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Bernard Aschwanden
www.publ ishingsmarter.com
bernard@publ ishingsmarter.com
Audience focused delivery
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@publishsmarter
Overall Objectives
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It's all about the audience.
Discussions abound about the informed consumer,
audience metrics, and personas, but how do you
actually organize and create content geared to
multiple audiences?
Learn tips and techniques for planning, writing, and
publishing which help you deliver the right
information, to the right audience, in the right format,
at the right time, and let them make the right
decisions.
Housekeeping and note taking
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A/V concerns: Turn off other
apps that hog bandwidth
Not all slides or topics are
equally weighted
Use some, discard others
Slides speed varies
(reference)
Questions? Ask along the
way!
I’d love to claim errors/typos
is on purpose… they isn’t,
ain’t, and weren’t never;
however, I’ll fix ‘em as I
About your speaker
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Publishing Smarter: President
Content strategist, publishing technologies expert, author, and geek-enough
Certified Technical Trainer
DITA
Content management
Topic-based writing
Society for Technical Communication
Past President
STC Associate Fellow
Solving business problems through communication
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We help clients: By helping clients:
Standard disclaimer
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In the interest of brevity I
will make some blanket
statements to keep it
simple
It’s not all 100% “the truth”,
but I’ll stay close
Purists may complain
And they are wrong!
(except when they are right)
These slides are to guide
you, not to write rules in
stone
Thinking about your user
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A few easy steps
What do differing audiences want?
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Tailored content
Not “the complete dummies guide to using a Windows or
Macintosh or Linux system from novice to expert and
covering what a mouse is as well as how to configure server
blades as a PDC or BDC for web hosting”
Instead, they want to get content that is specific
To their product
To their platform
To their abilities
Actually, they don’t want that at all. What they want
is…
They want you to get rid of the problem
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Stuff to work
Stop writing content, start to solve the problem
If you TRULY want to deliver what the audience
wants, focus on reducing their need for
documentation
If you can’t reduce their need for it, reduce the volume
If you must deliver to many audiences at once, give
them as little content as possible, as focused as
possible
Document review
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Start by reading your content
ID what can go away, and do so early
The less to review and clean up in detail, the better
Why write product specific content at all?
If I am reading “Microsoft Word 2020 for Windows 10 User
Guide” I don’t need to see “You can save a file in Microsoft
Word 2020 for Windows 10” as a sentence.
I defy you to tell me what software the following slide
is documenting!
Print (for every software tool, ever)
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Searched Google for ‘how to print word’
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Got this as the first hit... (ARGH)
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https://support.office.com/en-ca/article/Printing-and-print-preview-1c15515c-98b5-4421-baa9-68b7a870398a
Includes a video on how to print, plus Access
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Excel, OneNote, and Outlook
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PowerPoint and Project
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Publisher, Visio
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And finally, Word... (oh, go somewhere else)
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And once there, I can scroll down
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And continue to scroll down
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I got annoyed MAKING these slides
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Here it is. Finally.
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What I finally foundWhat I suggest about a day
ago
Follow these steps to print a document.
1. Click the File tab, and then click Print.TIP To go back to your document and make changes before you print it, click the File tab.
2. The properties for your default printer automatically appear in the first section. When the properties for your printer and document appear the way that you want them to, click Print to print the document.NOTE To change the properties for your printer, under the printer name, click Printer Properties.
Print content
Prerequisite: Ensure a file is open, a printer configured, and that you have a martini ready!
1. Select File > Print.Specify options, if required.
2. Click Print.
It’s that easy. Now have a martini.
Let’s compare approaches and content
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And the sad thing is...
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Every. Single. Screen. Was. The. Same. Info
Or at least, it could have been
Even that wasn’t the case: Access: 1. Click the File tab, and then click Print.
ExcelFor information about previewing and printing in Excel, see:
Preview worksheet pages before printing
Print a worksheet or workbook
OneNote: 1. Click the File tab, and then click Print.
Most others follow that standard.
In most: 2. When the properties for your printer and document appear the way that you want them to, click Print.
Is i t the tools we use?
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What is the solution?
One part is the tools we use
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Tools are part of the problem, but a small part
The biggest issues are: Legacy: But we always wrote it that way. (Um, we also “always” did
…)
People: They think they know what your users want. They don’t. At least, not if there isn’t research.
So, before we get to anything with software, deal with history and the people in the organization
Review the past, learn from it
Attend conferences or webinars, learn from them
Talk to users, learn from them
Watch how people (users, partners, competitors) do things, and learn from them
Paragraph design
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When publishing to online outputs, you can drop entire paragraph types, so organize information well Step
StepInfo
StepExample
StepResult
Don’t write this: Select File > Print, and in the dialog box that appears, specify options, if required, and then click Print. It’s that easy. Now have a martini.
Break content into logical components Easier to find
Easier to update (look/feel)
Easier to publish
Yes, you can do a lot of this in Microsoft Word as well!
Conditional content
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Use conditional text for Comments
Watermarks
Revision tracking (compare docs)
Set up conditions Avoid overlapping if possible, but is supported
If using FrameMaker and structure Manage conditions using elements, attributes and values
Automatically apply conditions to content
DITA also uses attributes and ditaval files
Microsoft Word and conditions… Not so much!
Variables
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Yes, it’s cool to be able to swap out the product
name
Or the audience, or even the platform
Now that we know it’s cool, avoid it
You are using a tool really, really well when you do
this, but solving a problem that simply should go
away
Longer term considerat ions
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Working with multiple
documents
Text insets
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Repeated phrases
Simple content in headers or footers
Consider format choices when importing
Develop multiple text flows in a single document to store repeated phrases
If using DITA: Review the use of conref
Books
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Consider using books and sharing files, or reusing topics (DITA?)
Add or remove entire chapters as required
Change numbering appearance from book
Generate files from a book on an “as needed” basis for specific purposes
Build generated files, then rename them to Table of Contents.fm or to Index.fm or to List of Figures.fm and so on avoids names being based on book (i.e. Book is Europe.book so
there are EuropeTOC.fm, EuropeIX.fm and so on)
books can not be renamed if defaults are used without renaming generated files
Create “super books” that contain all your files
Let ’s see a sample of some of the
ideas
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Deliver the goods
Organize and create content for your
audiences
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Plan Identify what you need to write in the first place
Once you know what you truly need, you likely write less
The audience will appreciate it
Form a content strategy, perform content analysis, get professional templates, and use the tools to their full potential
Write Create only the parts you identified in the plan (and get sign-offs in
writing)
Consider topic-based (task/concept/reference) to focus the writing
Let the SME contribute, the manager deal with issues, and technical communicators deal with content (all types of content)
Publish Deliver the right information, to the right audience, in the right format,
at the right time, and let them make the right decisions
Want to see something REALLY cool?
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This is a very basic, normal FrameMaker file
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It has minimal format; all “out of the box”
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What have I done so far?
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Written text
Assigned paragraph tags
Title, Heading1, Heading2,
Body, Numbered1,
Numbered, Indented
Assigned character tags
Emphasis
Added some graphics
(screen shots, pasted right into
FrameMaker... Yes, I know,
should be referenced)
For the purpose of the
slides I reduced them (to fit
better)
For publish I’m using
fullsize
Added some index
entries, all very basic stuff
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Now let’s see where we can go beyond
“default”
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First, I’ll publish it “as is”
File > Publish
Going to create
Responsive HTML5
output only
Review the output
Then I’ll mock up a better
solution to this thing
Create some conditions
Word
Excel
PowerPoint
Apply them, and publish
the defaults
Apply them, and publish
using Dynamic Content
Filter (which, if I may say,
is TOTALLY AWESOME!)
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What we did, and what is next
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Conclusion and contact
Recap of the session
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It's all about the audience.
Discussions abound about the informed consumer,
audience metrics, and personas, but how do you
actually organize and create content geared to
multiple audiences?
Learn tips and techniques for planning, writing, and
publishing which help you deliver the right
information, to the right audience, in the right format,
at the right time, and let them make the right
decisions.
Personalized demo with YOUR content?
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905 833 8448 (Eastern Time)
bernard@publishingsmarter.com
www.linkedin.com/in/bernardaschwanden
@publishsmarter –or– @aschwanden4stc
www.publishingsmarter.com
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