TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I've never considered myself much of an adjective slinger;
technical writing tends to make your writing more and more
terse as the years progress. However, I've always worked for
start-ups and I am always very involved in marketing/PR.
When the company is doing well, I always offer my services
to marketing to edit proposals, press releases, and other
marketing materials before they go out the door. Usually,
they start by thinking that there's nothing I can do to
improve their sterling prose and slowly but surely learn to
depend on my editing skills. Marcomm docs are usually put
together by everyone on the marketing team and they look
it. Fixing the subject/verb agreement and going for a
consistent tense isn't difficult, but it can look d**n
impressive. ;-)
Management learns to rely on my eye for technical details --
especially when the product is very technical and plays to
a very technical audience (programmers or IT people, for
example). My knowledge of the product and the audience can
keep us from looking the fool to the prospective customer.
In times of economic downturn, the marcomm people usually
get let go even before the technical writers, so I often
find myself in charge of the corporate web site, press
releases, updating and reprinting the existing marketing
collateral, ... . Actually, now that I think about it, this
can happen on the way up the ladder of success for the
company as well as on the way down.
Would marketing/PR help? Probably couldn't hurt. But graphic
arts skills and the ability to muck about in various DTP and
graphics packages and surface with a reasonably professional
looking piece is invaluable.
HTH!
-Sue Gallagher
>
> From: "Krysta J. Nibe" <krystajo -at- iastate -dot- edu>
> I am a graduate student working on a major paper and thesis at the same
> time. I am investigating the role that public relations plays in a tech
> writer's job. More specifically, I have been reading material that promotes
> technical writers helping the company out when it comes to public relations
> writing - especially for technical press releases.
>
> Do any of you have experience in public relations? Have you ever been asked
> to step in and help with press releases or other public relations projects?
> In your opinion, would technical writers benefit from public relations
> training in addition to technical writing training?
>
Have you tried the latest in Help Authoring from RoboHelp?
Try ROBOHELP X5 for Free - Now with Word 2003 support, Content
Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more!
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
