Be a Part of the Conversation

Lindsey Robbins — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

(Originally appeared on From the Doc Side)

How often do you think about the conversations you have with your constituents or users? Are you thinking about the synchronous real time conversations - the phone calls, the meetings, the special events? If you are, you're overlooking one of the most important conversations you're having with your members, users, or constituents. The conversations we have that aren't in real time can make or break your success. Some examples of asynchronous conversations are reports, journal articles, policies and procedures, legal notices, emails, websites, twitter, SMS, promotional materials, and more. No matter the medium, every user is seeking an answer.

This concept was perhaps the most interesting from a thought process perspective from the conference I attended. The session I attended was from Ginny Redish on Writing as an Asynchronous Conversation. It made me think about how I write and how every piece of documentation we write is an ongoing conversation with users.

So, whenever you write something, ask yourself, what question am I answering? You can see if you're answering questions by looking for the verb. Conversations usually start and progress with one. For example, check out Amazon.com's login page. What question are they asking you?

In the software world, we've been answering questions for a long time. A dialog box is a form of question. Do you want to delete this very important file forever and be doomed two days from now? Click Yes or No! We, of course, click No and curse ourselves out later. However, the key element is the program asked me a question. The conversation was started by the software and I gave a dumb answer, but an answer just the same.

Over the years, in software documentation we've added more conversations via context sensitive help (F1), help files, user guides, tutorials, and more. No matter how we do it, we have to evaluate whether we are answering your questions. If we aren't, what can we do better? See, another question!

I suggest you ask yourself the same thing. How are you doing in your conversations?

For example, try answering these questions -
"How is my money being used?"
"How can I help your mission by volunteering?"
"When is your next special event?"
"What is the latest news from your organization?"
"The economy isn't great. I don't have a lot of money, but I want to help. What can I do?"

How did you do answering the questions? And, more importantly, where are you answering them? We can't always rely on real time conversations to answer questions, we have to be effective with every means of communication or software available.

Sometimes, your users or constituents won't know the correct question to ask. In those situations, try to think out the questions for them and answer them in advance. Provide them with the conversation starter and they're more likely to be engaged.

And remember, people don't have an infinite amount of time. They really will only participate in the conversation long enough to get their answer. Therefore, all your communication whether it's real time or not needs to be concise, clear, and efficient. Don't provide lots of and lots of text that users will balk at when they see (for example, this crazy long post is not a good conversation starter ). Keep your answers to the point, ask yourself if you're answering a question, and validate by having others review your work.

After all, it's not really computer to human interaction. There is a person on the other end of the computer and they need human to human interaction. All these great tools like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Raiser's Edge, Blackbaud NetCommunity, Education Edge, and more are tools. They are the medium that connects you to your people. Are you using the tool to create conversations?

Here's a short reminder…
1. Keep conversations short and on topic.
2. When you write something, identify the question being answered.

And remember, over these short asynchronous conversations you're having with constituents, users, and members, you are developing relationships. It's not always about making the pitch where you win or lose people, it's how you handle the short, quick conversations on a daily basis.

Chatterbox : policies and procedures

Be a Part of the Conversation