Concerning Corporate Keyword Phrases

Layoffs are at an all time high. How do you know if your job is in jeopardy? It is difficult to tell for sure, but we have collected a few phrases from employees and freelancers that may be of interest to you.

 

Here are a few phrases you really don’t want to hear.

 

• Your department should be immune to the layoffs
• We want you to bring Sayeed up to speed
• You got a minute?
• We are concerned….
• Stop by my office before you leave today and make sure you bring your coat
• There is nothing to worry about; you will not be affected by the buyout
• Salary reviews will be postponed this year
• Bonuses have been rescinded
• Furlough
• There’s no truth to the CFO being indicted
• Please report to HR ASAP

If you have a phrase you would like to share with us, please do.

 

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Insourcing and Jobs in America

The big news on July 3, 2008 was 62,000 jobs lost. This has sparked several discussions on-line and we would like to add our two cents.

 

We will deal with this issue using the alternate definition of the word insourcing, since in theory, everything is possible. Since we are currently in America, this term will refer to transferring jobs to local contractors and facilities that are physically located in the United States of America.

 

This is an election year, and there is talk from both candidates about putting America back to work. Each candidate states their commitment to this but maybe small businesses can lead the charge for their respective industries. With supportive government policies, that are enforced, the number of jobs located in America just might increase.

 

For example, since free trade isn’t always fair trade, how about having product documentation targeted at the American consumer, written in America? Our company has rewritten product guides that were originally written in a country where English was not the first language. It turned out that outsourcing wasn’t appropriate in this case. In short, they had to pay to have the same work done twice. Where is the savings here? We don’t see any and neither do our clients.

 

Supporting policies and infrastructure may assist in avoiding issues like this and promote a win-win for both the corporate bottom line and the American worker. But this is just a theory, and in theory, everything is possible!

 

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Are you making the most of Single Sourcing?

Take your online help documentation and your user manuals to the next level!

 

Save time and money doing it the right way. Using Microsoft and Adobe software for documentation development and implementing effective technical communicator standards wasted time and money can be eliminated from documentation projects.

 

Why keep spending the extra money, when you don’t have to?

 

We have remote technical writers available to make this one time transition for you, so you can start saving money, today!

 

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Systems and Business Process Writing

Documentation is required for a company to move forward in the development of critical systems and business processes. RUP, UML and SDLC can all come into play here for larger projects so it is good to have a solid analytical and proven methodology for providing quality systems and business documents.

Corporations invest time and money to learn these methodologies and sometimes the benefits and monetary gains are intangible.

Let us say you have a team with expertise in the critical systems and business processes. Their knowledge of the critical systems and processes are accurate and exceeds expectations. The team’s technology skills consist of word processing, spreadsheets and some graphic illustration. From the technical communicator’s point of view, this may very well be a team of SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). The technical communicator with graphic illustration and writing skills can meet with your SMEs and start producing system and business process diagrams after each meeting is completed.

But let us take a closer look at your team. Do they have the time to produce the diagrams? Is there an easy to learn graphics illustration package in-house that a team member can use to illustrate and document the critical paths? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then this may be a technical communicator project that you can do in-house. If the answer is no, consider a freelance writer to document your critical systems and business path, using the SMEs with a clear understanding of the critical paths.

Clients allocate months for projects that may only need a few weeks if enough thought is put into constructing a documentation solution for a project.

Save time and money by looking at all of your options first.

Sometimes the answers are right in front of your nose!

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Freelance Web Design

Technical communication and writing includes a variety of skills. The basic approach of most technical writers is to add to their skills in a manner that is suitable to their career development.

 

Our technical writers have a liberal arts education (art and photography) as well as application and web programming experience. Therefore, it has been easy for them to add web skills to their training curriculum.

 

JavaScript, Dreamweaver, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), Flash, Illustrator, Photoshop, Fireworks, InDesign, Microsoft Office, VISIO, and more.

 

To date, we have been contacted for freelance web design as well as writing a variety of business manuals (on-line help and print) for the company website and personnel. This has been a very interesting experience since old documents and sketches become on-line help or PDF down-loadable documents from their website. The business analysis skills used for technical system and application development are useful for analyzing and organizing the new documents our clients are developing.

 

The old and the new are coming together to build a tomorrow, on the Internet, for many companies.

Writing for Business

Analysis related to business writing has evolved through many phases. When looking for freelancers capable of this kind of analysis don’t forget that SDLC (Systems Development Life Cycle) is very similar to UML (Unified Modeling Language) and RUP (Rational Unified Process).

 

If the writer you have chosen has written for SDLC projects they may be worth considering for your business writing projects that require business analysis.

 

Remember, there are also similarities between business writing, technical writing and copywriting so don’t reduce your chances of finding an economical business writer by limiting your choices too much.

Email Campaigns, Social Media and Technical Communicators

How is social media impacting technical communicator email campaigns?  Well, things are changing and there is never a dull moment. We are finding that there is an increase in advertising email campaigns moving to the internet and now there are discussions about including social media environments.

 

It is our understanding that advertising email campaigns on the internet is a lower cost advertising solution, thus a good choice in this economic environment.

 

From the perspective of content writing, we are noticing that newspaper and magazine advertising has reduced but internet and social media advertising has not been used effectively in many cases.

 

Our work with email campaigns has shown us that many companies do not know how to effectively implement these campaigns for reasons such as deadlines, cost, poor designs, and lack of web skills.

 

In addition, there are discussions about how social media will be impacting technical communicators, advertisers, and others, so this is definitely something to be watched.

Technical Communicators and the Wiki

Introducing new ways to organize the way companies communicate is a good thing. Companies are slowly beginning to look at public and private wiki applications that foster creativity and problem resolution.

 

The wiki moderator can invite the appropriate departments needed to reach solutions. In addition, vendors and contractors can be invited to the wiki to perform specific tasks for a specified duration. Security for some wikis can be applied to enable and disable access to complete tasks.

 

The wiki is a tool of innovation that companies are experimenting with to make ideas come to life, and then to market. It is our understanding this project began as a private wiki discussion and here is one result.

 

Cisco Wiki Innovation Video 

 

What ideas can your company come up with?