Motivating SMEs (even though you can’t fire them!)

In the valiant pursuit of providing excellent product help and other documents, just about every technical communicator out there works with subject matter experts (SMEs). Talking to experts is a normal part of the research for writing a technical document. SMEs are an invaluable resource, but can be challenging to work with sometimes. After all, whatever makes them experts in the first place has the potential to also make them:

• Very busy and hard to get in contact with
• Frustrated with people who don’t already understand the subject matter
• Downright arrogant

My own favorite SME quotes come from back when I was in college. I wrote technical manuals for a high-energy physics lab on campus. Once, after reading my first draft of a document about a piece of machinery in the lab, my supervisor told me, “It’s clear you don’t understand this at all.” That was harsh, but not really rude (and certainly not untrue). It was another time, when a grad student said to me, “I can’t understand why you’re having trouble with this; it’s trivial” that I really got to experience that I’m-too-smart-and-busy-to-bother-with-insects-like-you attitude that some technical writers deal with every day.

Fortunately, there are approaches that you, the technical communicator, can take into your interactions with SMEs to encourage responsiveness and respectfulness, even though you probably don’t have any actual authority over your SMEs.

Prerequisite: be a writer SMEs want to work with

Before you can start pulling the levers of motivating your SMEs, there are a few things you need to do to prepare yourself.
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A Conversation with Corey Ganser: TechWhirl Interview at LavaCon

Conditional Formatting and Single Sourcing

Recently I read a discussion thread at a LinkedIn Tech Comm group in which Aaron, my CEO, claimed MindTouch didn’t support single sourcing. He was promptly contradicted by a MindTouch customer, Amanda Cross of ExactTarget, and prominent Tech Comm leader who just kicked off a guest blog series here at the MindTouch blog. Later on another MindTouch customer from EMC echoed Amanda’s call that they too use MindTouch for single sourcing.

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Content in Context: Content is the Tie that Binds Us

It’s time for a little quiz. I’m going to run 5 terms by you quickly, you have to tell me what they mean. Ready?

1. “customer experience”
2. “social business”
3. “content is king”
4. “customer is king”
5. “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”

How did you do? Not so great I bet. If you are a business trying to sell your product or service, you probably don’t really care about all these terms marketers are throwing around. You just want to know how to give your customers and prospects the information they need to make the decision to buy from you and/or be happy in the decision they did make to buy from you.

We seem to finally be settling into a world where the customer has most of the power. What this means is that you can have all the fancy websites and marketing brochures you want, but if you aren’t thinking about what your customers need to make decisions, then you’re wasting a tidy sum. And these decisions, by the way, should be in your favor — that’s kind of important.

More Information Than You Know

The online world has become a place where people can quickly find information. But it’s not the only place they look. So you need to be sure you are consistent in your approach to providing that information. Content is the tie that binds all your marketing and support channels together. But it’s about more than great content. You have to offer that content in the right context.

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Introducing Amanda Cross, a Tech Comm Industry Leader

I’m excited to announce that MindTouch is being honored with a regular guest blog series here at the MindTouch blog titled “Let’s Talk Tech Comm.” Amanda Cross, the Documentation Manager at ExactTarget, will be writing a regular column bringing to us her wealth of experience and an admirable depth of knowledge in the space. She has twelve years of experience in technical communications, holds a BA in Technical Communications from Purdue University and an MBA from the Kelley School at Indiana University.

I met Amanda last year and she is my kind of person, which is to say that she is intensely passionate about her field and the end user. Also, I’ve been amazed by how bleeding edge her team is at ExactTarget in delivering automation and social interactions across their product documentation.

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