Chatterbox : audience

Co-Authoring in Microsoft SharePoint

Lindsey Robbins — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:55:00 GMT

Authoring in SharePoint – a world unto its own for those of you brave enough to venture into adding web parts, setting up sites and workspaces, and playing around with site settings. I find it’s often more like a treasure hunt than a systematic process. I’m not entirely complaining; I have had the opportunity to keep some skills fresh including the creation of a wiki for my team’s internal documentation.

However, I’ve been thinking recently about SharePoint and the concept of community or team authoring. I find if you’re tasked with authoring a SharePoint site, at minimum get regular feedback and at best get a couple of co-authors. Why?

Well as an example, another fun role I have at Blackbaud is on a voluntary team of employees who promote philanthropy and volunteerism within the organization. Participating on Team Blackbaud – Charleston is rewarding in so many ways but especially within context of our corporate value that Service to Others Makes the World a Better Place.

One of my fun tasks for Team Blackbaud – Charleston has been to update our SharePoint website. We encourage opportunities to volunteer, recognize employees’ philanthropic achievements, and promote our philanthropic quarterly initiatives. We need to educate, advertise, and encourage participation. But, for a while I was the only one working on the page. I’m not saying I’m terrible at SharePoint web design but I did learn that if you only have one perspective (and limited time to devote to the site) you can quickly find yourself on a sinking ship. We started off small and received input. However, with every quarter we kept adding content to our page. A year later and we suddenly had this lightbulb moment where we realized the page wasn’t working for us. It wasn’t achieving the desired result.

How to clean up an out of control page?

#1 – Get a couple people to thoroughly evaluate the website including an evaluation of what the desired result would be. If you have some subject matter experts in design, by all means solicit their help.

#2 – Find Help! We decided to change this position on Team Blackbaud – Charleston this year from one person to two. And instead of being the main contributer, I’m stepping back to a more supportive role. If you work on something too long, you can easily lose that fresh perspective.

#3 – Don’t let a page sit static for too long, keep the feedback ongoing and the content engaging.

#4 – If all else above fails, just delete everything and start from scratch. Seems drastic but if your site isn’t being used because it’s so unfriendly, then what do you really have to lose?

If we have some success re-inventing our site, I’ll be sure to share our results with you.

In the meantime, remember that your time and skills can be just as valuable to a nonprofit as your wallet!

Can you Digg It?

Lindsey Robbins — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 18:35:00 GMT

I confess. I don’t Digg and I have no idea what to use it for. In fact, just the other day I submitted my first article. And it doesn’t even really count since it’s one of my own blog posts. I just wanted to test the process. Sadly, as of today, 6 days after posting, I still only have 1 digg (my own). I’m sure it’s because it was my own content and I have no idea what I’m doing. However, I wanted to see if I could make sense out of this tool everyone else seems to be using but me. Maybe I’m not really at the cool kids lunch table?...

In case you need an intro to Digg like I do, here’s an overview of the website:

Digg is a place for people to share with others their favorite content they find anywhere on the internet.
Once you post, others vote on your submissions. The more diggs, the better.
People, collectively, determine the value of content.
Most content people submit are news articles, videos, and images.
If your content really rocks - people will submit your content, you’ll get digg’d a lot, and then you’ll get published on their front page. And published on the front page means you are really awesome and will get a lot more publicity.
They make it pretty easy to comment and share the stuff you find on Digg.
And, you can even make friends because you might trust their opinion on good or bad content and want to follow what they digg. And if not, you can always digg for content by topic category (technology, science, gaming, entertainment, etc).

So what do you think? Should I Digg it and how should I use this site?

Don’t Overlook the Obvious with Wikis

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:02:00 GMT

Being in the business of explaining technical things, it’s easy to skip the obvious and jump to the difficult stuff. After all, since we can make educated guesses of what people will struggle with; why not jump to explaining that content? However, doing so can be a trap. Recently this happened to me in my internal team documentation efforts.

A while back, I blogged on my experiences with wikis. In addition to my outside experience, I finally figured out a way in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 to setup a team wiki. We have to do some manual creation of navigation but overall it meets our needs for internal team knowledge management.

When I “launched” the wiki in a brief demo to the team, it went pretty well. And for the most part people have figured out where it is. However, time passed and I forgot one key thing. People needed to know how to use the wiki. It’s not that the wiki is all that difficult or complex but it’s still a process unfamiliar to people. I completely overlooked the obvious.

Now, I have a page set up with answers to the following common questions:

How do I use the wiki?
How do I add a new page?
How do I edit a page?
How do I add a picture?
How do I search for information?
How do I edit the navigation?

Sure, I may be someone who loves technology and will play with it until I figure out what’s going on but not all users are the same. I think it’s a valuable lesson for social media, technology, and software. It’s easy to assume that users can figure out the basic processes and workflows but then when you do that you create easy stumbling blocks that might discourage people from using your new tool. I’m glad I went back to do my how to guide. It’s not thorough or complete but it’s a start. Next up is a wiki page on how to blog. I really want to get my team more involved in blogging since I’ve heard what valuable things they have to say and would love for them to share it with you all too.

Have you ever overlooked something obvious in your social media or technology efforts?

Content Reuse is Super (and not just for technical writers)

Lindsey Robbins — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:47:00 GMT

In my day-to-day world as a technical writer (no, I’m not paid to be a blogger) we often think about how to reuse the content we write. Whether it’s content that’s similar from program to program or whether we’re thinking about different output (publishing) options, we think about how to make the most out of everything we write.

I remember when I started in the field the buzz word was “single sourcing.” How do you write from a single source and generate many different outputs. Who wants to write the same thing over and over again in different programs? When you do that the quality and consistency suffers not to mention the time suck of repeating efforts.

These days people talk a lot about DITA or modular documentation, but once you get past the terms, what you have is a concern over efficiency of time.

Don’t we all have that same concern whether we’re writing documentation, marketing material, corporate communications, or organizational newsletters? I think it’s a valuable lesson we all need to learn no matter what medium or profession we’re writing in. When you take the time to construct a message for a newsletter, don’t try to reinvent the wheel when you need to add content to your organization’s website, facebook page, or blog. Instead of taking a message you wrote for one and rewrite it every time you need to publish something new, write it the first time for content reuse. Not only can it save you, the writer time, but it can help your readers because then they don’t have to re-understand a topic every time they read something new from you. Also, if you ever need to translate, reusing content can save you major moola $$$.

Here are some recommendations:

Before you write, think ahead to all the places the content can be used. Knowing the format limitations of each medium can help you decide how to write in the first place.
Write in a program that makes publishing content to different mediums easier. While Microsoft Word can be easy to use, it can also enter a lot of style “junk” so when you copy and paste, things come over you’d rather leave behind. We use Adobe Structured FrameMaker because it makes it easy to quickly pull chunks of information from one section for reuse somewhere else (plus a lot more technical reasons). However, many great programs are available and even some open source programs work just as well. Do a little research into your organization’s needs and financial limitations and I’m sure you’ll find a suitable application.
Style. Yes, it really is important to think about the grammar and stylistic choices of your writing. When you establish a consistent organizational style, it’s easier to maintain content quality across all your mediums. We have a Blackbaud Corporate Style as well as a documentation style. But we’re not perfect; it’s something we work on all the time.
Don’t be too specific. Yes, it can be bad to be too detailed. If you want to use an article from the newsletter for the blog, don’t mention anything about the newsletter in the article. Kinda obvious but there are other subtle details that might give you away. When you write in a more general tone, you create opportunities. For example, craft a story about your organization that is a great standalone piece. When it’s strong on its own, you can easily share that story on your website, brochure, blog, presentation to the board, and more!
Slow down. Seems crazy to slow down but when you spend more time on one really great message, it’s easier to repurpose it. It really is possible to write less and end up with more.

But remember; don’t reuse your content so much that people get tired of seeing the same old message. Content reuse is more about evaluating the best use of your time, not getting lazy with your writing efforts.

Social Media Magic

Lindsey Robbins — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:29:00 GMT

Participating in social media can perform magic. How? It can magically take all your time and make it disappear! You started working on a short blog post. It’s only a couple paragraphs long. You write and re-write. Read it aloud to yourself. Change some words. Research some information on Google. Add a link for more information. You even insert an image to make the post more attractive to potential readers.

You’re feeling pretty good about your blog post. Well, until you look at the time. What?! Wait a minute, what happened? How is it hours later? Did Michael J. Fox take you back to the future? No, you just learned a valuable lesson in social media. Often the simplest of actions takes the most time.

Why? When you have a limited amount of time and space to capture your audience and bring them into your organization’s efforts every piece of social media communication becomes valuable and worthy of your time. Even for me, writing a blog takes up more time than I’d like and I’m supposed to be a professional writer. Words are not just words.

When you participate in social media, your every move needs time and thought. The details really do matter because there aren’t as many to observe. Most social media efforts take place in tiny bite sized information dispersed in several forms meant to drive your audience to your website, to your events, and ultimately to the bank to support your mission.

So how do you balance the demands on your time? If you’re like me you go through valleys and mountains of social media activity. You also are more patient with yourself and don’t expect to master all social media mediums instantaneously. Add efforts on a site-by-site basis. For a month or two, start your blog. Tweak how it looks until it presents the image of your organization you’re hoping for. Play with the links and the type of information you are providing. And, start writing posts. Think realistically about how often you can and should write. Minimum of one post a week is good. I’ve fallen victim to this one. If you don’t post often enough you lose readers, too often and people will skim over your information too much. When you’re blogging on a regular basis and feel comfortable with the demands then start expanding. Promote your blog on other sites. And maybe consider what other efforts you want to explore. Perhaps it’s time to promote the blog and your organization’s website on Facebook. Perhaps you want to twitter your posts and timely information. Either way, don’t take leaps, take small measured hops. I’ll take quality over quantity any day.

Paring Down the Tweets

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:25:00 GMT

A week later and my experiment with paring down the number of people I follow has worked wonders (so far). I’m back to following people without as much anxiety and I can keep up without dedicating my every working moment to watching the stream of collective thought dumps.

Talk much?

My excessive tweeters somewhat followed the same people Joe Meehan mentioned in his comment:

"But as I've discovered, the excessive tweets I've experienced fall into two categories: One - from news orgs I follow (USA Today, LA Times Busines section, CNN Breaking News). A bit much at times - but it's news (at least to someone).
The other category is people who tweet their every action/thought/response to others. If I have to scroll though a full web page of tweets by the same person, it's the virtual equal to the guy at the party who doesn't know when to end a conversation.”

My addition to his two is a third category of people I felt I should follow but wasn’t learning anything particularly valuable from. Don’t we all have these people we keep around because someone else thought they were important yet you’re not really sure what to do with them once you start listening?

I still find tweets from people (I value and want to listen to) with links to relevant information particularly useful. In fact, now that I can find and read them much more quickly I’m able to follow their thoughts and links much more easily.

Who went and who stayed?

I don’t want to divulge too many specifics but here’s in general who I dropped.

Technical communication people in my field who weren’t contributing valuable information, tweeted too much, or weren’t tweeting at all.
People I find vaguely interesting because they have a huge following on Twitter but in general I don’t really care what they have to say on a day-to-day basis.
Large organizations I have no personal ties to and the government feeds I initially liked but had no use for after the general intrigue wore off.

I kept many people. In fact, I’m still following 82 people/orgs. Who and why?

I’m still following people I work with. I find it important to know what’s going on at work and we can feed each other great content (and sometimes funny fluff too).
I follow select technical communication people who I respect and can continue to develop a networking relationship.
Friends. You can’t drop your friends! Even if I use twitter mainly for work related items, I still find it comforting to see funny or meaningful things from non-work people.
Local organizations and organizations I have ties to. I kept the local news, local nonprofits, and even Clemson football feed (although the way they are playing, I might have to drop them than think about the season).

Going Forward

I still find it difficult on busy days to follow the thread of information thoughts floating on twitter. However, following only the people that can meaningfully contribute to my day makes it much easier. And I plan to hope, as Chad commented in my last post, that Twitter figures out the social filtering. I would have liked to follow many of the people and organizations I dropped, just not on a daily basis.

So my recommendation to those out there considering to tweet and considering who to follow, sometimes it’s okay to join the fray and make some mistakes. But, as you go along, watch the trends of what you like to see and what you don’t. And most importantly, don’t twitter everything!

Connecting and Inspiring Activism on YouTube

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:41:00 GMT

My bad. I wish I could say my blog disappearing act was a result of these two distracting me...

L-R: Hanna, Ike

But in reality, I've been absorbed in my little world where I've been split between The Education Edge, Student Information System beta (and preparing for release later this year) and The Raiser's Edge.

However, over the past two weeks something on my periphery caught my attention. It was the emergence of the national conventions, Democratic and Republican, and their use of YouTube to bring you speeches and behind the scenes footage.

I loved that they integrated all forms of video to make you feel like you were part of the convention even if you weren't there. I'm guessing they will not only make connections with their audience but also inspire some to take up political activism even if they had never done so before.

Even if you're not political or even if you like some other side than the left and right, it's interesting to take a step back, tune out the politics, and just see what actions they are taking from a social media perspective. I know I'm not the type to sit down every night during the conventions to watch. I just don't have the attention span anymore. But, give me short little videos I can have some control over on YouTube and I'm a happy clam. Social media under my control (the user) and not dictated by anyone else.

If you want to do some investigations yourself, check out both their channels on YouTube (click on the respective images).

Have you ever thought about creating a YouTube channel and start sharing information about your organization? Or, do you already have a channel? I'd love to see some examples.

Using Social Media to Connect with your Audience: A True Story

Lindsey Robbins — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:23:00 GMT

I’m in shock right now. Something totally awesome and unexpected just happened. It was my lunch time, I was checking out Facebook, and this friend of a friend popped up online and had an off-topic question. We were chatting for a minute when he mentioned he was recently on Daniel Island for training at Blackbaud (he's from the upper east coast). He didn’t know where I worked (and I don't know anything about his background) and so what was a quick convo off-topic turned into an opportunity to talk one-on-one with someone who uses our software - technical writer to database coordinator. No crazy travel plans, no pre-arranged meetings, just a chat about how weird it was that he is an RE user and I’m a technical writer who writes for RE. Mind you, I’ve never met this user before. I barely have talked to him but for some reason through social media a connection was made.

Instead of taking up a bunch of his time, we chatted a bit on Facebook’s IM client and I had the chance to immediately ask him what his opinion was of our user guides and help files. Given the opportunity I didn’t want to pass it up. How often, in an informal way do you get to chat with your audience? How often do you take down the boundaries, the pressure, and expectations to just have an honest chat? Comcast and Whole Foods are a couple of recent examples of companies using Twitter to connect informally with their audience. I asked both what they hoped to get out of it.

Whole Foods responded: “We're still pretty early in our Twitter days, so consider more a communication and community building tool... 01:45 PM August 04, 2008”

Now I’m not necessarily looking to build a community but as a Documentation team we definitely are trying to develop more one-on-one connections so we can ask the important questions especially the ones about how to make help better. We really dig helping users and that means admitting that we need to keep talking to users, trying new user assistance communication methods and content, and never settling for the way it’s always been done.

So with that in mind, this opportunity to talk to Bruce*, a database coordinator for a healthcare organization, felt like the golden ticket. A real person to ask real questions and perhaps I could provide some answers along the way too. Here are some snippets from the chat:

12:47pmLindsey so do you ever read the docs or just figure it out on your own?
12:48pmBruce I use it ALLL the time
RE doesn’t speak my language....
12:49pmLindsey thanks for saying that ;-)
12:49pmBruce ALL the TIME!
I JUST printed Query and Export Guide
12:49pmLindsey really?
12:49pmBruce yeah
looking at it RIGHT now!
queries are my arch enemy
we don’t get along!
12:50pmLindsey so awesome people are using our stuff
they can be tough, lots of options
filters
12:50pmBruce yeah!
no kidding!
I rely on your guides!
at training I was bombarded with info
12:51pmLindsey well it does take a while to sink in
RE can do a lot
12:51pmBruce and THEN we went through things...hands on, but WAY fast and SO not my pace
so yeah
your guides are my bible!
12:51pmLindsey can I quote you, that's awesome
12:51pmBruce yeah!
its true
I wont run a query with out my query guide
cause for me a bad query could be really expensive!
12:52pmLindsey totally
12:52pmBruce yeah! so yes...THANK you!
I know LOTS of folks who use RE and we have had chats about the guides
like....
12:53pmLindsey really?
12:53pmBruce we like that they are available on line
12:53pmLindsey cause we are always looking for ways to improve
12:53pmBruce I know that’s a blackbaud tradition
12:55pmLindsey so what do you say about our guides?
and you can say bad stuff too
12:55pmBruce well....the first thing I REALLY like
of course
are the screen shots
for me, I am a visual learner
12:55pmLindsey we're just starting to do short video tutorials too!
12:56pmBruce WHAT!!!!
I want that!
12:56pmLindsey we're starting small but we'll get there
12:56pmBruce 2- the guides don’t read like the old VCR manuals
they are easy to understand, and there is no pre-req to understand it
12:57pmBruce I think anyone that has never seen a query could run one without issues using the guide
right!
your guides are different
12:57pmLindsey yeah, some people though do end up calling support because their queries can get really, really complex
12:57pmBruce YES,....BUT I have instand CHAT!
instant*
12:58pmBruce ANOTHER gig about blackbaud
I just downloaded Live Chat
like last week....and LOVE it!
12:58pmLindsey awesome, i'm glad we're doing that
I'll mention that to my support friends
12:58pmBruce I find that if I have support do it for me, I have learned nothing
yeah it SUCKED waiting on hold for 45 minutes
now I have someone with in seconds
1:01pmBruce I think there is SO much that RE can do that me and my team have yet to discover

I learned a valuable lesson today. Social media can be fun on some levels when you use it as a networking tool but then learn how to take it to the next level. Facebook gave me a chance to practice my listening skills in a new medium. I get goose bumps over how excited I am right now. I can’t wait to chat with Bruce again. I would love the opportunity to talk to other users as well. Y’all make my days totally worth it when I can hear how our help impact your days – good and bad. Grow from the bad, build on the good.