atw: Re: Audience Analysis

  • From: "Michelle Hallett" <michelle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:55:54 +1100

Matt,

 

It's a good idea, though like Christine, I'm tired of being an advocate for
some of the people who call themselves technical writers. I've been
exploring other directions as well. Still I will think about it and might
ask your help in finding journals or newspapers that would publish an
article.

 

There was some discussion some years ago about a course in Melbourne
(Swinburne?). I don't know if it's still offered. For the record, I have a
BA in Communication with a major in Professional Writing but I needed to do
a Graduate Diploma in IT to get a job as a technical writer. Even then, it
took a year or two to get my first TW job. I sat on Help Desk for a while
till someone took a chance on me.

 

Michelle

 

  _____  

From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew da Silva
Sent: Saturday, 21 November 2009 2:13 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Audience Analysis

 

Michelle - Why don't some of you guys write some op-ed pieces and get them
published in the National Times or even industry journals? If you think you
have a case, and if you think that management doesn't 'get it' in terms of
the reality of having "writing skills", then you can advocate on your own
behalf. After all, a masters in media practice - which I completed - is a
year-long degree (full-time). Does any university in Australia teach tech
writing? There's a good source for apt quotes, right there.

 

Cheers,

 

Matthew da Silva   BA (Hons) MMediaPrac (Merit) Syd

p 0434 536 772 | e journo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx | w matthewdasilva.com
<http://matthewdasilva.com/>  | t twitter.com/matt_dasilva

 

From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michelle Hallett
Sent: Saturday, 21 November 2009 11:00 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Audience Analysis

 

I clearly need to look some more at Google tools (thanks for the link,
Peter). 

 

Christine, I think the corporate environment has not realized (sorry,
English US keeps reasserting itself on my Outlook) the need to collect this
data. A lot of job ads still want a writer with a background in engineering
or IT, which indicates to me that many out there think writing is still a
'transparent' skill. By this I mean that it is believed that writing is
nothing more than what we learned to do at school (and some are better at it
than others). We should be acting as advocates for writing as a professional
skill and recommending to the management that this type of data should be
collected to make the tools we produce more effective and better for the
customer. Unfortunately very few of us are high enough in the company
structure to have this kind of influence and I think many of us still think
of ourselves as primarily engineers or IT professionals. I realize I'm
straying into declarative speech here so I should emphasize that this is my
opinion.

 

Michelle

 

  _____  

From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christine Kent
Sent: Saturday, 21 November 2009 11:22 AM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Audience Analysis

 

 

Structure may not always be the answer, but looking at the usage patterns
that work is a complex issue. 

From time to time, I suggest in online docs that we set up some scripts to
check hits on various parts of the documentation set.   It'd be interesting
to see which bits get read,  which get ignored etc..   And that should
presumably inform ideas on online doc structures.    Never seem to quite get
anywhere with that one, though.

 

This is another area where the on-line world has taken off without us.  It
is routine to set something such as Google Analytics to track hits to your
pages, entry from and exit to data, etc.   This lets you review the
effectiveness (usually from a marketing or sales perspective) of each page.
You can determine how the page was found (from a Google search, from a
related web page, from a friendly link), the geographic location of the
reader, data about their technical capacity etc, how long they stayed on the
page, and whether the reader exited the page to another page on the site or
left the site altogether.  This gives you pretty much all the data you need
to determine if a particular page is serving it's stated purpose.

 

I have not worked in a corporate environment for over three years now, but I
gather, from what you are saying, that corporate has not started collecting
this data.  Does anyone work in an environment that does, and does anyone
analyse either information delivery or training from this perspective.
Interesting topic (to me).

 

Christine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-PeterM
peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I like a man who grins when he fights. - Winston Churchill 

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