Helping the world explore and understand content management and technical communication
The sun is setting on our month-long look at Spy vs. Spy: Tech Comm vs MarCom. As one of those folks who has worked happily on both sides of this chasm, I’ve come to believe that great communicators have a lot more in common than not. The tactics and the style change from one discipline to another, and from one company to another, but the underlying principles seem to be pretty universal Continue reading ...
TechWhirl may be in one of the best positions ever to present both sides of this great, and long-standing debate. We've got lots of exposure to and experience in both technical communication and marketing. However, in the interests of fairness and objectivity, we decided that asking a thought leader to defend the statement "It's all Technical Communication" with the answers to five sort of simple questions about the critical role and value of Technical Communication in an organization. The president of the Society of Technical Communication (STC) seemed like a great candidate, and Alan Houser graciously accepted the challenge. Continue reading ...
All through August we've been talking about Spy vs. Spy (or Spy versus Spy for the pickier among us). We'll top off our coverage tomorrow with the Great Debate: "It's all Marketing" or "It's all Technical Communication." This is also the time of the year when many technical communication professionals decide it's time to get serious about new career directions. So this week's poll ties the two together nicely and asks... Continue reading ...
Yes I did it… I crossed over. Turns out that adding marketing writing to the technical communication repertoire wasn't the moral, ethical, or skills struggle I've been hearing about for years. I broke into marketing because I knew I could do marketing writing, and I saw a need I could fill. Continue reading ...
Summer Replay: To the world outside the cubicle farm, the differences between a typical technical writer and a typical marketing writer may be hard to determine at first glance. To people living one profession or the other, the differences are obvious. If you or your colleagues or friends have trouble telling them apart, use this handy checklist to determine whether they should be wearing the technical writer name tag or the marketing writer name tag. It might just save you hours of frustration and hurt feelings on all sides ... Continue reading ...
During August, TechWhirl plans to explore the nearly legendary battle between practitioners of technical communication and marketing communication. Technical writers have been complaining about marketing writers for at least as long as the TechWhirl discussion list has existed. And for marcom folks working in technology industries, it's likely that just as many complaints get lobbed in the other direction. This week's technical communication poll is aimed at finding out what kinds of "dark side" content are assigned to us these days. Continue reading ...