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I have come to believe one thing over 20 years of managing marketing, employee, technical and corporate communications... you MUST understand your audiences (emphasizing the plural) your product (including its features and flaws) and the goals of your organization (profit, market share, ROI and so on). You cannot be completely effective in any subdiscipline of communications without those three interrelated sets of knowledge. And you cannot be completely successful in an organization without the ability to play well with others and the confidence to demonstrate your added value.
The willingness to trash all marcomm, all HR, and various other business disciplines indicates to me that many TW's lack that confidence, and quite possibly that ability. As for me, I happily integrate all types of communication activities into my repetoire, and constantly look for ways to add value to the product or service I'm working on. Sometimes I step on toes, but mostly I help get good products out to appreciative users. That's my success metric.
Regards
Connie P. Giordano
Technical Writer
(704) 388-4318
(704) 957-8450 (c)
connie -dot- giordano -at- bankofamerica -dot- com
-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-152079 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-152079 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of John
Posada
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2004 9:00 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Great piece on marketing collateral
>That's because tech writers are trained
>to back up everything they say with real
>technical facts. Marcomm (and Sales) is
>not held to that same standard, so of
>course writing about a product's
>"benefits" is easier for them.
Both forms of writing have Good and Bad, Bad Marcom is unsubstantiated
benefits. Bad Technical writing has wrong facts, wrong procedures, and
incomplete instructions. Neither are immune from lower than desired
standards.
As far as "training", I think we're all seen proof of technical writers
on this list who demonstrate no training at all.
As far as the type of writing that Keith now does and I did, I have news
for you. You're presenting a document to take 100 million dollars of
someone else's money, they ARE going to make you prove EVERY SINGLE
STATEMENT, so you better be able to back up everything with facts.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Isogon Corporation http://www.isogon.com
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