the communications manager's toolbox
Post on 14-Apr-2017
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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
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
Tools for Communications’ Manager
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
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?
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
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
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
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
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
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
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
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
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
@Speaker Hashtag @LavaCon
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
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