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Why You Need a Technical Communicator
By Beth Agnew | July 11, 2010
Every company should have at least one technical communicator. A technical communicator (technical writer) is a valuable addition to the team in any organization, especially one in the scientific, medical, or high tech industry.
Technical communicators:
- Facilitate communication
- Translate technical language into plain language
- Document processes and procedures
- Communicate technical & scientific developments to a lay audience
- Help turn information into knowledge
The techwriter gets to know the market (audience, users) and works with marketing and sales to provide information that assists them in reaching the market with clear, easy to understand information. This is particularly important if complicated scientific, medical or technical information is involved, or if you need to explain policies or procedures. As experts in plain language writing, techwriters help demystify things like contracts and difficult procedures.
If new products are in development, technical writers work with the development team to document every aspect of the new product or service. This information then becomes manuals of instruction, training materials, and website content.
Technical communicators are very technically adept. We can quickly get up to speed with technologies we have never seen before, and we use a variety of leading edge technologies to communicate with our audiences.
When creating or improving a website, a technical communicator works with the web designer (who makes the site pretty) and the web developer (who programs the site and makes it work) to make the content and navigation easy to understand and usable (usability refers to the viewers ability to accomplish goals with the site).
Technical communicators are one of the few people in a company who interface with nearly every department within that company. We routinely work with customer support to ensure they have up to date information to help customers with problems. We work with quality assurance to perform user testing, standing in for the user with our expert knowledge. Consequently, technical writers can reduce customer support costs and help improve a company’s relationship with their customers. We work with marketing, to share information about the market or end user. We work with sales, contributing to sales literature and getting to understand the customer.
Technical writers are industry-independent. While you may find one with a specific background that is more relevant to your industry, a technical writer with a degree in Fine Arts is just as capable as one with a degree in Engineering when it comes to simplifying complex things. It is more important to look at the writing, editing, and consultation skills a techwriter brings to the table.
Further, technical communicators are skilled in project management, because they drive their own documentation projects in concert with any service or product development projects, and they have good people skills, being able to interview subject matter experts, as well as being able to develop rapport with a company’s customer base.
Technical communicators have skills in:
- Project Management
- Leadership
- Interviewing
- Publishing
- Human Resources
- Management & Budgeting
- General Business Skills
- Negotiation, Risk Management, etc.
(Add accounting to that and it’s pretty much an MBA!)
If your company has need of any of the following, you should have a technical communicator on staff:
- User guides
- White papers
- Marketing brochures, spec sheets, labels, signs, packaging, press releases
- Help files
- Error messages, interface tooltips and labels
- Installation instructions
- Usability testing
- Technology transfer
- Project documentation
- Technical reports
- Web sites
- E-Learning
- Corporate videos/documentaries
- Product demonstrations & trade shows
- Focus groups & customer advisory boards
- Single-Sourcing
- Knowledge management
- Content management
- Science writing
- Customer newsletters
- Beta testing programs
- Voice mail script writing
- E-mail response writing
- E-book publishing
- Mass personalization
- Meeting facilitation, especially video conferencing
Technical communicators are the Swiss Army Knife-employees you can plug in anywhere in your company and have them be productive and add value to your bottom line.
If you’re interested in hiring a technical communicator, contact me or communicate with the local chapter of the Society for Technical Communication in your region.
Topics: Careers, Management, Marketing, STC, Tech Comm, Technology Transfer, Usability, Web Development |
