Common Skills in Documentation Positions

As I finish my responsibilities as an intern, I do not feel that I am master of manual documentation, but I feel that I have learned a lot, even if I have primarily learned what not to do. After looking at job postings for positions that focus specifically on manual writing, maintenance, and updating, I admit I feel a bit more confident in my ability to adapt in to a cooperate environment because of my experiences. I’d like to spend some time discussing the requirements that seem common to these types of positions, to comment on the corporate world’s relation to academia, and to share some resources that I have found helpful.

While a lot of job listings appear to have prerequisites that are somewhat vague and common on job descriptions, such as having strong communication skills and attention to detail, there are some very specific prerequisites that appear. Two that stand out on several listings is that the applicant should have the ability to handle several projects simultaneously and to create instructional material with only a brief time to actually learn the program being documented. These requirements represent an attitude that exists within the corporate world – bosses do not like to hear ‘no’ for an answer (Soplinsky 112). While I was fortunate that my boss allowed me to spend the entire semester working on a manual, that was primarily because I was figuring out the program before anyone else within the department. In this specific situation, as long as I was assisting the administrative staff in using the program, I could take as much time as I wanted.  But then I was free help. In an employment situation, technical writers creating documentation are required to create that documentation quickly, possibly while simultaneously creating or modifying other documentation.

There is also a specific emphasis in these listings on being able to write for a wide variety of audiences. Often, corporations have grown from simply producing technology to selling information (Johnson-Eilola 579), and while that information may be distributed in a variety of ways, it all must be designed in a way that makes it user-friendly to a wide variety of demographics. In order to do this, technical writers must study writing mechanics and style to find techniques that make writing approachable to the widest audience possible. In some ways this adds to the requirement for strong communication skills. Specifically, future employees will need to listen to the way people communicate and interpret language in order to fit in to a corporate environment (Southard 85), and in the same way they must expressive sensitivity to how others may interpret communication in written instruction.

Other requirements seemed to be subordinate to or derived from these two basic foundations: working quickly and communicating effectively. So, to learn these skills, TPW students must practice and learn.

For multitasking and working quickly, personal practice works best. As I stated, my experience as an intern taught me a lot about what not to do while preparing documentation. Perhaps I do not know the best practices yet, but I have an idea of what works, and especially what doesn’t work, during planning and writing.

For communication skills, I find that there are a variety of resources out there. For style, the Microsoft Manual of Style works nicely, and because of Microsoft’s place in the technological world, the manual will give readers a familiarity with documentation for a variety of software. To help perfect form, Edmond Weiss’s The Elements of International Style provides not only rules for writing for a variety of international audiences but also discusses rules that commonly come up in discussing user-friendly mechanics, such as comma usage and active/passive voice sentence structure.

Finally, I find that Doc-To-Help YouTube series gives a lot of helpful information for beginner technical writers, especially in this video, titled “Approaching the Blank Page”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVlFeN2Bh_Y

Works Cited

Johnson-Eilola, Johndan. “Relocating the Value of Work: Technical Communication in a Post-Industrial Age.”

Soplinsky, Emily. “Survival Skills for Communicators within Organizations.”

Southard, Sherry G. “Interacting Successfully in Corporate Culture.” 

The Context of the Workplace

As an intern at Missouri Southern State University’s Student Success Center, I had the primary responsibility of creating a user manual for Tutortrac, a program recently purchased to help catalogue various facets of the center’s tutoring program. Like some internships, I never had an official job title (aside from “intern,” of course) because I was working in the department to perform an unconventional job, and my position would be unnecessary after my work was done.

Because I was designing a manual for a specific group of people, I had to understand how that group communicates and what their expectations are for the program. In the case of Tutortrac, many of its features were irrelevant to the Student Success Center’s goals, so part of the manual’s goals was to subordinate those features to the features that actually pertain to those goals. Because of this, I had to be able to interact with the administrative staff to learn how they think, how they communicate, and what they value in order to sculpt the manual to be user friendly. In a way, I was learning how to shape my writing to a specific audience, which was probably the most important skill for my internship.

What I did not do was follow the module in most academic communities. Typically, academic settings have students learning certain disciplines and then illustrate their knowledge in writing. In most humanistic programs, such as the English programs I had come from, the writing could take on any voice that the student writer wanted. Like many interns, I had to relearn the relationship between writing and its context, specifically because the environment had changed to one where my original expectations (that who I was writing for would know more about my subject than I did) we disappointed by the reality that I had to become the master of my own subject, and if I didn’t know about the subject (Anson & Forsberg 207-208), the student success center would only learn about it when the manual stopped working for them.

In some ways, I was not prepared for the freedom’s this position gave me. I expected to work on public relations and signage as part of my position, but I never really did much design work. Instead, when I was given jobs that related to something other than the manual, I would usually be working as an editor. I found that I entered the department with a level of prestige that came from my history as an English major because it gave me a level of rhetorical expertise (Katz 437). In a classroom setting for most English majors, this power dynamic is foreign because of the sense of equality that exists within English classes – while some students may be better than others, there is an awareness that most students are on the same or a similar level of expertise. The English classroom does not prepare students for the writing and editing I did as an intern because it only gives students the context of an English classroom and not the context of a department that has writing needs with only a limited number of members formally trained in writing (Driskill 59).

Though my appointment at the Student Success Center was for a position that would not really exist once the work was done, I appreciate the opportunity to have my expectations dismissed. While the classroom can give the student access to information that can be used in a variety of contexts (59), the opportunity to intern in limited positions that have no name, and that perhaps did not exist before the intern, provide an opportunity to work in a different environment and context, allowing the intern’s skills to be shaped in ways the classroom simply cannot.

Works Cited

Anson, Chrisand Lee Forsberg. “Moving Beyond the Academic Community: Transitional Stages in Professional Writing”

Driskill, Linda. “Understanding the Writing Contexts in Organizations”

Katz, Susan. “A Newcomer Gains Power: An Analysis of the Role of Rhetorical Expertise”

Instructional Manuals in TPW

Instructional Manuals in TPW

My primary job at Missouri Southern State University’s Student Success Center was drafting a technical manual for a tutoring program they had recently purchased. There was a reason why this task was given to me, and why it has taken so much time and energy: no one could figure the program out.  The program is not especially user-friendly, so the administration within the Student Success Center needed a document that would help them perform the specific tasks they needed to perform with the program, so I had to learn the program, understand the needs of its users, and then understand the condition that the manual would be used in so that I could understand how to approach the manual.

Of course, genres are formed by their conditions of use (Rhetorical Genre 79). I designed my manuals specifically for administration within the Student Success Center, an audience that is fairly limited and consistent. Even within the context of the Student Success Center, I would have to have made different decisions if the manual had been for the center’s tutors and tutees, since those audiences are broader and could conceivably change from semester to semester. Administration must meet certain prerequisites and all work within the same environment, and when you get to know that environment you get an idea of what liberties you can take in writing the manual, but when you do not know your audience so well, you have to reconsider how to go about writing the document.

The context the instruction manual exists in always influences the writing process (“Genre Research” 147). I found that the manual worked within my internship as a dialogue – the administration would ask me specific questions about the program, and I would write a section that answered that question. In turn, when trying to decide what functions to write about for the manual, I would speak with one or more of the administrative staff to understand how they want to use the program so I could better shape the document to answer the questions they might have. This also allowed me to understand the tone and vocabulary the administration staff use to communicate with each other, and allowed me to develop a vocabulary for the manual that would best fit the environment it would be used in. Anytime I was uncertain about how a section was written, I could have one of the administration attempt to perform the steps listed and see firsthand what worked and did not work for specific members of my audience. While it could be frustrating to constantly receive feedback for sections that were more difficult, that feedback made the manual a group project, a symbol that the entire office was working together to make sure they could each use the program.

I had a real luxury having the audience that I had because they worked next door to me. Often, I didn’t have to worry about what topics to cover in the manual because I could listen to specific questions they had. I used the term ‘dialogue’ to explain how the manual worked at the Student Success Center, but for larger audiences manuals work as monologues, since writers do not have the ability to speak with their audience. Because of this lack of interaction with the audience, it’s easy for the manual’s usability to suffer because of the subject matter’s complexity (Miller 162).  Because of this, instructional manuals that act as monologues have a different approach to content and voice. Writers must cover a wide array of topics to ensure that users of various skill levels can use the manual, and a neutral and consistent vocabulary must be developed for the manual to ensure that the largest number of users would be able to understand the manual. These manuals must undergo usability testing more often because writers are not working so closely with their audience, and the test subjects’ ability or inability to use the manuals become the only type of input the audience really gets.

Works Cited

Bawarshi, Anis and Mary Jo Reiff. “Genre Research in Workplace and Professional Contexts.”

---. “Rhetorical Genre Studies.”

Miller, Carolyn. “Genre as Social Action.”

Training for the Future

Contributions to Qualifications

My internship has contributed to my qualifications as a technical/professional writer by providing various genres of writing for me to write and edit. I have done something as simple as condensing a questionnaire to one page, to writing most of an annual report. This has contributed to my qualifications by letting me attach a well-known and respected organization to my resume and experience.

The skills and abilities I may need to develop include practice working in a business setting on a team endeavor, and perhaps learning to write content that includes a lot of statistics and facts. One additional skill I may need to develop is learning to understand the informal structures of a corporation or non-profit organization. According to Sherry Southard, informal structure develops “from the interactions of the specific employees working in a specific corporation at a specific time; these structures may also reflect changes in management policy not accompanied by a restructuring of official definitions of organizational patterns” (Southard, 81). These structures are always changing according to the varied interactions of employees. This structure is a subtle feel of who is in power despite formal organization, who generally takes control of which tasks, and will certainly affect the flow of information from person to person depending on individual relationships (Southard, 81).  Although these informal structures change from organization to organization, with practice, it becomes easier to pick up on these subtle threads. If I had spent more time within SEK-CAP’s offices, I would have had experience working within these informal structures, which are actually very important to understand and vital to the functioning of an organization.

Job #1

The first job I researched was for a position as a communications writer for NARAL Pro-Choice in New York. This company works to “promote reproductive rights and expand access to reproductive health care through bold advocacy, creative education campaigns, and high-impact partnerships,” according to the job advertisement. In this position, the primary responsibilities would be to write the content for the website, brochures and other marketing materials, writing the annual reports, board materials, policy materials, memos, and other relevant materials. Other responsibilities would include communication of the organization’s programs and goals and developing concepts and copy for social media campaigns. The basic qualifications include having 3-5 years’ experience writing for nonprofit, the ability to translate complicated legislative and organizational lingo into interesting and easy language for the public, knowledge about reproductive rights and legislation, and an ability to work in a fast-paced environment.

Training Unit

The training unit for this job would include a variety of resources on reproductive rights and legislation. The first is a website covering the latest news regarding reproductive rights and legislation. The second is a book on a woman’s reproductive rights called Reproductive Rights and the State by Melissa Haussman. Another book that may help the job seeker understand the issues that this job deals with is called Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Rickie Solinger. An even better resource would be NARAL’s own webpage. There, they have a specific page on what the laws say about reproductive issues in New York, which is the very information that the job advertisement expects applicant to know. Because the job expects the applicant to know how to edit technical materials, the book  Technical Editing, fifth edition by Carolyn D Rude would greatly come in handy. Finally, because the job advertisement lists social media as one of the job responsibilities, the slideshow Social Media for Social Good by Julia Campbell should be given a look-through.

Job #2

The second job position I researched was a position as the technical writer for Pathfinder International. According to the job advertisement, this company is a “global leader in sexual and reproductive health.” They “place reproductive health care at the center of all that [they] do—believing that it is not only a fundamental human right, but is critical for expanding life opportunities for women, families, communities, and nations, and paving the way for transformations in environmental stewardship, decreases in population pressures, and innovations in poverty reduction.”

The job responsibilities for this position (as copied from the original job advertisement) include:

• ·         Write original content for publications highlighting implementation experience, challenges, and accomplishments.
• ·         Work with project leads and country teams to capture critical concepts for articulation to external audiences.
• ·         Under guidance of other technical advisors within TSU, develop skills of Pathfinder field staff in production of technical publications.
• ·         Advise on targeted dissemination strategies to ensure technical publications reach priority audiences.
• ·         Edit Pathfinder technical documents (e.g., conference abstracts, presentations).
• ·         Work with Technical Advisors, Program Directors, and Communications staff to prioritize products to be developed and their corresponding timelines.
• ·         Participate in development and monitoring of publications timelines to ensure deadlines are met.
• ·         Work closely with editor and graphic designer to produce and finalize products.
• ·         Prepare summaries to announce products on project website and via social media channels.

Basic requirements for this position include (as copied from the original job advertisement):

• ·         Required Bachelor's degree in Public Health, Public Administration or related field.
• ·         Minimum of four years progressively responsible work related to Public Health, Health Education, International Relations, Development Studies, Women's Studies, Communications, or related field (two years' experience will be acceptable if candidate has a Master's degree in Public Health related field).
• ·         Excellent writing skills, with an ability to write technical content clearly, concisely, and in an engaging manner, drawing from a variety of data sources under tight timelines;
• ·         Familiarity with sexual and reproductive health topics, terminology, and programming;
• ·         Professional experience in dissemination of written products in a variety of forums, ideally in development or relevant field;
• ·         Familiarity with design of visual representations of data, including diagrams, charts, and graphs;
• ·         Qualitative and quantitative data analysis skills;
• ·         Excellent organizational skills with an emphasis on being thorough and very detail-oriented, with ability to multi-task;
• ·         Ability to work effectively in a highly collaborative team;
• ·         Excellent computer skills to include proficiency with Microsoft Office products;
• ·         Fluent in written and spoken English;
• ·         Ability to travel internationally up to 30%;
• ·         Commitment to the mission, vision, and values of Pathfinder International.

The preferred qualifications for this positions (as copied from the original job advertisement) include:

• ·         Master's degree in related field strongly preferred;
• ·         Previous experience studying or working in a developing country or countries;
• ·         Editing experience a plus;
• ·         Fluency in French, Portuguese, or other language;
• ·         Familiarity with Adobe InDesign a plus.

Training Unit

The training unit for this job application include many books and references on learning language, editing, social media, and other software, as well as information on sexual and reproductive health topics and information. First, there is a guide to abortion laws and rights published by the Guttmacher Institute. This guide breaks down the laws in every state and area that could affect a woman’s rights to safe reproductive care and would be valuable information for a potential applicant to study. In the same thread, there is a peer sex educator named Laci Green who does video logs detailing the various aspects of sex education and information that the public should know. This information falls right in line with the information that the employee would deal with in the position; thus, this would be excellent information for an applicant to know. Because the applicant would be designing charts and diagrams, the books Designer’s Guide to Creating Charts and Diagrams by Nigel Holmes and Designing Infographics by Erik K Meyer would make excellent references for learning this information. Also, because the job applicant would need to know plenty about Microsoft Office, a good reference to learn all about this software would be the book Microsoft Office 2010 Volume 1. No matter which version the company uses, a general knowledge of any version of the software would help exponentially.  Another method of learning this same information would be the training files on Microsoft.com. These would make good resources because they are free and they are done by the company itself, and thus are sure to be full of a few good hints and shortcuts that could come in handy on the job. Because the job would require knowing social media for nonprofit, being “in the know” about a live and updating resource for new and changing hints and tips may help win the case for hire. This resource would be the website Social Media for Nonprofits. Another excellent suggestion would be finding a local nonprofit organization needing help with their social media pages and volunteering to run them. Finally, because the company would prefer the applicant to know more than one language, being willing to learn one of their recommended languages would put the applicant in good standing. One popular method of learning a new language is Rosetta Stone.

Job #3

The third and final job advertisement I researched was a position as a copywriter for the Lee marketing team. The Lee Marketing Group is an advertising and marketing business working out of Merriam, KS. They do logos and branding, print, audio and video, web design, signage, and apparel and promotional products. They need a copywriter for “writing editing and proofreading content for a diverse range of projects including product brochures, ticketing, direct mail, press kits, on-line marketing, & retail store needs. Additionally the copy writer will support Lee.com by writing content, video editorial marketing and product promotional copy, product descriptions optimized for SEO and all Digital Marketing.” The education and experience they would like new hires to have include 3-5 years of professional experience, a BA/BS degree in English, Journalism, Communications, Advertising, or another related field. They also would prefer it if the applicant had creative writing experience in the apparel industry. They would also like the applicant to have a minimum of two years’ experience writing for the web, retail, or business. The skills they would like the applicant to have include being able to write copy for catalogs or online stores, an attention to detail and an eye for proofreading, organizational and time management skills, the ability to self-manage and meet deadlines, and to be a team player. More specifically, they would like new hires to be proficient in Word, Excel, Acrobat, and Powerpoint on a PC. They also want someone who can multitask.

Training Unit

The training unit for this job includes a tutorial for using PowerPoint, Acrobat, and all Microsoft Office programs, including Excel. Because the company does a lot of marketing for other businesses, taking a few courses in marketing would only help a prospective employee. A good resource for finding online marketing courses would be the University of Kansas’s online courses website. Another excellent resource for a prospective applicant would be a book on proofreading to brush up on basic proofreading skills. A good book to purchase for this would be Developing Proofreading and Editing Skills by Sue C Camp. Interestingly enough, there is even a textbook on writing catalog copy. How to Write Powerful Catalog Copy by Lewis, Herschell Gordon would be a good book to pick up to learn about what writing works well for catalogs.

From Schoolroom to Workroom

Job Title and Responsibilities

I don’t believe that I have a specific job title at SEK-CAP. I do know that I am the technical writing intern who is working under Becky Gray, who is the Director of Research, Planning, and Grants Development.  

My responsibilities include running the Facebook page and completing any writing or editing that Becky sends my way. These writing and editing projects have been anything from making a questionnaire fit on a single sheet of paper to writing the complete Annual Report for the organization.

Qualifications

Some required qualifications for this position would be:

• ·         Being a senior in the technical writing department
• ·         Completed Document Design, or are in the process of it,
• ·         Completed Technical and Professional Writing
• ·         Learned to copyedit

Some preferred qualifications for this position would include:

• ·         An interest in non-profit
• ·         A real concern for the impoverished and those of low-income
• ·         Taken multiple graphic design courses

New Abilities and Skills

I have gained and practiced many new abilities during this internship. I have gained a second experience, and learned a completely different technique, running a social media website. The SEK-CAP page has a different kind of follower than the KSNOW page. They are less passionate, a little bit less involved, and make up a different demographic than the KSNOW page. Thus, they interact a lot less than the followers of KSNOW. Comments are fewer and farther inbetween, as are likes and other methods of interaction and feedback. Because of this, outreach is much smaller. Another ability I was able to practice was copywriting for business. Copywriting for school, where the resulting document was never read or implemented, is very different than writing for business, where the resulting document is read by hundreds of people you don’t know and has endless impact on policy and decision-making. In the same thread, I had practice editing large manuals and multiple pages. Another area I had practice in was document design, especially regarding multiple pages. However, this isn’t the loud, in-your-face kind of document design, but a more subtle design using only text and spacing. A brand new skill I had to develop was meeting with business people and working with them on projects. Specifically, I had to learn what their expectations were. In meetings, I had to learn to ask the right questions and speak respectively, formally, yet be very friendly, in order to fit into the expectations set in the workplace.

Some of the abilities and skills I thought I would learn/practice but have not include:

• ·         Going to the job site every day
• ·         Learning what a professional wardrobe looked like for my field
• ·         Meeting new people in business and building a professional network

If Wishes Were Horses 

I do wish I had the experience of going to the job site every day, so that I had to opportunity to learn what the atmosphere is like and what kinds of behavior are expected. Also, I wish I had this opportunity to make connections with other business people. Next, I am terrible with clothing. If I had to dress according to expectation, maybe the idea of dressing for the workplace would become less intimidating.  Finally, I very much wish I had to opportunity to learn how to meet people within the business setting and how to build a professional network.

Schoolroom to Workroom

The difference between writing and working for the internship and writing and working for school is that with school, the only person who suffers from a botched job is yourself. Your grade suffers, you don’t learn the lesson, and you feel a bit guilty. However, if you are late with an ‘assignment’ for the internship, or if you cannot give your full effort, then the consequences are much larger. Thus, the pressure to do a fantastic job is heavy and, at the beginning, can be frightening. Also different is that the world is affected by your writing. Rather than just your professor reading your writing or editing job, your work has real-world consequences. Your writing can save or harm a life. Another thing that is very different working within an internship than within school is that your work partners actually care about the work at hand. You are less likely to be stuck with a deadweight person in group projects because each person has a larger investment and personal pride and passion. 

Work Atmosphere

The atmospheres at both of the office buildings I have entered have seemed friendly and welcoming. All of the individuals I have met have been open, inviting, and eager to meet new people. I felt welcomed and important. I would assume that this atmosphere develops due to type of people a nonprofit organization attracts as employees. I doubt anyone or nearly anyone is there solely with the intent to make money; rather, they all have a vague idea of making the world a better place.

Power, Authority, Hierarchy

My power in this position increased only slightly. I began as a simple intern, willing to do any work handed to me. Partway through the internship, Becky gained respect for my knowledge of how to work social media. Because of this respect, my power increased marginally, but enough to be able to initiate projects and movements on social media without having to check with authority, first. Another place in which my power increased was gaining a respected voice and opinion on certain projects and actions. My opinion the projects I was given mattered more than I expected it to, considering I am only an intern. Susan Katz makes this point in her article “A Newcomer Gains Power.” I was considered an “expert” in social media, and “if an individual—even an individual who lacks power based on his or her position within the organizational space—is an expert rhetor in an organization where the rhetorical expertise is valued and needed (but is not the norm), that expertise may be the source of significant power” (Katz, 437). This rule has proven firmly true in my case because there is no one as knowledgeable about the techniques of social media within the circle Becky moves in; thus, she sees me as the ‘expert’ in the field. Therefore, she gives me power over the items I post to the Facebook page and over the techniques that I use to gain outreach.

Contribution 2: Genres in Tech/Professional Writing

Genre

The primary genre of technical writing used during my internship was writing for social media. This genre of writing is considered a form of technical writing because 1) it must consider the audience, 2) it is a type of rhetoric, and 3) it often influences its readers to take some kind of action. Writing for social media also often informs its audience, whether this information is about a larger issue or something as simple as a restaurant’s menu changes. Writing for social media does not appear technical at first glance because it is easy and generally must fun to read. Because of this, some may not hold this kind of writing on the same scale as a user’s manual. Yet, both genres have similar goals: to encourage an audience to read it, to inform them of something, to gain the reader’s trust, and to encourage the audience to complete some kind of action.

How to Write for Social Media

To write or design for social media, the writer must understand his or her audience and their reading preference and expectations. The writer must consider the medium in which the message will be read. Often, the writer has to consider the pre-established ‘culture’ that the social media website has set up. Next, the writer must consider possible limitations on a message’s structure. Is there a character limit? Does the platform only support certain kinds of media? Next, the writer must consider the audience. What will the reader want to see or experience? Will they be more responsive to a specific kind of writing or lingo? What is the audience interested in? Are they hungry for controversy and drama, or are they put off by it? Do they prefer things that go viral, or are they more interested in the unfamiliar and new? After all of these elements are considered, the writer must then write the copy, making sure to stick to the requirements of the genre that were just determined. Because even though writing for social media is a genre, the requirements will change from platform to platform. At least, a successful social media writer will understand this. An excerpt from Rhetorical Genre Studies puts this into excellent words. Subgenres within writing for social media are always changing “because as their conditions of use change—for example because of changes in material conditions, changes in community membership, changes in technology, changes in disciplinary purposes, values, and what Charles Bazerman describes as systems of accountability—genres must change along with them or risk becoming obsolete” (Bawarshi and Reiff). As the platforms for social media change, so do the audiences. For example, Facebook may have people of all generations, races, ethnicities, education levels, and interests using it because it is such a common and necessary social media platform at this time. However, for a platform such as Tumblr, the audience is very different. The primary audience for this platform is the 18-24 age range, plus social activists and general bloggers about specific topics. The overall genre of social media writing must change between the two platforms in order to be successful.

In the Workplace

This type of writing is more and more commonly being used in a wide range of workplaces. Almost every business these days is expected to have a page on almost every heavily-trafficked social media platform. As any businessperson, I can apply this genre to further my business and to better interact with my customers. For the Southeast Kansas Community Action Program, the majority of the people following the page are employees at SEK-CAP and community members who support the efforts of SEK-CAP. The things SEK-CAP posts on their Facebook page are mostly important events that are happening within the organization. However, it is just as important that the viewers be well informed about what new things are happening around the country or state as what is happening locally. Thus, posting articles and commentary about these topics are important to the overall purpose and rhetoric of the Facebook page. The writer’s job, then, is not only to find relevant topics but also to write the commentary. That commentary has to convince the page’s followers to read the article.

In another context, outside of SEK-CAP’s business, being able to write effectively for social media could mean the difference between a successful business and an average one. For most businesses that started for profits, social media is where coupons and other deals are posted for customers and clients. Social media is also a place where customers and clients can give feedback to the business and where disputes can be settled. To be an effective writer for this situation, the writer must remove him or herself completely and become the voice of the business, and for a national or international business, that can be extremely difficult and touchy.

An article on TechCrunch describes the various ways that other small businesses use social media writing within the workplace. One example would be an international business, such as Starbucks. Starbucks posts promotional elements onto their page, such as a free pastry with the purchase of a coffee. This brings in more business, bringing in people who normally would not come in who just want to get a free pastry. Another way Starbucks uses writing for social media is to interact with customers talking about the brand. This gives Starbucks sufficient feedback about what they are doing right so that they can take their business to the next level. All of this online interaction takes a special kind of writing, one that draws people in, that interests them, that has a consistent personality across all mediums, and that does not offend. It is very easy to offend customers these days, especially via social media. One wrong word loses you thousands if not millions of customers.

In My Professional Context

Writing for social media is a very specific kind of technical writing genre. It works within my specific professional context by spreading information and setting out a call for certain actions that the workplace deems necessary. This genre also works within this professional context by spreading knowledge about SEK-CAP throughout the community and making the community aware of its existence and all that is done. After all, the community cannot appreciate all the hard work that SEK-CAP does without knowing what it is that it does. The genre of social media writing must be interesting enough that the audience will pick it out from countless other pieces of social media writing (thus, one aspect of this genre is that it is competitive against other pieces of the same genre), and yet informative enough that the audience will come away changed in some way.

From Schoolroom to Workroom

I have been interning as a freelance editor for the City of Cherokee. During that time I worked on one major project, which was to digitize the City Code book and edit for typos. I also added in amendments, applied styles to all of the text, and then reformatted it into an additional pocket sized book.

For this project I needed knowledge of editing, Microsoft Word, and a basic working knowledge of legalese. This was my first opportunity to apply styles to an entire document to make it easier for an aging population, and editing a document written in legalese. I had dealt with legal documents in previous jobs, but I never actually edited them before. I was limited in the wording I could change due to the legality, but getting to work with it was new.

            Working from home I was able to set my own time frame and goals. I was basically digitizing and applying styles to the entire document, so there wasn’t a lot of writing. I worked under the city clerk and he reported to the council and mayor the changes that I made. The clerk was friendly and open to the changes I made stylistically when I went to talk to him. There was some tension in the office when an employee was terminated, reminding me it was nice to not be in an office environment.

If I hadn’t already completed the code book I would have passed on the style sheet to my successor. I would make sure they knew that language needed to remain the same, and I would let them know about the town itself by way of explaining some of the stylistic choices that were made.

Genres in Technical / Professional Writing

The primary elements of technical / professional writing genre used during my internship are that of a City Code book. A City Code book is organized in a manner that is conducive to productivity for those using it. It is a professional item, that uses legalese to convey to all residents those rules that everyone in town must follow. Although the City Clerk and Mayor will be the primary users of this book, it is available for anyone to view, so it must be written in a way that all can understand.

This genre works in my specific professional context at my internship site because it gives the city's residents guidelines that they must follow. These guidelines assist in keeping the community orderly, and in the event that something is amiss, the City Clerk has something tangible to reference for enforcement issues. 



Other professional contexts in which this genre might be used would be code books for law enforcement and dress codes for school or work. This genre of technical / professional writing would vary based on codes being enforced, the size of the company or organization writing the code, and the audience that will be using them.