The average human is fairly capable of understanding new concepts and ideas. However, in a group, we have been known to exhibit a preference for familiarity and unwillingness to change. This is not necessarily about crowd behavior or as the Plebs would say – mob mentality. Rather, this is an outcome of conformity, a phenomenon best described as a situation where individuals tend to agree with the majority opinion whether they agree with it or not.
It is a commonly held idea that technical writing is meant only to simplify complex concepts. But this is just one of the goals of technical marketing content. This form of technical writing requires communicating complex information to the reader so they may understand how to accomplish some task or goal. Such content is particularly important for IT companies and software developers. There is greater access to computers or smartphones. More importantly, advances like IoT, smart homes, smart cars, and other forms of technology integration have meant that more users need to learn and familiarise themselves with concepts that were considered too advanced merely a few years ago.
IT companies seem to have a perennial need for technical content writing services. Technical knowledge rarely translates into the ability to explain needs and features, which is crucial if you want to generate business leads. Technical content writers, on the other hand, can assimilate the information and present the same in a lucid, easy-to-understand style, delivering quality content for tech companies to use as promotional content or instructional material. The two most common examples of each are a product webpage and installation instructions, respectively. Consequently, the job of technical writing often incorporates related disciplines like design and is usually done by a team of people rather than a single individual.
Remember the last time
Yet, even the best can sometimes be just a little off from perfect. As a business owner or product developer, you need to understand that content creators can only do so much. Remember the last time you assembled something from Ikea? Did you read the instruction manual before you started to assemble everything or was it after you could not get it to stand up? Technical writing needs to account for the common human habit of avoiding instructions until it is too late. Your users will need a way to locate their mistake and rectify it instead of starting over. While a large part of this comes from product design, dividing the instructions into sets or stages is the most common and effective solution. This seems painfully obvious but it is not as intuitive to execute. Worse, incorrect staging of the instructions may have disastrous consequences. Product developers are not always the best at gauging these divisions since familiarity with their product and an intuitive understanding of design may lead them to overlook simple but crucial steps. The technical content writer usually makes the call here and their experience does come into play when determining when and how to make the splits.
Printed instruction manuals and research reports are important categories of technical writing but online content like product pages and troubleshooting guides make up the bulk of the technical content you are likely to encounter. Thus, a technical content writing service needs to be able to discern which points to cover and what to exclude. Non-essential details serve no purpose on a product page while extraneous information in a set of FAQs or guides will likely confuse the reader.
The goals of technical content creation thus involve a writing style that has some clear characteristics. Whether you are a business owner, a digital marketer, or a content writer aspiring to be a technical content developer, the following pointers should serve as a starting point for technical content writing.
Focus on Simplicity and Accuracy
Technical content writing services work to simplify things. Therefore, it is important to focus on accuracy, clarity, and efficiency. Frame clear, concise, and unambiguous sentences. Clear “wording and phrasing” are also equally important. Technical content writers must get their grammar and punctuation correct to ensure logical progress and legibility of their content.
Know Your Audience
It is extremely important to know the target audience you are writing for. Consider the expected technical and product knowledge of the users, analyse the language patterns and creativity skills of the users before you move on to write or develop the content. You will have to make some safe assumptions. An emphasis on the organisation is crucial when creating technical content.
Highlight Hazards
Watch out for things that need special attention. There are almost always certain sections that require the user to follow specific steps. Common and expected mistakes could do with some highlighting so that the users know what to look out for and how to avoid errors. Figure out the pain points and high-risk steps, and then use appropriate means to specify the potential hazard. As a technical content writer, one must know how to discover hidden hazards in a scenario. Furthermore, writers must be able to rank the mechanisms to differentiate between the types of severities. This requires communicating with the product developers and a detailed understanding of the product and the platform, in the case of software products.
Consistency is Important
Consistency is important for any kind of content, but while you can get away with deviations with generic content, there is little to no room to maneuver in technical writing. For instance, when you are writing about the same thing for three different sections, curb your creativity and ensure it is consistent instead. This is what makes SEO for technical content a challenge, as you have to find the optimal balance between consistency and creativity to ensure the content is original. This is not a problem for printed manuals or troubleshooting guides where fixed terminology supersedes originality. Other content like product pages can be treated like any other marketing content to some extent, depending on the factors mentioned earlier. In general, take care of technical terminology and instructions or steps. This is even more crucial for localisation of technical content, where you will need to ensure technical details, particularly important ones, are not lost in translation.
