem keeping them very busy.)

So what’s a hiring manager to do?

Here’s what I look for to assess whether candidates are as effective as they claim for API, SDK, and developer tutorial documentation projects:

1. Programming experience. There’s no substitute when it comes to knowing what your audience knows.
2. Sympathy for an impatient user. No one reads reference docs for pleasure.
3. Excellent listening, research, and information-organizing skills.
4. Humility, curiosity, and tenacity.
5. Command of the tools, both for replicating the development environment (to run the product) and for authoring the content.
6. Deep sense of responsibility, both to the audience and to the product development team.
7. Excellent writing skills. Without a strong knowledge of (and respect for) the language, and a tireless internal editor, the best of intentions and most rarefied of technical skills get wasted.

On a resume, these traits can be hard to discern. Besides evidence of working with the technologies being documented, I look for repeat engagements with clients or long tenures with employers, ideally with a track record of increasing responsibility as an individual contributor. I also look for accomplishments that reflect a serious work ethic; sometimes (especially in the chaotic world of software development) there’s no substitute for raw, sustained effort.

Don’t misunderstand; I’ve sent clients the resumes of candidates who lack some of these traits. But I’m known for my candor; I tell the hiring manager up-front about my experience with the candidate, and where I sense their weaknesses lie — and what to do about them (for example, allow time for an editorial review).

No one’s perfect, and in the dev-doc world the main imperfections (aside from lying about what they understand) boil down to pride and atrophied social skills. I know almost no API writers, for example, who’ll agree to work onsite for more than a day or two a week. I know none who’ll work for the same prices as their less-technical peers (even if they’re not using their geek know-how on a given job). Like most tech writers, they don’t like meetings, particularly of the frequency required in an Agile environment, and they don’t like interruptions. More than most tech writers, they enjoy the illusion that they know as much as their SMEs, but get defensive when asked to prove it.

Many hiring managers are tempted to hire SMEs who say they can write. And most tech writers have had to clean up the result. Unless such a person has been trained to pay close attention to what the audience knows and doesn’t, and has a gift for organizing information (to say nothing of all the other skills professional tech writers possess and use daily), you’ll be disappointed. There’ll be just as many calls to Tech Support.

If subject matter expertise is crucial and you can’t find the all-in-one resource you need, pair an articulate SME with a smart, capable writer and let them both do what they do best. Hire someone who wants to learn about your product and whom you have a good chance of retaining (assuming the product you’re documenting will evolve). Give them incentives to stick around; tech writers warm to teams that respect them, want their input, and say “thank you” occasionally.

If all this sounds like too much work, call me. Content Rules solves challenges like yours every day and would welcome the chance to introduce you to “geek doc” tech writers who’ll make you proud.

I just finished reading an article in the February 2012 issue of Intercom, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication. The article was written by Jack Molisani and Scott Abel, and is entitled, “Tech Comm 2.0: Reinventing Our Relevance in the 2000s.” The authors use the common structure of a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to evaluate the skills and opportunities possessed by most people in the technical writing field. They make many points, including the following:

• Technical communicators need to stop calling themselves technical writers, because technical writing has been commoditized and is not seen as offering value to a business organization.
• Technical communicators possess a large number of skills that can be repurposed to solve business problems, if only they’d stop calling themselves technical writers.
• Core competencies of technical communicators include critical thinking, problem solving, project management, collaboration, and communication.
• Technical communicators have many of the skills needed to build a product.
• Technical communicators do a poor job of educating others in their organizations as to all of the skills they have and value they can provide.

Now, I don’t disagree with Jack and Scott. I agree with many of the points that they make in the article. It is my experience that technical writing has become largely commoditized and that communicators who have specialties are in high-demand. I also agree that there are technical communicators who possess the skills they describe. But not all.

Just because you are a technical communicator doesn’t mean that you have applied yourself to the life-long learning that you need to stay current. Just because you know how to create procedures, software developer kits, or XML style sheets, does not mean that you have automagically, via osmosis, gained many of the skills that Jack and Scott describe.

At the risk of getting a number of people annoyed, I am going to state what I’ve seen over the past 20 years in the technical communication industry. Most people do not expend the energy and take the time necessary to educate themselves. Most technical writers I know are just that – technical writers. They are great at creating a documentation set or writing a manual. But, mention new technologies to them, or suggest they write a script or create a storyboard, and they look at you like you’re nuts. It’s simply not in their skillset.

So, what’s a technical communicator to do? Well, there are many things that you can do to stay a step ahead. Here are some suggestions:

• Read. Read a lot. Every single day. And no, I don’t mean romance novels or the latest science fiction book to hit the virtual shelves. You need to read about all kinds of real-life things:
• New technologies – eBooks, enhanced eBooks, interactive eBooks, iBooks, advances in structured authoring, content management systems, machine translation tools, and more. There are all sorts of game-changing technologies that are coming out every day. To stay current, you must keep up.
• Business trends – what are business leaders saying about what they are seeing in the marketplace? What are they predicting for the future? How is the manufacturing segment doing? What’s happening with offshore development? Are CFOs spending money or hoarding cash? What are the trends in mergers and acquisitions? Initial public offerings? If you don’t think that business trends have anything to do with your future, think again. People at the highest levels are making decisions that will impact you. Just look at what’s happened to the commoditization of technical writing. That didn’t happen in a vacuum.
• Current events – How are the world markets doing? What country is getting a bailout this week? What about the price of gas? And all of those wars? You must learn to read the world in order to understand your place in it and to have a grasp on how these events will affect your professional life.
• Biographies – Who do you admire? Steve Jobs? Warren Buffett? Read their biographies; understand how they think and how they became the people whom you look up to. Who do you dislike or disagree with? You might want to understand where they are coming from, too.
• Business books – No list would be complete without requisite business books. Sure, there are always new business books hitting the shelves. How about going back to the basics? Have you ever read a textbook on economics? You’d be surprised at how much there is to learn and how much it can affect your career. Do you truly understand what it means to provide value? Do you understand what it means if you are merely an expense to the organization? Read and learn about how you can make your company money, rather than be an expense.
• Listen. Put yourself in situations where you can hear what others have to say. For example:
• Listen to webinars that have new and useful information. Make the time in your calendar, or get the link and listen on Sunday morning.
• Attend a pertinent event from time-to-time. I know that your company won’t pay for you to attend conferences anymore. Well, perhaps you need to pay for them yourself. Go to a conference. Go to a networking event. You’ll meet interesting people and they will meet you. You’ll hear about what your competitors and colleagues are doing in the marketplace. You’ll learn all sorts of things. It will be well worth your time and money.
• Peruse the internet. Do you have any idea how many TED talks you can find online?
• Speak. Yes, you. Speak up. Once you have made it a daily habit to read and listen, you need to formulate your own viewpoints and opinions, and speak up. Make sure that you have facts and information to backup what you have to say. Then, speak your truth. Talk about the value you bring to the organization. Talk about the things that you can do to improve the corporate bottom line, improve customer satisfaction, and collaborate across the enterprise. No one is going to guess at your knowledge and value. You must speak it yourself.

Will doing all of these things guarantee your success? Well, no. But not doing these things will definitely guarantee that the rest of the world will keep moving at lightening-fast speed. All the while you will be sitting in your office typing your latest command-line reference guide into your Microsoft Word template. And maybe you can keep doing that for the next 20 years and continue to pay your mortgage.

I, for one, am not willing to bet on it.

Today, it does not take much talent or technology to produce content for publication, be it on a website somewhere or as a self-published eBook.  The result is that the amount of content available has sky rocketed, while the quality of the content has declined precipitously.

As a professional in the content development business, I find this … disturbing.  I can’t think of the last time I read a book on my Kindle where I didn’t find at least 10 significant errors. Typos and writos happen to the best of us – of course – myself included (in fact, I even have one in this post!), but I’m talking about books that were put together by a professional team at some of the largest publishing concerns in the world.

What will it take to raise our content standards?  Great question.  Three things I think.

First, recognize that you get what you pay for.  Some of our clients have commissioned articles at $10 a pop through low-cost editorial services.  Our own experience with these services has been very poor.  Sure, you’ll get pounds of articles to fill up your website or support site.  But you won’t get articles that drive readership or engagement, accelerate sales, or reduce your support costs. For that, you need to hire content developers with technical acumen and – you guessed it – that costs money.

Second, real content developers pay attention to semantics, as required to make their content intelligent.  With the pounds and pounds of content that gets created every day, it is imperative that we make content that is easy to find, easy to reuse, and can be adapted to various devices (mobile, tablet, web, readers). My colleagues Scott Abel and Anne Rockley call out five specific attributes that make content intelligent as defined  in this seminal article.

Third, understand that the real innovations in content happen when you link content to business strategy.   A great case in point was highlighted in the New York Times just the other day.  The article talks about a new website “inspired by Google Street View”.

Generally, the New York Times does not bother to talk about a new website, but this is an example of a consumer-packaged goods company investing $1M in content marketing.  The site consists of trail maps for three of the most-visited national parks in the US:  the Grand Canyon, Great Smokies, and Yellowstone.  The way the trail maps are presented is not new and not presented in a particularly novel way. Indeed the presentation of the trail maps themselves was borrowed from Google Earth.

What makes this case innovative is the way General Mills is using this type of content to keep their granola bar brand top-of-mind with families and active adults who plan on visiting the national parks this spring and summer.

What else do we need to do to raise our content standards?  I know you’ve got ideas.  Please do share them with me and I’ll continue to codify them here.

I just came back from the Intelligent Content Conference held in Palm Springs. This is a yearly conference put on by Ann Rockley and Scott Abel. It was my second time at this conference and I was not disappointed.

I arrived on Thursday for Kristina Halvorson‘s keynote. As usual, Kristina was lively and engaging. This year, her presentation was based on the paradigm of Wall-E. One of the refreshing things that I enjoy about Kristina is that she always speaks about what she sees in the world of content strategy. And, this time around, Kristina sees that the time for content is now. The time for content strategy is now. With every passing technology development, the role of content gets even greater. These are truly exciting times to be involved in content.

I am anxiously awaiting the release of the second edition of Kristina’s book, Content Strategy for the Web. It is sure to be an engaging read, loaded with terrific information.

My favorite presentation was Mark Fidelman‘s, How to Capitalize on the Forthcoming Interactive Books Market Explosion. What I liked about Mark’s presentation was that he clearly explained the difference between enhanced eBooks and interactive eBooks. He showed us a number of examples, which really helped my understanding.

Mark picked out what he considers to be best in class examples of both enhanced and interactive eBooks. Here are his favorites:

• The Elements, by Theodore Gray
• Harvesting the Wind, by Al Gore
• Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein
• Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Rather than singling out the worst eBooks, Mark gave us the factors that send an eBook to his “worst of” category:

• Bad video quality
• Retrofitted content
• Poor user experience
• Dumping PDFs into an eBook format
• Low quality images
• Bad spelling (!!)
• No interaction

I also enjoyed speaking at my session on Shepherding Your Content for Operational Efficiency. I am glad we had time at the end for questions, as many good ones were asked. If you missed my session, but want to know how to get your content to do more for you, you can download the whitepaper.

As an added bonus, all attendees received the new version of Ann Rockley’s book, Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy. The first edition introduced the path that so many of us are now following in the content strategy arena. I’m looking forward to reading this updated version.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that a lot of people were looking at my now-famous post on Adobe Framemaker. It is the post that continues to live on in infamy. I noticed that many people were finding the post from a site called tecwriter.com. So, I decided to peruse tecwriter.com, to see exactly what is going on there.

Tecwriter.com appears to be an aggregated site where you can have your blog posts linked. And lo and behold, the very first link is my FrameMaker post. I have no idea how it got there, but I am grateful for the connection. I started looking more closely at the links on the site. It would appear that most of them are related to Madcap Flare – which makes me wonder if Madcap has something to do with the site. Does anyone know?

In any event, I came across a great post that I wanted to share with you. It is called “Ten Best Practices for Preparing a Flare (or RoboHelp) Project for Translation,” and it is by Lorraine Kupka. The post is on the Writers UA site, which is a great place to go for information on user assistance.

What I like about Lorraine’s post is that it is very thorough. It covers most of the various items you should think about when your project is going to be translated. Lorraine focuses not just on the writing, but on all of the additional things you can (and should) do to make your project go smoothly. I strongly suggest you read her entire post.

For crimp notes, here are Lorraine’s 10 best practices:

1. Follow best practices for technical writing
2. Consider how the text will appear after translation
3. Use CSS styles instead of local formatting
4. Use naming conventions
5. Document conventions and processes in a style guide
6. Simplify conditioned text
7. Don’t embed text in images
8. Consider whether to translate sample data used in screen shots
9. Remove extraneous project files (targets, topics, TOCs, etc.)
10. Identify topic content that must match the user interface

If you are not creating online help, you might not need all of these best practices, since a few are specific to online help systems. However, most of these practices should be used religiously if you are sending your content to translation.

A few months ago, Scott Abel wrote a post for eContent Magazine on preparing your content for translation. I would add the following best practices from Scott’s post:

• Avoid being America-centric in your writing
• Make sure your content is findable
• Structure your content consistently
• Use a consistent set of semantic tags
• Install and use a CMS for managing your content

What are some of the other best practices that you would add?