Most social media strategies focus on new marketing trends, sales opportunities, or public relations. However, these strategies are driven by a company’s fear of inaction rather than a desire to provide the support that Web 2.0 users expect. Can technical communicators leverage their user experience expertise to contribute to an effective social media initiative?
9. Beyond the Bleeding Edge, STC Summit 2011 Fer O’Neil fer.oneil@eset.com 1.619.876.5632 The Technical Writer's Influence on Social Media Strategy slideshare.net/feroneil Fer O’Neil,“The Technical Writer’s Influence on Social Media Strategy”. Techniques, Spring 2011, page 8. http://english2.mnsu.edu/stc/newsletter.html
Hinweis der Redaktion
“Knowledgebase” is our company’s Technical Communications department. This presentation only deals with one aspect of the initiative; namely, Twitter.
1. Ability to interact for feedback. 5. And non-support channels as well (Sales process if a disconnect—will discuss this later). 6. KB Exposure -> Users don’t know what KB is or when they are in it or using it. The others are things that don’t require that much effort and that we were doing before. FOURTH WALL
Disparate departments who are involved with social media. Is there a marketing conference where my PR doppelganger is talking about the very same thing? A Customer Support agent couldn’t be either because all the content comes from tech writers. Tech Writers have to part of the process to fix the disconnect.
Who are the social media specialists? -> consumers look to social media for real-time Q&A, i.e. support. Technical Communicators communicate technical information, through any medium.
In addition to other initiatives: Marketing/PR @eset and Research @esetllc. Customer Support Agents on Twitter is same as CS Agents using ZAP. I’m not saying to only have this channel, but it’s a needed addition to more common SM marketing/sales/pr channels to handle support. Works the same if using one account for multiple channels -> still need Tech Writers involved.
1. Planning the initiative to work within the overall Comm. Dev. strategy UX skills. 2. Analytics/feedback to improve existing content or create new. 3. Admin of the initiative as part of the Comm. Development strategy, feedback loop.So, we est. that a strategy should include tech comm for UX, but what will that initiative do? Can it produce ROI?
Positive case analysis. Once again, can work with one channel divided among several dept./initiatives. Act as liaison between departments to connect Support with Sales. Review interactions to fill content gaps. Each step of the process is actually within the Knowledgebase: the FAQ, the Beta page, liaison between departments.