Category: Technical Communication

Outsource Technical Writing

Why Should You Outsource Technical Content Development

Why Should You Outsource Technical Content Development

 

There are several reasons why you might want to consider hiring a technical writing agency:

  1. Expertise: Technical writers have specialized knowledge and skills in writing technical content that is accurate, clear, and easy to understand. They have experience working with complex technical information and can explain it in a way that is accessible to your target audience.

  2. Objectivity: Technical writers bring a fresh perspective and objectivity to your content. They can help you ensure that your message is clear and concise, and that your content is free from any bias.

  3. Time-saving: Technical writing can be time-consuming and requires a significant investment of resources. Hiring a technical writing agency can save you time and free up your internal resources to focus on other important tasks.

  4. Increased productivity: A technical writing agency can work with you to create a consistent, high-quality output of technical content, which can help increase your productivity and improve the overall quality of your output.

  5. Cost-effective: Hiring a technical writing agency can often be more cost-effective than hiring an in-house writer or trying to do the work yourself. The agency can provide you with the resources you need to get the job done right, without the added cost of a full-time employee.

Overall, a technical writing agency can bring a wealth of expertise, objectivity, and efficiency to your technical writing needs, helping you to produce high-quality technical content that is accurate, clear, and accessible to your target audience.

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

Technical Writing Best Practices

Technical Writing Best Practices

Technical Writing Best Practices: A Guide to Clear and Effective Communication

Technical writing is a specialized form of writing that requires a clear, concise, and precise style to convey complex information. Technical writers are responsible for producing a wide range of content, including user manuals, software documentation, technical reports, and marketing materials. In this article, we will explore the best practices for technical writing to help you produce clear, effective, and professional content.

Know your audience

Before you start writing, it’s crucial to understand who your audience is and what their needs and expectations are. This will help you determine the tone and style of your content, as well as the level of detail required. For example, if you’re writing for technical experts, you can assume a higher level of technical knowledge, but if you’re writing for non-technical readers, you may need to explain complex concepts in simple terms.

Use clear and concise language

Technical writing is all about conveying complex information in a clear and concise manner. Avoid using jargon or complex technical terms that your audience may not understand. Instead, use simple and straightforward language that is easy to read and understand. Also, make sure that your content is free of grammar and spelling errors, as these can detract from the quality of your content.

Organize your content logically

Organizing your content logically is key to making it easy to read and understand. Use headings and subheadings to break up long blocks of text, and use bullet points and numbered lists to highlight important information. This will make your content more visually appealing and easier to navigate.

Include examples and visuals

Examples and visuals can help clarify complex concepts and make your content more engaging. Use diagrams, images, and charts to illustrate your points and help your audience understand the information more easily. When using visuals, make sure they are clear and concise, and that they support the information in your text.

Use active voice

Using active voice in your writing can help make your content more concise and engaging. In active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action, making the sentences shorter and easier to read. For example, “The engineer designed the software” is written in active voice, while “The software was designed by the engineer” is written in passive voice.

Test your content

Before publishing your content, it’s important to test it to make sure it is clear, concise, and easy to understand. Get feedback from your target audience, and make any necessary revisions based on their suggestions. Testing your content will also help you identify any technical errors or inaccuracies, allowing you to make improvements before your content is published.

Keep your content up-to-date

Technical information can change quickly, and it’s essential to keep your content up-to-date to ensure that it is accurate and relevant. Regularly review your content and make any necessary updates to keep it current. You can also include a revision history to help your audience understand when changes have been made and why.

In conclusion, technical writing is a specialized form of writing that requires a clear, concise, and precise style to convey complex information. By following these best practices, you can produce clear, effective, and professional content that meets the needs and expectations of your target audience. Whether you’re writing user manuals, software documentation, technical reports, or marketing materials, these best practices will help you produce content that is both informative and engaging.

 

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

Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

Digital Marketing: A Marketeers Boon

Fancy this. You are an ad sales representative from a magazine on his way to the client’s office, pitching for a full-page advertisement at your card rate, willing to cough up a discount at the drop of a hat!

However, you are greeted with a chronological bifurcation from your revered potential client of how — while you were busy he learned the nuances of showcasing his products and offerings on the digital gamut of numerous platforms. This garnered him more business, customers, and eyeballs overall. Welcome to the world of digital marketing, where grabbing these quintessential eyeballs is the name of the game.

Let’s face it; your client wants to be where his potential customers are or are likely to be. The more optimized your product placement is, the more chances you must convert a viewer into a business leader and, later, a steady follower and subscriber. This calls for the most innovative tool today: SEO or Search Engine Optimisation.

Advantages of Digital Marketing

The ecosystem possessed by digital marketing today surpasses the tried and tested formula offered by traditional marketing modules. Indeed, the touch-and-feel modus operandi has and will always be welcome, but the currency of digital offerings helps brands overcome these obstacles with ease.

This change in trend has a lot to do with the traditional media sources being replaced with digital ones across age groups. News on the go, coupled with live updates, has been long challenging traditional paper-and-ink media, with fruitful results.

Tapping Customer Needs Better

The fact that intelligent keyword positioning, along with strategic HTML placements & hyperlinks to ‘wow’ brand factors, relies on a viewer’s last search results empowers a brand with the ability and dexterity to custom-place ads masquerading cleverly within the text. This is often referred to as on-page optimization, which is a micro­-manifestation of how an individual customer will/might react to an ad placement.

Coaxing (and essentially) luring potential customers to click on an ad of yours calls for strategic placement of keywords across these social media sites, which clasp on a user’s past and current web searches while being sensitive not to be too persuasive.

Enjoying Design Flexibility

“I want it in black and white,” said no modern-day brand manager ever! The lack of customizability – that came with traditional print ads and promotions – was a severe handicap that rendered this medium archaic.

Ads today need to be dynamic. Audience demographics are changing at the drop of a hat, and the only thing constant about a market is that nothing is constant anymore! Designers today have much more flexibility and creative liberty in designing ads, as they can always go back to the original blueprint and tweak the artwork as required.

Connecting Better with Customers

Effective marketing does not sell a product or service: it sells convenience to customers. Agreed that mapping the minds of consumers is an arduous task, but once mastered, it ensures robust brand loyalty and customer connection.

Digital marketing offers endless possibilities to create indelible impressions in customers’ minds with attractive websites, catchy social media posts, customer-engagement initiatives, and convincing case studies. All this would never have been possible with traditional media as the apparent constraints of space and time associated with print media cannot be ignored.

The Road Ahead for Digital Marketing

The game has now moved on to an equally enchanting off-page SEO optimization that focuses on the macrocosm of the digital marketing spectrum. How well a brand can leverage other existing aspects of media to its advantage forms a part of this tool. And news mediums are the perfect means to achieve this end.

Imagine the CEO of a global automotive giant gets featured in a lead interview of a prominent magazine: instant brand recognition and customer eyeballs. Next week, the same Mr. CEO is the key speaker at an eminent customer satisfaction survey forum: further brand image enhancement.

Remember our poor ad sales representative from the beginning of this article? He was smart enough to jump boats and join the digital bandwagon to his advantage! It isn’t difficult to fathom that the road adopted in the two channels might differ, but the sales charts will ring either way.

 

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

How to Create High-Quality Documents

How to Create High-Quality Documents

How to Create High-Quality Documents?

A good product requires even better documentation to establish its monopoly in the market. Product documentation, often called “Necessary Evil’ is a fine-print document created by technical writers detailing the ‘use and produce’ of the product. The monotony of the process makes developers treat it as an ‘afterthought’ and hence lose interest in creating high-quality documents. This is why most of the great products fail to capture the market. High-quality, well-written product documentation can send the right message to customers and yield desired results. 

Let us begin by understanding the meaning and vitality of Product Documentation.

Product documentation refers to documents provided with the product for easy assembly and usage. These documents include User Manuals, Standard Operating Procedures, Quickstart Guide, etc. Product documentation is a broad umbrella, including all forms of communication required for a product. From Internal communication to end-user communication, product documents are the blueprints of the product’s usability and accessibility. 

Product documentation is one of the most crucial tasks in the Product Development Cycle. A well-written product document can do wonders for your product by increasing its fandom and business returns. The entire product and its related communication depend on this descriptive piece of content called product documentation. 

Vitality

The vitality of high-quality product documentation is immense. In today’s digital world, documentation is treated as a product because it helps prospective users understand the product and its usage. 

Product documents can make or break your product. A poor product document will not communicate the product right to the user. Ill-written documents not only confuse the users but also discourage them from buying the product. Furthermore, irrelevant information can make the document unfair and biased.  So, if you’re a product developer, reconsider your ideas and create a high-quality product document to stand out and gain a competitive edge.

Tips to Keep in Mind While Creating a Document

This blog elaborates on some proven ways that can help technical writers create quality documentation design, boost efficiency, reduce errors and improve overall data quality. Continue reading to know more.

  • Categorizing Information: Categorizing the information sets the tone for the entire product document. Categories help in information segmentation and provide coherence to the text. Product documentation varies depending on the business goals. Before structuring the document, it is advisable to know the type of documentation. For example, if you are writing a technical product document, you’ll need to take an advanced technical content writing route. From complex vocabulary to industry jargon, this form of product documentation is all about facts and technology.  Project documentation is primarily meant for collaborating developers who help develop the product. On the other hand, standard operating procedures are meant for internal communication to facilitate product manufacturing. Product documents, however, are focused on users’ points of view to deliver a carefully structured and informed document to the end users.  
  • Identifying your Target Audience: Identifying your Target Audience will align your business goals with customer satisfaction. Analyzing your target audience is one of the most crucial steps while creating and structuring a product document. The target audience is a pool of people with similar product needs. Identify and understand the specifics of your documentation and your target audience’s needs. Write from their perspective and include key pointers your audience would be interested in knowing. A clear flow of information with relevant information would benefit your customers. For example, if your customer wants to troubleshoot a problem, the document should have a clear flow of information to facilitate customer understanding. 
  • Creating an Elaborate Table of Contents: The table of Contents is the list of all the content residing in a particular document. An elaborate table of content serves two purposes. Firstly, it gives an overview of the document’s content and organization. Secondly, it helps users to find a specific topic in no time. Placing all related information in one place is a smart organizational idea for any technical writer. Clear segregation of topics renders the product a coherent and symmetric tone. Creating a Table of contents should be the first step in creating any product document. It acts as a blueprint for the entire document making it more comprehensive and readable. Try creating a blueprint of the content first and see how resourceful your product document turns out to be!
  • Creating a Clear Documentation Plan: A documentation plan outlines the document’s content and enlists all the work to be done. A documentation plan is crucial to knowledge transfer and helps structure all the processes within the team,  granting every team member access to all the essential information.  A precise document plan will reduce your workload with well-defined KRAs. A good documentation plan should include actionable insights, templates and style guides, documentation tooling, and hosting. Creating content within this structure is an excellent document culture practice. It provides you with all the necessary documents for your project and the context needed for each section, eliminating time and resource wastage. 
  • Using Simple and Understandable Language: You are not writing a technical document to impress your users but to make them understand the product and its usage. Using simple and easy-to-read language will enhance your document’s readability. The idea is to educate your user about the product. Write from the user’s perspective and avoid using complex technical terms that would hinder their understanding. Do not aim to sound smart in the text.
  • Keep Document Versioning Handy: As a product evolves, its product documentation also changes. Every product version requires product documentation.  Document versioning refers to the use and management of multiple document versions. It helps organize all the products’ versions and their related documentation. Versioning lets users choose the document according to their product versions. Besides helping the users find relevant information quickly, document versioning keeps them sensitized to newer product updates and features, strategically motivating them to upgrade. 
  • Attractive Document Style: Product documentation is monotonous, and getting the users hooked to the context is the real challenge.  A flat document structure is an eyesore when there are reams of information. Document style and page structuring play a significant role here. Strategically organize and divide large chunks of information into simple consumable texts or imagery to enhance your document’s readability and product growth. Choose a document style that renders your text an exciting element. 
  • Keeping the Relevant Information at the Top: Keeping information accessible to users should be your priority while creating a product document. Make sure to include everything that seems relevant from a user’s perspective. Organizing all the related information under the same subheads will make information more accessible to the users. Using the “Inverted Pyramid” model of information for categorizing will create a resourceful document in no time. The flow of information should be from the most priority to most minor priority topics.  

Consider these tips before creating a product document and see how small strategic changes can significantly improve the quality and delivery of your text. 

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

The Importance of Process Documentation

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

Technical Documentation: Best Practices

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.

Whitepaper Marketing

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

Perfecting an API Guide

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

A Developers’ Guide: A Journey Beyond Coding

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 – Simplifying User Experience

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.