@mattrsullivan | www.techcommtools.com
T E C H C O M M T O O L S
H T T P : / / B I T. LY / M AT T S - E M A I L- L I S T
Matt Sullivan
Focus on the topic: Writing better content, faster
Headshot optional
Thank you to:
UWT Joe Welinske/WritersUA Adobe Systems and you!
Words and Video…Better Together
-Allie Proff
Silos don’t work together
-Misty Weaver
Responsive is great…
now write to the medium
-Joe Welinske
It’s like technical poetry,
not technical communication
-Joan Wendt
What do you do when the President/CEO of your favorite client is dead-wrong?
Background
Software as a Service (SaaS) organization with lots of content- Online help/Policies and Procedures- User manuals- Tech support- Sales collateral- Internal customer education department
So the president turns
to me and says…
We need a bunch of 8-minute videos to help
train our clients
No, you don’t. And I
show him this:
Which, (quite
obviously) is this:
Their recent web overhaul was their Hula Hoop
Needles front page goes here
Question 1: Does this
need to be documente
d?
Name Field : Enter your name in the Name field
Question 2: What’s the appropriate
medium?
Words > Video Words < Video Interactive?
Question 3: Where is
the logical break for
reuse?
Stringing topics together
BAD
What content is
already available?
2.0 (nearly always) > 1.0*
*Except for SNL-based comedies
Help system revamped- Stripped over 1000 tables out of
previous project via REG EX (Regular Expressions)
- Chunked topics appropriately Grabbed help, marketing, tech support content and used to rank importance of video topics Established script and recording standards with client, resulting in smooth transition from internal resources to me
Net Result
I worked my way out of a
job!
But most importantly
for the client…
mattrsullivan.com http://bit.ly/matts-email-list [email protected] mattrsullivan
- Twitter- Facebook- LinkedIn- Just about everything else
Contact info
Tomorrow 3:30, Creating Reusable Screencasts Join the Tech Comm Tools community
- Free offers a few times a month Problem Solving
- Mattrsullivan.youcanbook.me Live training, live online, and blended learning courses on
- FrameMaker- RoboHelp- Captivate- Screencasting
Where to go from here