TechWrite and Content Management for Small and Medium Firms

A colleague wrote to me with some questions about how TechWrite can meet the needs of its customers in the future. Here's a revised version of my thoughts in response:

As always, your thinking is clear and raises the right issues. You're right, I don't want to create a staffing agency for writers. Even if you specialize in contracts for communicators, you compete with hundreds of other agencies. A publishing company, however, competes with only a few other firms, and those firms each have their own special character. One of those prospective competitors operates efficiently and pays attention to process. Successful firms have to pay attention to that.

Anyway, I think that a we've reached a point in our technology that a publishing company - especially one that publishes online - doesn't have to sustain the overhead required for office space and all the other expenses that go along with office space. Yes, working in one place has big advantages, but you can build a publishing firm as a virtual company.

Second, I think companies need help when they put a large amount of material online. They want to be efficient about it, and they want to serve their stakeholders well. One of our colleagues consults with companies about how to manage that process, but he doesn't do the work himself. He counsels firms about how to manage the process internally. Perhaps, though, they'd like to have an outside firm coordinate and execute the process.

Third, we've all found, as we work at various firms, that they have much material stored away on their networks. A lot of it is disorganized and out of date, but whatever shape it's in, much of it is still useful. Firms would like efficient ways to use these materials to meet current requirements. It costs a lot to create things from scratch. People with our skills know how to make good use of this valuable stuff lying around.

Printed materials are going by the by very fast now. Even publishing to a CD is something you rarely see these days. With broadband connections, the most efficient way to publish is via the internet, period. Yet the processes for doing so are still in early stages of development. That's why you hear so much discussion about content management systems: we're still figuring out how to do it. A firm like TechWrite Publishing can contribute, not only to the discussion, but also by helping firms accomplish key tasks in this area.

The emphasis in the discussion so far is to help large firms manage their content. Small to medium firms need similar help: it's obvious to them even if it's not so clear how to solve those problems. A common way to solve the problem is to hire a technical writer, stick the writer in a cubicle and tell the writer to create content for the next release. That method works just well enough that this approach hasn't changed much over the years. Much more efficient is to grasp the firm's publishing needs at the outset, and integrate publishing processes with other things the firm has going on.

I truly think TechWrite Publishing can help firms in this area. Experts like us can make connections between customers' needs and communications tasks. We can put processes in place that help firms communicate effectively, without spending more than they can afford. Old processes don't change easily, though, so TechWrite needs to persuade prospective customers that they can benefit a lot from taking a more comprehensive approach to their online publishing.

I like to produce good materials, but I don't want to be the writer in a cubicle anymore. Even though I like to write, organize, analyze, outline, design, revise, publish, research, learn, improve, and do all the other things that writers do, I don't like to leave things unfinished so much. Again and again, firms run out of money before they finish a project, or they leave a project unfinished for some other reason. Money is the universal language of decision making in business, as it should be, so the reason for ending a project before it's done usually comes back to money. That doesn't have to be the case, though.

Suppose you were able to offer firms a publishing process where the value of the investment was visible more quickly? Firms don't need immediate gratification, but they do want to see what they're getting. Writers continually make the case that their work is under-valued, that they can't make their supervisors see the importance of what they do. But we're stuck there. The standard statistic in our field is, look how much we were able to reduce customer calls to the call center. A lot of firms don't have call centers, though, and those that do aren't going to shut them down because they've improved their documentation.

So we have the difficulty that arises when ideas are a little ahead of their time. How do you create something new when old ways are well established? The established way is to put a writer in a cubicle, go through the proper development and review process, then put the new content out there and hope it does the job. The old way has worked well enough, especially for print publication.

Now we have all these new ideas that can help firms efficiently organize and publish their valuable content online. If the publishing processes are efficient enough, it would mean that publication projects actually get done, rather than languish. They languish because they lack proper planning and follow-through, and they lack clear processes adapted to online publishing. Better processes would address problems of efficiency, organization, easy access to information, and the like. More publishing projects would actually be completed.

I like marketing. I like sales, too, when I'm successful at it. I know, though, that these activities are hard to do alone. In fact, it's hard to accomplish almost anything of value alone. The accomplishments of productive teams are everywhere to see. Almost everyone wants to be part of a productive team. Perhaps TechWrite can create a team that meets genuine publishing needs. These needs arise with the growth of online publishing, and of course with the development of complex technology that people want to understand quickly. TechWrite can contribute in these areas, but it can't contribute so much under the old model of a lone writer in a cubicle.

Constant Contact and Ezine Director

To a colleague who asked about online publishing services for distributing e-newsletters and other mailings:

I tried out Constant Contact back in 2002. Constant Contact puts its logo at the bottom of all messages when you’re using the free trial, of course, but I found they continued to do it even after we paid for the service. If you ask them to take it off, they do, but it took a little bit of effort.

I think others aren’t as sensitive to that kind of thing as I am, but I thought I’d let you know that logo removal is possible after the trial period. Your old newsletter had a home-grown feel, and that distinguished it positively from others. On the other hand, the list management you get from an online service saves a lot of time. (I use Ezine Director at www.ezinedirector.com).

...I do like Ezine Director, or I wouldn’t have stayed with them. It’s simple, but it requires some willingness to learn on your own, too. It doesn’t aim for the turnkey publishing model of Constant Contact. Uploading lists in Ezine Director is quite easy: a real strength.

As for templates, I moved away from Constant Contact because of their complete reliance on pre-cooked templates. That’s how it was four years ago, anyway: you could go with a very basic plain text template, or walk your way through a series of screens that took the fun out of online publishing. When I was done filling in all the blanks and checking off all the boxes, I still didn’t like the result much, and there wasn’t much I could do to make changes.

Ezine Director doesn’t offer any templates. That’s where you have to be self-reliant, and they tell you so. I’m not an HTML expert by any means, though I’ve learned a little along the way. The best method is to work with a WYSIWYG HTML editor, then paste the source HTML from the editor to Ezine Director. I used FrontPage before I started using a Mac, and that worked well enough. The Mac has raised difficulties in that area. I had to look hard to find a simple, low-priced, WYSIWYG HTML editor for the Mac. I finally settled on Nvu, which is open source and free. Nvu is available for Windows also, and you should try it out if you’re interested in an HTML editor that has a lot of features, considering that you don’t have to buy it. The website is www.nvu.com. Here’s a blurb from their home page:

“Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.”

That’s encouraging to us non-experts!

For historical interest: The simple template and colors I use for Tips & Analysis began as a more complicated Constant Contact template years ago. I’ve used the layout both for my website and for the newsletter. But I like to keep things simple, not busy, and until I used my own editor I couldn’t make the layout look the way I wanted it to look.

Nothing is ever simple, though. After great care with the template, I generated the HTML for the newsletter you just received from a Word document, knowing that you take your professional sanity in your hands when you do that. Sure enough, I paid for it in time and headaches. That was after I learned the hard way that the best way to prepare the text for a newsletter is in a plain text editor, then paste the text into a simple HTML template. Anyway, the formatting of the current newsletter turned out fine, but under the hood, the source code is a near nightmare at first glance. So much for my simple template.

Black Diamond Networks

Black Diamond Networks