The Communications Manager’s Toolbox

Eeshita Grover

About the Speaker

Eeshita Grover is an experienced professional of 18+ years with a career equally divided across writing, teaching, and leading content creation and delivery teams. Eeshita has been with Cisco for the past 10 years building and driving innovative content strategies for cutting edge products with an emphasis on delivery for the web, mobile web, and video. Eeshita has led content design using DITA for the various content types and their presentation for ease of use. Her passion lies in driving teams to innovative goals and evolving mindsets.

Tools for Communications’ Manager

Vision, Strategy, and Metrics

Rate of Adoption – Role of Content

Innovation and Content

Team Brand and Presence

Holistic Team – More than writers

Performance and Feedback

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Tools for Communications’ Manager

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Vision •  Aspirational description of what

an organization intends to accomplish in the mid-term or long-term future. Serves as a clear guide for choosing current and future courses of action. From Business Dictionary

Strategy • A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem. From Business Dictionary

Metrics • Standards of measurement by which efficiency, performance, progress, or quality of a plan, process, or product can be assessed. From Business Dictionary

Vision and Strategy

Why? • Goal setting for the next 3-5 years • Defining a content strategy

How? • Product Roadmaps – provide product

direction •  Industry Trends – market and industry shifts • Market Share • Competitors – How are they doing content?

How can we do that and better?

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Metrics

Why? • Decisions are data driven • Success is measured in numbers

How? • Customer outreach – opinion about the

users’ content experience • Share-ability – how many times was the

content shared? • Likes • Number of Comments

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The Connection

Vision

• Roadmap •  Industry trends • Competitors • Market share • Customer Outreach

Strategy

• Authoring • Publishing • Content Management –

Information Architecture, Reuse, Metadata and Taxonomies

• Localization

Metrics

• Customer feedback and satisfaction

• Social Media – mentions, share-ability numbers

• SEO results • Web Analytics

Rate of Adoption

Why? • Establish deep rooted relationships with the

cross-functional product teams • Content is integral to the product

• Critical to product success – used as a pre- and post-sales tool

• Cannot be an after thought

How? • Define a content roadmap • Establish direct communication with users and

support personnel • Partner with other product content creators • Understand the power of omni channel

content delivery – video, mobile, in-product

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The following data was presented in a webinar hosted by SDL and Acrolinx:

Documentation as a Sales Tool

Content Roadmap

Launch/New Product

• Learning and Training

• Emphasis on Getting Started

• Use cases and Work flows

• Higher involvement from product/customer support

Growth and Expansion

• Learning and Training

• Emphasis on more complex features and advanced functionality

• Troubleshooting – Transition to make the users independent

End of Support/Life

• Minimal product information

• Basic information/content to cover the last version available in the field

• Legal information

Innovation and Content

Why? Content management and marketing, using content as a sales tool, pre-sales and post-sales – Getting to the next level Content professionals have a lot to learn: SEO, techniques and tools for making content readily available, on demand – Key motivation factor Exploiting the power of content, power of component management, new products and technologies, new content platforms (social media, search engines, new form factors) – Grow skillsets

How? • Thinking outside the box – cliché? NOT really. •  If you don’t think it, someone else will

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A Holistic Team

Communications Team

Web Skills – Design delivery of the content by exploiting available platforms e.g. mobile,

video, blogs, wikis etc.

Content Strategy - Provide content experience

(authoring and presentation) based on the nature of the product and

technology

Tools Proficiency

Information Architecture

Technology Expertise - Enable content directed to

simplifying the product understanding for the user

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Your Brand

Extending your services to adjacent teams, when

possible

Impressing the value of content on your internal

consumers

Content is powerful – explain and emphasize to product development, QA, and marketing

Content creates impressions and perspectives about products

Understand and use the span of influence of

Communications

What did you build? – architecture for an in-product content model or a killer

instructional video

Did you see success? – Likes within the first few hours or are

some more improvements needed to the page layout for

responsive delivery

Sharing successes and innovations within your

span of influence

Build your Brand

Is ‘content’ in the product support category or is content ‘the’ product?

Performance Defining criteria and expectations for content professionals •  Build from your vision and strategy - For example,

–  All conceptual content should be delivered in video on YouTube. –  Video – in-person, animation, or screen captures –  Defining the tools for creation, platform for publishing –  Structured content and reuse

•  Encourage the team to connect the dots. For example, –  Understanding the audience – demographics, age group, commonly used

platforms, etc. –  Technology trends – open source leads to more API content

•  Content experts vs. product experts •  Coaching and Mentoring •  Providing career path support to a team with diverse skills