Content Strategy Best Practices in Technical Communication

Category: Career Development, Content Strategy, Education, Technical Communication Leave a Comment

Content strategy is fast becoming an important skill set for technical communicators of many stripes. As technical content grows in importance, from marketing to follow-up after a purchase, technical communicators are poised to take center stage in this process. In my recent presentation for the Symposium on Communicating Complex Information with Jack Labriola and Sheryl Ruszkiewicz, I provided an overview of content strategy best practices in technical communication.

What Are Content Strategy Best Practices in Technical Communication?

Content strategy best practices in technical communication can be organized under 3 broad categories:

  1. Strategies for Developing and Deploying Content: Technical communicators are increasingly strategizing content development, publishing, and delivery across a dizzying array of venues, including print, social, web, mobile, intranet, enterprise, and more!
  2. Usability and Audience Awareness: At the same time, audiences within each venue must be engaged, meaning content must be searchable, findable, usable, and useful.
  3. Content Management: Finally, managing all this content across channels, including ensuring it stays relevant and authoritative, requires equally sophisticated techniques and the tactical use of technologies like content management systems and analytics tools.

Why Content Strategy Best Practices Matter for Technical Communicators

If the field of technical communication is to continue to grow, it must grapple with the complex needs of modern audiences of technical content. This includes everyone from people looking for help repairing a device to software engineers seeking help developing or maintaining an API. Technical communicators have a strategic opportunity during this shift to help organizations move from creating one-of documents to creating content-driven systems that serve everyone involved.

Content Strategy in Technical Communication: Our Forthcoming Book From the ATTW Book Series!

I’ll be showcasing these ideas and more in my forthcoming book from Routledge. Stay tuned for more updates!