Category: Technical Communication

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.

 

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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.

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Case Study
case study, Communication, investor pitch, marketing collateral, Technical Communication

Case Study – Marketer’s Magical Tool

Nov 28, 2021 by mindivik 0 Comments

Case Study - Marketers' Magical Tool

A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It goes beyond stoic persuasive marketing/sales pitches and provides real business scenarios to prospective customers about your company’s past accolades.

Mindivik - Content writing company

By ANWESH KOLEY

What’s a Case Study?

You have managed to create brand recognition for your product or service in your target market. What next? Would you rather continue with your tried and tested marketing and brand building initiatives, or let your potential customers hear it from your satisfied partners about your unique propositions? Enter the world of case studies.

A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It goes beyond stoic persuasive marketing/sales pitches and provides real business scenarios to prospective customers about your company’s past accolades. It includes a beginning — often discussing a conflict, an explanation of what happened next, and a resolution that explains how the company solved or improved on something.

There are myriad ways to use case studies in your marketing strategy. From featuring them on your website to including them on a sales presentation, a case study is a strong, persuasive tool that shows customers why they should work with you — straight from another customer.

Why do we need one?

A case study proves how your product has helped other companies by demonstrating real-life results. Not just that, case studies essentially contain quotes by the customer. This renders it more powerful than a standard marketing advertisement where you praise your own product.

Rather, other companies are praising your company — and there’s no stronger marketing material than a verbal recommendation or testimonial. A great case study is also filled with research and stats to back up points made about a project’s results.

Over the years, companies have realized that there’s no better way to generate more leads than by providing case studies. The need here would be relevant case study examples to draw inspiration from. Without these, it can be difficult to write impactful studies that convince visitors to submit a form.

Case studies clearly show the value proposition of each product and also demonstrate how each company benefited in both the short and long term using quantitative data. You get to hear encouraging statements, such as, “This Company helped us a lot!” along with stakeholders seeing the actual change within the firm through numbers and figures.

“When done right, case studies can create a major “wow factor”. Highlighting specific, tangible results achieved for clients or customers can have the effect of breaking through the competitive clutter and capturing a user’s attention.”

Case Studies: Your Marketing Partner

 

Creating brand value and trust

Brands do a lot of work convincing potential customers of their trustworthiness, but ultimately customers know when they’re being sold to. Good case studies hero the client and his or her direct experience. This helps build brand trust because your consumers value the opinions of their peers over the sales messages of businesses.

A Tangible proof of Success

Customer trust and visible proof are closely related because it is an integral component of building long-term trust. In the current business scenario, companies strive to create as much social visibility as possible. They want to know something’s good before betting their time and money on your product or service. Case studies are a mechanism to create social proof for a brand.

Providing the wow factor

When done right, case studies can create a major “wow factor”. Highlighting specific, tangible results achieved for clients or customers can have the effect of breaking through the competitive clutter and capturing a user’s attention.

A Storytelling Opportunity

Businesses today are well aware about the power of storytelling. It helps brands develop a deeper, more meaningful connection with their audiences. Case studies are great examples of storytelling. You can use them to tell engaging and persuasive stories about the meaningful impact your brand has had on your customers.

A Unique Bouquet of Tailor-made Content

Case Studies effectively allow you to create a knowledge arena, which is unique to your company. Digital marketing runs on content and on the most basic level, case studies are fuel to power the content machine.

More importantly however, the case studies created by your company are entirely unique and specific to you. They can’t be replicated elsewhere or imitated by competitors and that’s the most valuable form of content possible.

Using a Case Study to your Advantage

Write a Blog

Once you publish a case study, the next logical step would be to write a blog post about it to expose your audience to it. The idea is to write about the case study in a way that identifies with your audience’s needs. To make this more emphatic, you might write about a specific hurdle, issue, or challenge the company overcame.

Once done, use that company’s case study to illustrate how the issues were addressed. It’s important not to center the blog post on your company, product, or service – instead, the key highlight should be the customer’s challenges and how you enabled them to overcome these, thereby creating a success story.

Create a Video

Adding credibility to your case studies would be supplementary videos, which create a stronger impact. The ever-expanding reach of the internet ensures that your case studies reach the right TG at the most opportune time.

Potential customers might be more inclined to watch a video than they are to read a lengthy case study. If your budget and resources permit, go ahead and create videos of your case studies. It will become a really powerful way to communicate your unique offerings.

Have it up on Social Media

Of course, do not forget to share your case studies across all major social media platforms. There’s nothing like using these avenues to showcase your potential and generate leads faster than expected!

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Communication, Technical Communication

Technical Documentation: An Important Customer-Connect Tool

Nov 26, 2021 by mindivik 0 Comments #tech pubs, #technical documentation, #technical publications, #technical writing, #writing

Technical Documentation: An Important Customer-Connect Tool

By Anwesh Koley

The importance of Technical Documentation

Technical documentation has become a crucial asset for any organization. It allows both your staff and your customers to work autonomously and feel in control of their product. Essentially, a well-researched document helps users achieve their goals using a product, makes the conquest of space possible and saves lives.

It helps your staff do their job more efficiently, reducing the time needed and improving quality of service. It provides employees with a constant and up-to-date knowledge bank that they can easily refer to, thereby reducing the training time and costs and their dependency on each other.

The major reasons why companies today create technical documentation are quite evident. It helps reduce frequent customer tickets, thereby reducing customer service expenses. Also, it helps support teams solve customer queries effectively.

So, the main purpose of technical documentation is to help users achieve their goal using the product. It can be in the form of a printed or online manual, video, and the like.

Enhancing Project Life

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

  • Process articulation
  • Thought process integration across verticals
  • Clear reference point for all team members

In addition to internal documentation, end user documentation helps customers have a positive experience while using a product. A lot can be achieved by educating the customer appropriately with the following materials:

  • Easily accessible user guides
  • Well-researched training materials
  • Troubleshooting manuals
  • On-demand online help

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.

This makes them less dependent on your support staff for help for every minor issue faced. This can reduce calls to technical support lines, and therefore greatly cut down your staffing costs.

We can thus safely say that product documentation is an indispensable aid to learning. Your staff or customers can refer to them long after the training session is over. Providing maximum clarity to customers at minimum effort is the main aim of a successful technical document.

Without consistent, concise, and clear documentation, a potential customer is much less likely to have confidence in the product or want to put in the time and effort to learn how to use it.

A Marketing Asset

Today’s customer knows full well the difference between a product or service-oriented technical document, and a cleverly masked marketing initiative. Not only that, the current digital expansion has left little scope for pure marketing pitches, which do little to answer 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. This in turn helps them to set up the product faster and use it with perfection. This results in higher customer satisfaction levels, coupled with more positive reviews. Needless to say, higher sales numbers are guaranteed.

How to Deliver the Best Technical Documentation

Identify Your Audience

Learning about your audience is very important to identify, if your documentation is aimed at developers, employees, users, and other similar stakeholders. This helps users understand the background, goals, and knowledge of the product or technology. Similarly, it helps you customize your document as per customer needs and changes as and when they crop up.

Create an Outline

A technical documentation warrants the need for an initial structured outline. Without this in place, generating seamless content can be challenging. An initial skeleton is a must, around which your documentation revolves. A smart mix of headlines, categories, sub-categories, and topics can greatly help in organizing and structuring your documents methodically.

Ensure Crisp, 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 at your end that your understanding of how the product/service works is reflected in your draft. Displaying your linguistic prowess will be of no use, if an existing/prospective customer isn’t able to comprehend the process or his queries are not answered.

Always remember: your customers are not you. The ability of a technical document to explain a simple/complex procedure to a wide spectrum of users determines its success. Make sure the applicability of the technical document takes precedence over other prerequisites.

Use Attractive Graphics and Illustrations

Supplementing your text with the right illustration, picture or diagram adds authenticity to your document. These tools provide directions on using a product or technology beyond textual representation.

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

Safety Precautions

Technical documents often contain steps, which require users to share confidential data. Your aim should be to address such challenges early on. Many directions or pointers redirect users to information sharing platforms. You must conduct a safety test at your end and ensure such a task ‘always’ redirects a user to a credible platform, without any margin for error.

The main purpose of technical documentation is to help users achieve their goal using the product. It can be in the form of a printed or online manual, video, and the like.

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