Nowadays, your customers are looking for information that is easily accessible online in many formats. Moreover, the technical information of a product not only helps to sell it, but also to build a community around it that perceives it positively. That way, your product will gain value and improve your reputation, leading to a healthy business model.
1. Content availability: the basics
It seems obvious that content should be easily available for any product. How can customers be interested in a product they will struggle to get information on ? Short of easily accessible information, they could misuse it and put themselves in potential danger.
Also, recent studies prove that people tend to prefer using a single platform for all the information.
2. Accurate content: Consistency
Your information must be consistent for the customer to find it useful. You must also make sure that the grammar is up to scratch, as well as how clear your content is. Technical communication needs to be easily readable for the customer to find it both interesting, and informative.
3. Appropriate content: Adaptation
When writing any technical content, there are three important points that must always be taken into account:
Language: You should focus most of your time and effort on localization. As tcworld puts it, “81 percent [of readers] want content available in their language”.
Complexity: you are going to give content to people who may not be experts within the domain. The simpler the terms and the more the information is broken down into understandable chunks, the better.
Accessibility: Mobiles and tablets are being increasingly used to search for information. Make your information mobile-friendly. With many formats available, it’s an easy and relatively cheap way of broadening your audience.
4. Connected content: Interaction
Today’s consumers want to interact with the product information they find. They might share, review, rate, comment it or even modify content, as they see fit.
Social media: this is particularly true for millenials, who are contstantly looking for a greater sense of community online. This is often done by commenting on a community website about the product.
Reputation: Neglecting the image of your product is probably the biggest mistake you could make. People are likely to judge a brand according to the reviews they find on the Internet, so taking care of your online reputation should be at the top of your list.
Media: Here’s a smart tip: Another recent study shows that users like videos or video tutorials in order to help them understand a product. You’d better start using this format to improve your user experience!
Your product has greater chances of being successful if you can create a community around it. And this can be done by allowing users to interact with the different forms technical information that you have innovated for your product.
5. Intelligent content: Personalization
The last element when it comes to customer friendly technical information is adapting content to the user. Content could be personalized through filters for example, or made interactive to improve the user experience. Not only should the content be user-friendly, but so should the way in which users find it.
By making your content available, accurate, appropriate, connected and intelligent, you will create a solid customer base. This will lead to the creation of a community that will share about your product and participate in your brand reputation. Now that you understand the importance of developing your technical communication strategy, use it to make your product valuable and successful!
Comments
Yannick Obergfell | Sep 24, 2018 20:44
Great article Jean-Lou, thanks!