All posts by mindivik

10-Step Guide for Great Technical Writing
content marketing, marketing collateral, technical documentation

10-Step Guide for Great Technical Writing

Dec 23, 2022 by mindivik 2 Comments

10-Step Guide for Great Technical Writing

Technical writing is a content writing discipline focused on strategy, facts, and technology. It involves communicating technical information to its users. It simplifies complex processes in understandable words. Technical documents include technical manuals, User guides, Standard Operation Procedures, etc., and provide advanced, factual information for easy usability.

A technical writer must have good writing skills and technical knowledge to convey complex information to the end users in simple and understandable words. Technical writers with specialized skills and expert technical know-how document the content from the user’s perspective to yield maximum user satisfaction.

The scope of technical writing is not just limited to technical manuals and user guides. Technical writing is a broad concept covering all forms of factual writing. This umbrella now covers all forms of formal writing, including Press Releases, Reports, Briefs, Business Proposals, Public Speeches, etc. Any form of writing that requires clear, factual, and concept-based delivery is a technical document.

A well-written technical document is crucial for any business, from store owners to big tech companies. Every business requires clear, precise communication within its organization and with its end users to achieve its business goals effectively. These documents define your brand image. A clear and coherent flow of information is required for the users to understand the products or services. An ill-structured technical document can affect your user’s understandability, hampering your business’s reputation.

Technical documentation requires comprehensive knowledge of the product. Here are a few tips to help you improve your user communication and develop an effective technical document.

  1. Audience Analysis: It is very crucial to know your target audience. Know your audience, from internal users to end users, to create an effective technical document. Conduct a thorough audience analysis to know who your end users might be. Plan out your document keeping in mind your audience specifications. When writing an SOP, t create a logical sequence of steps for the readers. While writing a business proposal to facilitate internal communication, including all the technical concepts and jargon will create an elaborate technical document.
  2. Research your Audience’s Existing Knowledge of the Product: It is always a good course of action to know about your user’s existing knowledge of the product. This comprehensive research will help you create a blueprint of the contents to be included in your document. A clear definition of user needs and knowledge will help you create a relevant technical document with the necessary information. The user just needs to know about the usefulness of the product. Include details and terminology according to your user’s knowledge and serve them the desired content.
  3. Know the Product you are Writing for. Know your product inside out. Having in-depth knowledge about the product, its specifications, user persona, unique features, etc., will help you devise a clear technical document in no time. A writer with extensive knowledge about the product can deliver the technical document in the simplest words. The goal is to simplify the product so indulge in some good research on your product to achieve this writing goal.
  4. Structuring your Document: After the research phase comes the executing or structuring phase. How you present, your information is just as important as what you present. Technical documents are usually considered monotonous content pieces. Present your document in a way that grabs the reader’s attention and hooks them up with your document. Give your text a meaningful flow from one concept to another to enhance the readability and understandability of your content. An excellent technical document will engage the readers and deliver the context in the simplest way possible.
  5. Document Flow: Use attractive layouts to navigate your document flow. Layouts that enhance readability and help in easy scanning. Make your text more appealing using bulleted or numbered lists, headers, footers, and document names. Make your transition from one text to another seamless with coherent document flow. Include examples in your text to keep the readers hooked to reality while keeping it practical.
  6. Using Visuals to Engage. Use imagery as and when possible. With shorter attention spans, modern readers prefer visuals over text. Visuals grab the reader’s attention more than written texts. The goal is to get your message across in fewer words. Use different illustrations like tables, flow charts, 3-D diagrams, and screenshots to break the monotony of boring texts. Visuals enhance the reader’s understandability of the text, improves document flow, and facilitate readability.
  7. Using Simplest Language Possible. You do not want to sound smart and confuse your readers with complex vocabulary. Technical documentation aims to get the message across. Stick to simple words, short sentences, and clear steps to guide your readers. Think from your reader’s perspective while writing the text and Simply the language wherever possible. Opt for more minor texts with numbered lists and the most straightforward language to enhance your document’s readability.
  8. Creating detailed TOC: Enhance your document’s searchability by preparing an elaborate Table of Contents. A table of contents is the index of your entire document and the first thing to interact with your readers. Make sure it is well-defined and comprehensive. Your readers should be able to find anything in the document easily. Create the TOC with simple language and the aim to provide a roadmap to the readers. Cross-reference the pages and numbers to avoid confusion among the readers.
  9. Preparing Glossary: A perfect technical document has an elaborate list of glossaries to enhance the reader’s understanding. A glossary is an alphabetical list of words relating to a specific term with an explanation. It is an effective strategy to tie words and phrases your readers might find challenging to understand. Simple words and phrases to explain complex terms will make your technical document effective and efficient.
  10. Proofread your Document and Refine: Edit and refine your technical document with every version update. Update your content regularly to keep it afresh and practical and maintain a competitive edge. Creating a technical document is a lengthy and cumbersome process. Take expert guidance from a subject matter expert to pinpoint the shortcomings in the text. Having a second set of eyes is always a good option in reviewing.

About the Author: Yogesh Sharma is the founder and CEO of Mindivik, which is a technical documentation company based out of Noida, India.

www.mindivik.in
www.facebook.com/mindivik
https://linkedin.com/company/mindivik

process documentation
content marketing, marketing collateral, Technical Communication

The Importance of Process Documentation

Dec 22, 2022 by mindivik 0 Comments

The Importance of Process Documentation

The scale and diversity of operations of any organization require all its processes, tasks, and knowledge documents to be streamlined and aligned across verticals and departments. An ill-structured, inconsistent, and inaccurate process document causes unnecessary confusion among employees, creating delays in the workflow and reducing efficiency.

What is Process Documentation

Information within an organization is dynamic; any vertical might require it at any time. It is imperative to ensure that everyone within the organization is on the same page. This warrants city and completeness across documents so that the staff knows the task without external guidance. An expanding business will have a growing amount of information distributed among the employees.

To achieve this, companies must undertake what is known as process documentation. Process documentation is an ongoing activity that simplifies complicated operations by making the process accountable, transparent, and tangible. It is a step-by-step document explaining the exact structure of how tasks need to be performed.

Why do We Need Process Documentation

Process documentation explains to the user how to carry out a process that’s part of your organization’s work. It’s not merely an explanatory document but a holistic guide explaining a process that caters to employees across domains and skill sets.

Eliminating Uncertainty in Operations

Process documentation helps businesses remove ambiguity from their work. Understanding that any stakeholder might mentally store all the FAQs related to a process is essential, but they can still be lucidly explained during a crunch situation.

Efficient process documentation eliminates the need to assume certain aspects of a process. Many junior-level employees might be averse to quizzing their seniors about the following step in the application, thereby nullifying the purpose of information sharing.

This is where a well-structured process document steps in. All the information can be accessed from anywhere by anyone at any time. Also, if the person possessing all the process information leaves the organization, there is no risk of the data being lost forever.

Ensuring Organizational Conformity

Certain work ethics and practices in every company bind employees. These ethics must reflect in the manner in which an operator completes tasks and achieves the desired goals. The procedures and policies within an organization and the operational tasks must be unanimously followed. A process document enlists the various steps that an employee must follow to minimize errors and save time.

The stricter application of process documentation is during real-time operations. A supervisor might verbally explain the entire process to an operator perfectly. Still, there are high chances of the latter messing up this information as it might often be a lot to remember, process, and implement simultaneously. A centralized document containing the entire workflow and problem-solving tips will help reduce mistakes and improve efficiency.

Maintaining Information Consistency

Consistency is a critical factor in a business that helps maintain harmony in internal operations and projects homogeneity in the eyes of customers and external stakeholders, thereby creating positive brand value. Every organization wants things belonging to the same group to appear and feel the same. If this does not happen, a natural lack of cohesion becomes inevitable, leading to disoriented implementations and erratic output.

An interesting fact here is that the lack of consistency does not arise due to inherent human errors but owing to our natural intent to modify and mold processes as per our observation or comprehension. An individual might be inclined to complete a particular task in a specific manner, while his colleague might have other thoughts.

In the future, both might explain the process in their versions to others in the value chain. This might cause information distortion in the long run and create unfathomable challenges for businesses.

An approved, centralized, and standardized document spelling out the various aspects of a process and how it must be adhered to will go a long way in sticking to the basics. Employees will no longer have to apply their judgment in a process and can instead focus on other essential tasks.

Removing Redundancy

There is often a tendency among individuals to elaborate a process and jargonize it to make it appear bejeweled while being able to highlight their contributions in the process. Such enthusiasm is highly commendable but might lead to redundancy in an otherwise simple process.

Stoic process documentation directs all employees to follow a unified structure. It sticks to the basics, answers all the essential questions, and allows fellow members to be looped in as required. Being dynamic, organizations must revisit a process document periodically and carry out modifications to accommodate the latest developments and process changes.

Process Documentation: The Smart Approach

The key idea behind having a workable process documentation in place is to identify and implement a team’s collective intelligence in every process and make it profitable. Merely hastening a process or mitigating errors is not the aim of such a document. It helps businesses envision an environment where everyone works together, achieves collective goals, adapts to changes quicker, and grows professionally.

 

About the Author:
Yogesh Sharma is the founder of Mindivik, which is a technical content development company based out of Noida, India. Yogesh Sharma can be reached on LinkedIn and Facebook.

technical-documentation-best-practices
Communication, content marketing, Technical Communication, technical documentation, user guide

Technical Documentation: Best Practices

Dec 22, 2022 by mindivik 0 Comments

Technical Documentation: Best Practices

Picture this: You and your company have a pathbreaking product or service destined to succeed across markets and customer profiles. It’s easy to install, can be quickly set up, and ensures time and monetary savings for customers.

However, you need proper communication to lure potential customers into buying your product. Worse still, if you are a startup, you won’t have any customers in the first place, as even your investor will not be convinced about the viability of your proposition!

Sounds scary? Technical documentation is the modern-day tool that you should be looking at. It’s a detailed document explaining every aspect of your product or service in the best possible manner to annihilate ambiguity, provide all requisite answers, and save time.

Documentation is essential in every step of the project’s life cycle. Without technical documentation, large projects have a risk of falling apart!

A Critical Customer-Connect Tool

Today’s customer knows the difference between a product or service-oriented technical document and a cleverly masked marketing initiative. Not only that, but the current digital expansion has also left little scope for pure marketing pitches, which do little to answer the critical queries of a user.

It is here that a potent technical material takes the brand ahead. A concise and informative technical document has the potential to elevate the brand perception of a product while providing ample convenience to the end user.

Creating technical documents that are attractive, interesting, and easy to navigate will help users understand the product better in less time. It will allow users to set up the product faster and use it ideally. It results in higher customer satisfaction levels, coupled with more positive reviews. Higher sales numbers are guaranteed.

A perfectly created technical documentation helps articulate the process of understanding a product, service, or application. Developers can achieve a precise thought process integration across verticals with a clear reference point for all team members.

Always remember that consistent, concise, and precise documentation is necessary for a potential customer to have confidence in the product or want to spend time and effort learning how to use it.

How to Write a Perfect Technical Document

The winning trick in writing a comprehensive technical document is to ensure that a customer has all or most of his functionality-related queries, doubts, and problems answered via a single source.

A well-written document makes them less dependent on your support staff for help with every minor issue faced. It can reduce calls to technical support lines and your staffing costs significantly.

Product documentation is an indispensable learning aid. Providing maximum clarity to customers with minimum effort is the main aim of a successful technical document. Your staff or customers will be able to refer to them long after the training session.

Identifying Your Audience

Learning about your audience is very important to identify if your documentation is aimed at developers, employees, users, and other similar stakeholders. It helps users understand the background, goals, and knowledge of the product or technology.

Having an early idea of your target audience enables you to customize your document to customer needs and changes as and when they crop up. Your product or service can cater to a broader spectrum of audiences, but the core consumer base needs to be mentioned at the beginning.

Creating a Workflow

Technical documentation warrants the need for an initial structured outline. With this in place, generating seamless content can be smooth. An initial skeleton is a must, around which your documentation revolves. An intelligent mix of headlines, categories, sub-categories, and topics can help organize and structure your documents methodically.

This roadmap makes it easier for you to pitch your idea to investors. An idea not entangled in jargon highlights the most important aspects at the beginning and justifies its market existence and financial worth. While the end user looks for immediate validation from your offering, investors visualize the long-term feasibility of any solution and proceed accordingly.

Ensuring Clear and Lucid Content

A technical document is a customer guide to enable ease of usage. Before your content reaches SMEs and peer groups, ensure that your understanding of how the product or service works reflects your draft. Displaying your linguistic prowess will be useless if an existing/prospective customer can’t comprehend the process or his queries are not answered.

Always remember: your customers might have different requirements than you do. The ability of a technical document to explain a complex/straightforward procedure to a broad spectrum of users determines its success. Make sure the applicability of the technical document takes precedence over other prerequisites.

Supplementing Text with Attractive Graphics and Illustrations

Supplementing your text with proper illustrations, pictures, or diagrams adds authenticity to your document. These tools provide directions on using a product or technology beyond textual representation.

Images help break the constant monotony of words for your customers and make the document enjoyable. Also, be sure to use appropriate captions supporting all illustrations. Captions can help bring context to the product diagrams and illustrations with clear directions.

A well-displayed graphical representation of your offering helps better comprehend the complex technical subject. Readers/viewers stand to understand more from pictorial representations than the same context in written words.

Illustrations also enhance the document’s visual appeal and thus improve the reader’s concentration on the critical message. Most importantly, it breaks away from language barriers and helps convey the same message to a broader audience who do not share a common language.

Ensuring Safety Precautions

Your product or service will reach out to a massive audience who will bestow their faith in you and your company based on the contents of the technical documentation. Often your product might require sensitive or confidential information of the users to proceed.

You must ensure that in no way is a customer susceptible to online fraud or scams through any of your required actions. Conducting a safety test at your end before the pilot project is launched ensures such a task ‘always’ redirects a user to a credible platform without any margin for error.

content marketing

The Power of Content Marketing

Dec 14, 2022 by mindivik 0 Comments #content, #content marketing, #strategy

Content marketing has become a potent tool for brand promotion. While content marketing keeps growing in popularity, creating blogs and social media posts is not enough to impact the bottom line.

To succeed in content marketing, it is essential to build a comprehensive and workable strategy that is implementable and complements a company’s business outlook. The ultimate aim is to allow us to attract and engage a clearly defined audience and, in the end, generate profitable customer action.

An effective content marketing strategy should have these five elements worth applying: a well-identified target audience, strategic brand positioning, media value proposition, a justifiable business case, and a workable action plan.

It becomes difficult to propose a brand plan if the business is unclear about its target audience. That’s why the first step will be to identify the audience the project plans to target with its content. There are multiple ways to do this:

  • Surveying the existing customers
  • Researching industry trends
  • Knowing who the brand is not trying to target
  • Keeping close tabs on whom competitors are targeting
Content writing company

Ways to Succeed in Content Marketing

Good content ensures that the target audience remains interested and engaged in the content and business that will ultimately drive sales leads. When a business provides relevant and valuable information to its audience, they will find it instantly attractive and share it with people who matter. Not only that, but people will also interact with the content in other ways, like providing constructive comments and positive reactions.

The most crucial role that a good content marketing strategy plays is that it helps brands attract more traffic to their website with a good perspective for the business. In these rapid social media interactions and information overload, it gets increasingly difficult to guide people to locate business amongst the flood of online information. However, genuinely relatable content makes products discoverable across search engines.

Relevant content also draws attention in social media or email marketing initiatives, resulting in more visitors to a website and helping in more eyeballs. A clearly defined brand and product positioning will help provide a consistent experience for the target audience and build the right image through all the pursued content marketing channels.

Ways to Succeed in Content Marketing

All businesses today want more customers, greater outreach, and enhanced profits. To achieve these, businesses need a specific content marketing strategy. For starters, if a brand is trying to build an email list or increase brand awareness, it needs to consider the value addition it can provide to the end customers.

Eventually, it’s crucial to clarify objectives for effective marketing. Suppose the idea is to get potential customers to visit customer facing businesses, or sell products directly from a company’s website. In that case, having clarity of thought and a distinctive business proposition is essential.

Before creating compelling content, companies need to identify their target audience. A buyer persona helps create the kind of content prospective customers appreciate. Understanding customers’ interests, needs, problems, and preferences are essential. Clarity on these prerequisites will help brands determine the kind of content they should create for short- and long-term business viability.

A tried-and-tested content marketing methodology is being able to curate content that people will find worth sharing and promoting with peers. Whether it is a visually-attractive video, an alluring offer, or a ready-reckoner photo; any content that can engage current customers and attract new ones will eventually provide rich dividends. With an endless stream of digital content, making a product or service stand out from the crowd will further the cause of a brand in the long run.

The Current Relevance of Content Marketing

Consistency and steady relevance in brand messaging are the key factors that determine a business’s growth and prospects. Big and engaging brands know the art of consistently presenting their brand at every customer touchpoint, irrespective of the ups and downs witnessed by their specific product or service.

The same reasoning applies to content marketing. Likable, relevant, and relatable content must carry a unique and identifiable voice, style, and message across all distribution channels. Content consistency establishes brand credibility, builds trust, and strengthens product reputation.

Effective content marketing can generate engagement and revenue while asleep, just like an e-commerce site or any other digital approach to building a business. It can create traffic, engagement, followers, sales, repeat sales, and conversations around the brand. Even if a company had produced the content long ago and hadn’t done much with it, it’s not going to lose its relevance.

The quality of well-thought-out digital content is relative to a brand’s audience profile. Businesses can better understand customers’ needs by offering content with higher resonance. However, enhancing a brand’s content marketing prowess is an ongoing process. Companies must regularly measure and analyze their audience’s responses to understand and improve on the factors instrumental in creating a market niche.

The Way Forward

The current scenario for brand promotions is a highly dynamic one. Search engines have changed the business landscape forever. According to research, most consumers today use search engines to look for the most relevant goods and services before making a purchase.

Many of these online shoppers also performed product research via search engines before deciding on making an offline purchase. This trend renders it highly imperative to opt for a robust, workable, and financially viable content marketing approach for any brand.

Suppose a company’s marketing strategy does not weigh heavily towards its business popping up during all the online searches made by prospective customers. In that case, the brand is highly likely to lose out in the race. The right mix of originality, innovation, and customer-centric content marketing can work wonders for a business and create a sustainable brand value that will reap rich dividends for years.

Communication, Technical Communication, whitepaper

Whitepaper Marketing

Dec 5, 2022 by mindivik 0 Comments #case study, #technical writing, #whitepaper

Whitepaper Marketing: All you need to know

When you think of a successful marketing tool, memes, TV/ Radio ads, social media marketing, and viral marketing techniques would be at the top of your mind. As exciting and promising as these may be, several other powerful content marketing ways exist, including publishing whitepapers. Let us begin by understanding what a whitepaper is.

What is a Whitepaper?

A whitepaper is an extensively researched report written by a company or a not-for-profit organization to provide a solution for a specific industry problem. Whitepapers are written and used as a marketing tool by several industries. Companies illustrate their knowledge, research, and expertise through facts to structure a whitepaper.
It is like a guide informing readers about a complex business problem and presenting issuing bodies’ thoughts and solutions. Government and NGOs also use Whitepapers to gauge public opinion on new policies and reforms.

Whitepaper as a Marketing tool

With the changing digital scenario, companies are switching to newer, more comprehensive marketing tools like Whitepaper. A whitepaper is an effective tool for B2B (business-to-business) content marketing strategy. Written with a persuasive yet factual tone, a whitepaper is more than just an information piece nowadays.
An accurate and detailed whitepaper increases businesses’ chances to target and capture their market. A well-structured whitepaper communicates facts and in-depth information about a business problem and provides innovative solutions. The business’s nature can affect the whitepaper’s tone, but the structure and writing strategy remain the same.
Intended to educate and inform the target audience, whitepapers are trusted by more than 71% of companies as their most effective content marketing tool.

What is a whitepaper

Tips to keep in mind while writing a whitepaper

A whitepaper should have well-researched information and a compelling narrative to grab the reader’s attention. Written in academic style with over 2500 words, a whitepaper discusses in detail the business problem and provides a solution to the brand’s products or services.

Writing from the B2B perspective, a whitepaper should discuss and promote the company’s products and services to its customers, stakeholders, and media. It strives to provide trusted expertise and guidance through credible research and reasoning.

Here are a few tips to pay attention to:

  1. Research to give wings to your Whitepaper: Research marks the beginning of any content piece. Comprehensive research sets the tone of the whitepaper. Knowing your customer’s needs and expectations from the business gives leverage and a competitive edge. Make sure you indulge in factual research and findings.
  2. Magic lies in the topic: The topic of the whitepaper is the first thing that interacts with a customer. Make sure it’s relevant, persuasive, factual, and engaging.
  3. Introduce like an attention-seeker: Entire readership of your whitepaper lies in the captivating introduction. Pique their interest and provide them with a constructive solution. Structure your whitepaper with an engaging introduction, an organized list of topics, and a persuasive conclusion.
  4. Keep it persuasive yet professional: Writing from a marketing perspective entails creativity. But while writing a whitepaper, keep in mind the professional tone of writing to sound more reliable and factual.
  5. Make it visually rich: Include infographics like charts, photos, graphs, pie charts, video links, etc., to make the content more captivating and grab the reader’s attention.
  6. Proofread your whitepaper over and over for better readability and easy understanding.

Whitepaper and Business Growth

A whitepaper is excellent marketing collateral that indicates your authority over the chosen niche. Companies, Governments, Universities, and Individuals have realized the benefits of publishing whitepapers to address a business problem and propose a solution.

A whitepaper is an effective and potential content tool providing solutions to the problems faced by the majority. Let us have a look over some of the several benefits whitepaper allow in inbound marketing and Content strategy:

  • Generating Leads: Generating leads is the most popular benefit of using a whitepaper and helps your business grow and expand. A Whitepaper is a perfect mix of educative content in the form of long articles and marketing material, such as a corporate brochure. This perfect duo of learning and persuasion renders it a competitive edge over other marketing tools.
  • Building Thought Leadership: Publishing a well-structured and researched whitepaper build a positive brand image with your readers. This positions your brand as a trusted advisor and a subject matter expert in the field, enhancing the reader’s rapport with your brand. Try to accommodate a small content piece about your brand’s thoughts on the problem and how its products can eliminate the problem at the end of the whitepaper to increase curiosity among the readers.
  • Accommodating original research and expressing relevant facts: In the age of duplicate internet content, stand out by creating original content. Readers or possible leads appreciate original, relevant content that addresses their pain points. Gain a competitive edge by researching and creating compelling content.
  • These are some practical ways your whitepapers can help achieve business growth. Follow these methods to increase your online presence, spread expertise, generate leads and conversions, and, most importantly, build trust with your readers or potential customers.

Mindivik content solutions for professional documentation, technical communication, marketing copies, etc. Contact us now!

API Documentation
Technical Communication

Perfecting an API Guide

Mar 16, 2022 by mindivik 0 Comments

Perfecting an API Guide

What is API Documentation?

API documentation is a technical content deliverable, containing instructions about how to use and integrate with an API effectively. It’s a brief reference manual containing all the information required to work with the API.

It contains details about the functions, classes, return types, and arguments supported by tutorials and examples. API Documentation has traditionally been done using regular content creation and maintenance tools and text editors.

API description formats like the OpenAPI/Swagger Specification have automated the documentation process, making it easier for teams to generate and maintain them. A third-party developer is your API’s leading consumer, and he is trusted with the task of solving complex programming challenges.

Your API is significant for the technical user, as it is a crucial cog in the entire software value chain. They will want to integrate it as fast as possible and take their software development process ahead.

Hence, you must ensure that they immediately understand the value and usage of your API. The aggregate experience of the developer when discovering, learning to use, and finally integrating with an API is termed Developer Experience (DX). Smart API documentation is the key to a great DX.

The Need to Document APIs

Increased Awareness

A satisfied user will ensure more follow suit. The network effect is when a service or product becomes more valuable when more people use it. Your satisfied consumers will be the API’s most prominent advocates. As more users adopt your APIs and reach critical mass, there will be a probable increase in evangelism and word-of-mouth publicity by your satisfied consumers, leading to the network effect.

This is similar to our own experiences. We continually raise awareness of the great products we’ve used. It’s the same for developers. If they can easily and quickly learn to use your APIs, they’ll be your most prominent proponents.

Improved User Adoption

Adoption patterns are already shifting towards developers in the technology sphere. One big reason for having good API documentation is that it improves the experience for developers using your API, which directly correlates with API adoption.

People adopt products they enjoy using, and the same holds with your API. If you get your documentation right, more people will find value in your services easily, leading to better growth and adoption.

Saves Support Time and Costs

In addition to driving increased awareness and adoption of your API, good documentation also decreases the time spent onboarding new users, be it internal developers or external partners.

Poor or no documentation means more frustrated users relying on your team to understand how to work with your API. On the other hand, when you give users the ability to try out the API before implementing it and arm them with detailed documentation to get started, you’ll save your team countless hours responding to support emails and calls.

Ensures Easier Maintenance

Documentation leads to good product maintenance. It helps your internal teams know the details of your resources, methods, and associated requests and responses, making maintenance and updates quicker.

Developers' Guide
Technical Communication

A Developers’ Guide: A Journey Beyond Coding

Mar 16, 2022 by mindivik 0 Comments

A Developers’ Guide: A Journey Beyond Coding

Creating the perfect developer guide is the key to the success of your software and its application. They allow your target audience to quickly gain all the information they need to use your product and to start developing against your API.

With the rapid growth of API applications, it has become even more important to communicate a developer’s thought process clearly. This not only avoids unnecessary confusion, but also empowers the developer to aim beyond mere coding tasks.

How to Create the Perfect Developers’ Guide?

Keeping the Developer Engaged

Developers are first and foremost techies who love coding, tech processes and digital wizardry. However, they want their products or services implemented with least errors and hassles.

Grabbing a dev’s attention in a developer guide means showing them something they can instantly act upon. If the guide spends too much time on explaining intricate details or the subject matter, unfortunately the developer will no longer be on the same page with you.

Triggering Developer Interest

Once you’ve grabbed a developer’s attention, you need to keep them interested through easy-to-use guides and utilities. These should let them progress from a simple code snippet, to a running application. There are many ways this can be accomplished but the key is to achieve this quickly and efficiently.

The main page should provide access to a tailored and more detailed documentation. Likewise, the front page should help the dev to select one of the available languages and the code snippets are then shown in that language. Developers can also self-provision a sandbox, which simplifies the setup of their development ecosystem.

Empowering Devs with Knowledge

An involved and driven developer, who knows what they can do with your API, is now ready to delve deeper into your requirements with adequate knowledge. This can cover a range of subjects, which are as follows:

  • Understanding the “unhappy” path including error scenarios that happen out-of-band of the API call and how these are addressed
  • Using web hooks to create feedback loops for other out-of-band activities
  • Understanding rate limits, quotas, throttling, etc. that may affect how your API can be consumed

Deepening a developer’s knowledge might need them to understand the subject matter of the industry you operate in. This is because your implementation might reflect certain industry practices or constraints.

Your API might not be entirely perfect and can be coupled to an existing backend that is not RESTful in nature. Also, with experience, your proficiency in delivering APIs might still be growing. This would require certain design choices to be clearly explained to the developer.

Ensuring the Final Production Run

The success of the aforementioned processes and efforts lies in taking a developer’s application to production. This might vary, as it is largely dependent on the API provider and the type of API. The key to success is in making this process as easy as possible, with clear guidelines on the steps and process.

Luckily, free-to-use public APIs implementing no security measures can go to production quite easily. Most consumers are likely to be using a single API endpoint right through the entire API lifecycle. API providers should ensure developers are aware of this fact to allow them to develop their application as efficiently as possible.

Where an API does have a promotional model, the API provider needs to clearly state how developers will need to configure their applications between development and production.

 

Administrators' Guide
administrators guide, Communication, Technical Communication

Administrators’ Guide – Simplifying User Experience

Mar 14, 2022 by mindivik 0 Comments

Administrators’ Guide – Simplifying User Experience

A lot of effort goes into providing users a quality experience while they use a product or service. While effective user guides ensure that a user is happy with the initial purchase and installation experience, an administrator’s guide guarantees continued customer satisfaction and grievance redressal.

Who are System Administrators?

Since the digital revolution has taken over the world, System Administrators (SysAdmins) have toiled to maintain the accessibility and uptime of your most important IT services. And, while the rise of DevOps and cloud computing has led to more people with a hybrid SysAdmin/Developer skill set, the primary duties of a system administrator will always be required.

A system administrator’s role has undergone a paradigm shift in the last decade. Today’s system administrators are knowledgeable in both hardware and software – configuring resilient, secure architecture to ensure the success of the business.

System administrators are normally tasked with the installation, maintenance, configuration and repair for servers, networks and other computer systems. They work across both hardware and software applications, while operating across programming and scripting tasks as well. This helps them execute tasks and actions across their applications and infrastructure.

How to Write an Accurate Administrator’s Guide?

Opt for Tables & Matrices

A SysAdmin can significantly improve presentation and usability by displaying information via tables and role-based matrices. This content hierarchy helps SysAdmins find information faster, making the documents more useful, and reduces calls to other support channels.

Use White Space Judiciously

By making better use of white space, the Administrator’s guide becomes easier to read. This negates the need to constantly refer to supporting or explanatory text. Old-school System Administration Guides were quite difficult to read. This made users vary of referring to them, while causing unwillingness to consult the guides for information.

A Readable Font is a Must

An administrator’s guide is meant to convey maximum satisfactory information at minimum time. Opting for flashy or aesthetically alluring fonts will not cut the mustard. If a SysAdmin isn’t able to read, understand and communicate the content to the user satisfactorily, the entire purpose of this guide is nullified. Stick to a simple and readable format, always.

No Fillers Please!

The idea is to do away with unnecessary articles, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, and other descriptors when possible. While these do embellish an article, we must remember that the reader wants to find an exact piece of information right then. A cluttered page beats this end. Literary aesthetics can wait; a customer’s concern cannot.

Eliminate Redundant Words

Instead of saying, “in the event of”, write “if” instead. Do away with the flab and keep it crisp. In introductions, look for phrases that add little value and clog up the page. Systematically remove them. Stick to a brief introduction and try to shift to the main content: this is where the solution lies.

More Short Words are Welcome

Just like sentences, words should also be shorter and easier to understand. This not only reduces the word count, but also keeps the quality of communication intact. Remember, your success lies in addressing a user’s issue successfully and not in showcasing your command over a language.

user guide
Communication, Technical Communication, user guide

User Guides – Your Doorway to Technical Clarity

Dec 8, 2021 by mindivik 0 Comments

User Guides – Your Doorway to Technical Clarity

The aim is simple: translate complex technical information into simple and graspable material, which a user – without any technical know-how or expertise – can understand and implement.

user guide

By ANWESH KOLEY

The ever-expanding world of technology has engulfed almost every aspect of our lives. This has resulted in software and hardware applications becoming more encompassing. With this, has emerged the need to provide users the right technical knowledge to correctly use their devices.

Be it software, hardware, laptops, mobiles, printers, or any other appliance aiding our everyday convenience, a well-written user manual is the key to keeping customers happy and ensuring your product/service is being used in the right manner.

 

What is a User Guide?

A user guide is essentially a technical document, which helps achieve the aforementioned objectives. It comes with a specific purpose of helping non-technical people identify and solve problems without expert assistance. Usually, user guides are incorporated in the knowledge base software of the company and are enormously helpful to retrieve any information.

The aim is simple: translate complex technical information into simple and graspable material, which a user – without any technical know-how or expertise – can understand and implement. User guides are indispensable in the technical sector, as a product/service needs to cater to users across the socio-economic spectrum and address queries and concerns transcending language and geographical barriers.

A hardware or software developer might not possess the linguistic expertise to draft a lucid knowledge document explaining their offering. It therefore comes to technical writing experts to decipher their technical prowess and simplify the contents for everyone to understand.

The aim is simple: translate complex technical information into simple and graspable material, which a user – without any technical know-how or expertise – can understand and implement.

How to Write the Best User Guide?

 

Understand the User

End users are not you or your product/service developer. The user guide needs to address the user, the system and the strategic tasks, which the product/service addresses. Once these factors are accounted for, you need to streamline your content accordingly.

The common questions you need to ask yourself are:

  • How lengthy should the guide be?
  • How well-endowed is my user in terms of language proficiency?
  • Have I managed to structure the user guide seamlessly?
  • Will it answer all the possible questions that a user might pose?
  • Do I have an easy feedback mechanism in place?

 

A Descriptive Structure

A user guide must be easy to navigate and the user must immediately be able to locate the pointer he wants to refer. The body is the most important part of your manual, as it provides all necessary procedures and instructions. Apart from the body, you’ll need to offer a table of contents, an index page, glossary of terms, and reference materials as well.

Users will want to know not only how, but also exactly in which situations and under what terms to perform a certain task, so you’ll have to be as exhaustive and detailed as possible. This does not mean explaining the technical brainstorming going onto a product, but only as much as a user would require installing, using and continuing using it with minimum glitches.

 

Make it Attractive

Finally, it is recommended to smartly organize and present your text to provide complete operational transparency. Divide the user guide with distinctly written headings and section titles. Use bold and italics for separating different information and underline what needs to be emphasized.

Pictorial depictions and explanations are a must. A user would feel at ease, if he finds a diagram or graphic displaying how a product/service is to be used, through a series of illustrations. On many occasions, words can be kept at minimum, while focusing on info-graphics, diagrams and other pictorial tools to explain the process.

 

Facebook-f Twitter Linkedin-in
Communication, marketing collateral, Technical Communication, whitepaper

The Art of Writing the Perfect White Paper

Nov 29, 2021 by mindivik 0 Comments #marketing collateral, #techcom, #technical communication, #technical publications, #techpubs, #whitepaper

The Art of Writing the Perfect White Paper

White papers have, for long, been used by not-for-profit organizations, NGOs, and governments to gauge public opinion on new policies. With the expansion of digital footprint, white papers are often used by private companies as a marketing strategy for brand awareness and lead generation. This is because white papers essentially have a lower advertising appeal.

Mindivik - Content writing company

By ANWESH KOLEY

Understanding a White Paper

Content today generates business and the key to effectively channelize quality content to boost revenues is a white paper. A white paper is a marketing and sales asset, which aids problem solving and streamlines the process. It is a document used by businesses to explore a particular subject matter related to its product or service thereby generating the required numbers.

In a modern day business set up, a white paper is more than a mere knowledge document. Today, a concisely written white paper extensively delves into a specific topic, problem, or solution relevant to the business.

Business units can use a white paper to announce new products or services to the general public or other stakeholders. They can be distributed via an internet landing page that may be promoted through the following:

  • Blogs and social media platforms
  • Podcasts
  • Paid marketing initiatives
  • Organic search engine traffic

White papers have, for long, been used by not-for-profit organizations, NGOs, and governments to gauge public opinion on new policies. With the expansion of digital footprint, white papers are often used by private companies as a marketing strategy for brand awareness and lead generation. This is because white papers essentially have a lower advertising appeal. They are more fact oriented and clearly describe the essential attributes of a product or service.

Why do We Need a White Paper

The key usage of a white paper is for businesses to promote their products or services to new customers, decision-makers and other relevant stakeholders. A good white paper engages and educates a business’s given clientele with in-depth information that does the work for the customer. The idea is to address a specific topic relevant to its industry and the wider business spectrum. A white paper can establish a business as an authority on a specific topic in the public eye.

By effectively engaging with the public, a white paper has emerged as an informative tool for knowledge sharing and stakeholder empowerment. It is an avenue for a business’s marketers to share information about new products, services, or methodologies that their business offers. White papers are also used in business-to-business (B2B) marketing, for businesses to inform other businesses in the supply chain of their products or services.

“In a modern day business set up, a white paper is more than a mere knowledge document. Today, a concisely written white paper extensively delves into a specific topic, problem, or solution relevant to the business.”

How to Write an Effective White Paper

 

A Relevant Topic

The most essential part of your white paper journey is to zero down on a topic most relevant to your TG. Often, finding the right topic can be the biggest challenge. It is essential to identify the right audience whom the scope of your white paper will appeal to. Next, choose an issue that’s interesting to them and they can instantly relate to. It can be an immediate case study of successful companies in your industry to create benchmarks, for instance.

Keep it Professional

The essence of an effective white paper is to be descriptive and professional. Writing a white paper is not similar to writing a blog. You need to use a business writing style, which is relatively formal and explains the requirements clearly.

Your Intro to Fame

A captivating intro sets the perfect tone for your white paper. You want to catch the attention of the right audience from the word go and your intro is the best tool to set this tone. Pique their interest, and then tell them what they’re going to accomplish by reading your white paper. This includes writing a summary of your white paper and including an organized list of topics.

Adding Value

A white paper is as emphatic as the value it adds to the work process of your audience. Make sure to emphasize the value you will create with your presentation. Your white paper is not a billboard for your business, but an opportunity to create an image of expertise and insight that will help your readers. Whether this generates immediate sales for you or future avenues comes later. Initially, you need to give them something of value. This can only be achieved by loading your white paper with useful tips and information.

A Clear Structural Flow

A well-structured draft creates a positive impression throughout your presentation. Make it a point to come up with a clear outline first, and then proceed to write your paper. Be sure the flow of your white paper is in sync with your goals. This instantly grabs their attention, while delivering the requisite value, and makes them take further action.

Start it First

First, write out your draft and then sit for editing it. Once you have your outline put together, get your thoughts down while they are still fresh in your mind. It is important to begin with your ideas. You need not bother about editing the draft at every stage until you have completed the draft. If the idea of the white paper is clear, you will have no challenge going back and ensuring your work flows seamlessly afterwards.

Proofread your Way

Proofreading forms the backbone of a successful white paper (or any other document, for that matter!). Go back over your draft and see what needs to be done to make it read better. Ask for other people’s opinions, because they may be able to catch mistakes you overlooked. Read it out multiple times, to ensure there are no run-on sentences or mismatched phrases.

Ensure Effective Feedback

Like any other form of communication, you must complete the chain by following up with your audience and provide help wherever required. If you are selling a product or service that will help your readers, make sure to mention it at the end. You would do better not to use a white paper to blatantly sell your product or service. Instead, your proposition should accentuate the value you offer, which eventually drives the audience towards your offerings and the value it creates in their business and lives.

 

Are you looking for assistance with writing whitepapers, case studies, marketing collateral, technical documentation, and other forms of content, feel free to contact us.

Facebook-f Twitter Linkedin-in