"Why should I hire a technical writer? How can a technical writer benefit my business?"
Knowing the answer to these questions is crucial to develop your technical writing career. If you can show your client or employer that hiring you will have a positive impact on the business, then you will multiply your chances of success.
How can a technical writer affect a company's bottom line? Let's take a look.
1. Satisfied customers bring in more sales
The product documents you create such as user guides and manuals are part of the product. They should be detail oriented and easy to understand. User guides and manuals should make life easier for the customer.
A well-written user manual explains all the product benefits the customer can enjoy, which results in a satisfied customer. Satisfied customers lead to repeat business, referrals, and more sales.
Conversely, poorly written user guides can frustrate and confuse the customer resulting in a waste of his time. He is unlikely to buy from you in the future and will pass on this information to his family, friends, and business associates.
2. Business documents bring in contracts and projects
Well written RFPs, RFQs, and proposals can lead to new contracts, projects, and sales. As a technical writer, your job is to take costs, schedules, budgets, timelines, and scopes and create winning business documents. But what you can also do is include the benefits the reader of these documents will enjoy. This will increase the success chances of business documents.
3. Automate the customer support process
By creating customer support documents that are thorough and easy to understand, you will reduce the number of calls to the customer or tech support department. Because your documents do such a good job of explaining the process or steps to the customer, the chances of her needing any extra support are reduced.
This can result in significant cost and time savings for the client.
4. Time savings via standardization
By creating standard processes, templates, style guides and document libraries, you are saving your client time. These processes and templates can be used for future projects reducing future development time. Plus, standardization improves the business image because of the consistent use of style, language, and other communication elements.
5. Improve business efficiency and productivity
The documents you create are concise and clear. They remove confusion and create transparency. Both internal and external communication is improved. As a result, the business functions smoothly with increased productivity.
Every business must do two things consistently to thrive: boost sales and manage costs. As a technical writer, you can contribute to both these factors.
Keep the above five things in mind when looking for your next technical writing job or project. Use them when talking to prospective employers and clients. Not only will you increase your value as a technical writer, but you will also increase your chances of success.
If you can write a simple sentence in English and organize your thoughts then technical writing may be a rewarding field. You can easily make it a second income stream in your spare time.
Rabu, 22 November 2017
Selasa, 07 November 2017
Technical Writing Course - The Constant Technical Writer
Learning a skill takes time. Becoming very good at it takes even longer. To become a very good technical writer you need to:
Learn the necessary technical writing skills
Practice these skills on a daily basis to keep them sharp
It's easy to get complacent once you have settled into a good paying technical writing job. Or have developed a successful freelance technical writing business.
The daily duties and responsibilities of the job keep you occupied. Complacency sets in. And your technical writing skills are not as sharp as they used to be. This will have a negative effect on the quality of your documents and projects.
To avoid this, you must practice your technical writing skills as often as you can - ideally on a daily basis.
How to practice technical writing on a daily basis
Follow these five steps to keep your technical writing skills sharp and up to date:
Set aside time every day and call this your technical writing practice time. It could be 30 - 60 minutes. Give this time its deserved importance. Don't let emails, phone calls, friends, family and co-workers distract you.
Take a manual, process, procedure, proposal, or brochure and study it. Think about the target audience and what the writer was trying to communicate.
Next, think about how you could make it better. Is there something the writer missed? Or is there a place where you could insert some user feedback?
Rewrite it. Include anything you think might make the document more specific and/or user friendly. It may be that the original document was precise and you will not need to modify it. Or the original document may be confusing and you may have to rewrite it completely.
Do this little exercise on a regular basis.
There are three advantages of this daily exercise:
By writing everyday you will keep practicing your technical writing skills.
You will learn something new every day - about processes, products, current trends, writing styles and formats.
You can use the writing you do as writing samples and include them in your portfolio.
Besides the above exercise, you can subscribe to technical manuals and publications specific to the industry you're currently working in. And we here at TWTK will be sending you useful and relevant information every week.
Think of your technical writing skills like a set of knives. Each knife's blade must maintain its sharpness to be effective. Only then will it cut precisely.
If you can write a simple sentence in English and organize your thoughts then technical writing may be a rewarding field. You can easily make it a second income stream in your spare time.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average salary for technical writers is $60,380. Freelance technical writers can make from $30 to $70 per hour.
The field of technical writing is like a golden city. It's filled with wealth, rewards and opportunities. After learning technical writing you can branch out into business writing, marketing writing and communications writing. All of these can become additional income streams.
But to succeed you must learn how to market yourself to clients. You have to prove to them that you are an invaluable asset. That's where ProTech - Your Fast Track to Becoming a Successful Technical Writer can help. It's a technical writing course that does two equally important things:
1. It teaches you the skills to become a technical writer in the shortest time frame. You'll learn to create manuals, procedures, tutorials, processes, proposals, spec sheets and other documents that businesses need.
2. It shows you how to market yourself to clients so you can start your income stream as soon as possible.
In fact, you'll get a complete marketing toolkit which has the templates and the technical writing job sites to get started immediately!
You can download two sample lessons by clicking the link below.
This could be your chance to create a prosperous future.
Learn the necessary technical writing skills
Practice these skills on a daily basis to keep them sharp
It's easy to get complacent once you have settled into a good paying technical writing job. Or have developed a successful freelance technical writing business.
The daily duties and responsibilities of the job keep you occupied. Complacency sets in. And your technical writing skills are not as sharp as they used to be. This will have a negative effect on the quality of your documents and projects.
To avoid this, you must practice your technical writing skills as often as you can - ideally on a daily basis.
How to practice technical writing on a daily basis
Follow these five steps to keep your technical writing skills sharp and up to date:
Set aside time every day and call this your technical writing practice time. It could be 30 - 60 minutes. Give this time its deserved importance. Don't let emails, phone calls, friends, family and co-workers distract you.
Take a manual, process, procedure, proposal, or brochure and study it. Think about the target audience and what the writer was trying to communicate.
Next, think about how you could make it better. Is there something the writer missed? Or is there a place where you could insert some user feedback?
Rewrite it. Include anything you think might make the document more specific and/or user friendly. It may be that the original document was precise and you will not need to modify it. Or the original document may be confusing and you may have to rewrite it completely.
Do this little exercise on a regular basis.
There are three advantages of this daily exercise:
By writing everyday you will keep practicing your technical writing skills.
You will learn something new every day - about processes, products, current trends, writing styles and formats.
You can use the writing you do as writing samples and include them in your portfolio.
Besides the above exercise, you can subscribe to technical manuals and publications specific to the industry you're currently working in. And we here at TWTK will be sending you useful and relevant information every week.
Think of your technical writing skills like a set of knives. Each knife's blade must maintain its sharpness to be effective. Only then will it cut precisely.
If you can write a simple sentence in English and organize your thoughts then technical writing may be a rewarding field. You can easily make it a second income stream in your spare time.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average salary for technical writers is $60,380. Freelance technical writers can make from $30 to $70 per hour.
The field of technical writing is like a golden city. It's filled with wealth, rewards and opportunities. After learning technical writing you can branch out into business writing, marketing writing and communications writing. All of these can become additional income streams.
But to succeed you must learn how to market yourself to clients. You have to prove to them that you are an invaluable asset. That's where ProTech - Your Fast Track to Becoming a Successful Technical Writer can help. It's a technical writing course that does two equally important things:
1. It teaches you the skills to become a technical writer in the shortest time frame. You'll learn to create manuals, procedures, tutorials, processes, proposals, spec sheets and other documents that businesses need.
2. It shows you how to market yourself to clients so you can start your income stream as soon as possible.
In fact, you'll get a complete marketing toolkit which has the templates and the technical writing job sites to get started immediately!
You can download two sample lessons by clicking the link below.
This could be your chance to create a prosperous future.
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