In the hustle and bustle of the modern world and the invention of various technologies, one might not understand much technical jargon. Enter our blog: 10 Reasons to Hire a Technical Writer for Your Business.
Yes, you read that right! The technical writer stands out in the crowd. They are the silent champions. They bridge the gap between complex technical concepts and everyday language. Dive deep into this blog to explore more.
What is Technical Writing?
Technical writing is a blend of writing skills with subject-matter knowledge to produce educational content or documents like manuals, articles, and product guides. They share highly technical information in a way that is understandable by the specific audience (in simple terms, to a layman). They use the technical jargon of their respective fields or subjects to produce complicated guides. Most often, they provide content for trade or industry-specific audiences. Others work on making difficult topics simple for a general audience. They most prominently work in industries like engineering, computer science, aerospace, biotechnology, chemistry, robotics, healthcare and medical, and manufacturing.
Who is a Technical Writer?
A technical writer is a specialist who produces content and prepares documentation that conveys technical knowledge in an easy-to-understand way. They play an important role in converting technical ideas, processes, and requirements into content that is easy to understand for non-technical people. These include user manuals, guides, tutorials, online help systems, FAQs, and technical documentation. Technical writers must also understand their target audience.
The hiring of technical writers is expected to grow by 7% from 2022 to 2032, faster than average. They need to collaborate with Subject-Matter Experts (SMEs) to fully understand the technical material that they will write about, and they must know the art of asking the right questions.
7 C’s of Technical Writing
Here are the 7 C’s of Technical Writing:
- Crispness: Technical writing should be brief and free of redundant words, phrases, and sentences.
- Comprehensiveness: It must contain all relevant data, including all important facts, statistics, and details.
- Clearness: It should be clear and simple to grasp. It should convey the desired message.
- Credibility: It should be free of mistakes, precise and follow all grammatical and spelling requirements.
- Consistency: The layout, style, tone, and language should be consistent across all technical writing documents.
- Consideration: Technical writers should consider the target audience’s needs, interests, and background knowledge. In simple terms, define your buyer persons to make it easily accessible for the audience.
- Courtesy: Technical writing should avoid using offensive or insulting language or tone and should instead be courteous, respectful, and professional.
In case you are wondering with the advent of AI, what is the scenario for writers? You will find your answers here at our blog post: Will AI Replace Copywriters? How AI is Changing the Content Game?
Types of Technical Writing
Technical writing includes a wide range of documentation formats intended to assist consumers in learning and using a product or service. Technical writers apply their knowledge to produce documentation that is simple to read, clear, and easy to use so that customers may use a product without problem. Technical writing documentation comes in several forms. These include:
Medical Documents
Writing in this genre focuses on medical diagnosis, treatment, and research. Using the greatest medical documentation software available, medical records must be precise, well-organized, and comprehensive. Practitioners utilize these papers as a learning tool to learn about processes and effects.
Case Studies
These studies are meant to demonstrate how a certain product benefits a company. The company will explain in writing how this good or service helped the business accomplish its objectives. Testimonials and customer reviews are two types of case studies.
Customer Documentation
By converting technical jargon into easily understood text, this kind of documentation assists users in learning and using a product. Technical books, product manuals, user assistance guides, and assembly instructions are a few types of customer material.
Conventional Documentation
Technical writers create these publications for subject-matter specialists. Software user manuals, how-to guides, operation and maintenance manuals, and general instructions are some examples of these papers.
10 Reasons to Hire a Technical Writer for Your Business
If you are looking for technical writers, you should be aware of your possibilities. Many businesses delegate writing technical and documentation for the products and services to their engineering and marketing departments. Some businesses employ a full-time technical writer. Here are 10 reasons why you should hire a technical writer for your business:
To Understand the Audience
Your target audience must always be your priority when you begin writing any piece of information. A technical writer has the capacity to put her/himself in the shoes of a reader. They understand the audience-specific writing rule. This helps them emphasise the reader’s interests in their work. Even if consumers’ needs are considered while creating the product, it is important to explain the features of the products and services and how they benefit the target and prospective audience. The audience needs information that is tailored to meet their needs. So, the content should be written correctly by the professional technical writers.
More Clarity and Brief Content
Writing is a skill that can be nurtured and developed like any other. Professional writers are committed to creating content that is brief and clear. They can produce high-quality and clear information rather than someone who is not experienced. The purpose of technical writing is to make it simpler to understand for the audience. Therefore, hiring experts is the best way to produce content that is simple, brief, graspable, and clear for your audience.
Focus solely on Writing
There will be incidents where you require a piece of content in a short span of time with accuracy. Your technical and marketing teams might be overwhelmed by the number of responsibilities. An expert technical writer will help you as he/she will entirely be devoted to writing and concerned about producing high-quality content. As a result, they are not trying to understand the fundamentals of writing while also managing other responsibilities. You can reduce unnecessary wastage of time.
Better Content Layout
Clarity and brevity are crucial for technical writing. Considering the perspective of your audience, you need to create documents that are easy to read and well-written. Thus, a proper layout and structure are necessary. The technical writers understand how to structure the content making it readable and accessible for the audience. They are skilled in using correct white space, headings, lists, and other formatting features. All these contribute to making better, easy-to-read and comprehensive content for the audience. They also partner with designers and subject-matter experts to create informative content and keep the readers engaged.
Unbiased Perspective
Sometimes, it is challenging to write about a product or a service because you feel too close to it. You overstate the benefits and describe its features. However, a technical writer will help you provide an unbiased perspective. They will make it look good and appealing but they will also think about the audience’s perspective and add the objective flare to it. They perceive a product or a service as a whole. Therefore, they can express the entire image to the audience with more precision and accuracy.
Technical Writing is Cost-effective
Generally, hiring a technical writer will help you save money compared to other staff members to prepare documentation. They have lower salaries as compared to engineers, which is why it is cost-effective to hire them for content production. They can finish writing content faster than it would take someone else to do it. Experience and talent reduce cost and increase efficiency. Even if you hired a contractual technical writer, you only have to pay for the hours they worked to prepare the content. You don’t have to pay for the hours they didn’t work for you. Thus, it is a cost-effective approach for your business or you are running a startup.
Increases Team Effectiveness
The rest of the team has more time and energy to focus on primary responsibilities by employing a technical writer for your business. An engineer or a marketing person will not be able to devote all their time to writing and drafting documents, that too quickly and efficiently. Technical writers bridge this gap by simplifying content production using their excellent communication and writing skills. This helps the other team members to focus on the core strategies. This further boosts the productivity of your team and increases the quality of your written content.
SEO Optimisation
We are living in the digital age. SEO helps to get your content in front of your target audience. A technical writer will create content and also optimise it for search engines. This also helps improve your website ranking making it easier for the customers to find you. A technical writer will help you reach your target audience with the right content. They will write the content in a simple way to make it readable and understandable for your audience. They will employ the right keywords that will help your website crawl upward in the search engines. You can hire an expert content marketer to captivate your audience.
Competitive Edge
A technical writer will help create high-quality content for your audience. Having high-quality and reader-friendly content can set your business apart from the competitors in your industry. They will help make your products or services appealing to prospective customers. This will give you a competitive edge in the marketplace. High-quality content will help you build relationships with your audience in your niche. It will also establish a loyal customer base for your company by building trust in the community.
Maintaining Brand Consistency
A technical writer will make sure that your brand’s voice and values are uniform across all platforms. Consistent, high-quality, and jargon-free content will help to build authenticity among your audience. It strengthens brand loyalty in the industry. Brand consistency creates a sense of stability and reliability in front of your audience. They will carefully create content that follows your brand guidelines to make sure every piece of content resonates with your brand’s identity. This leads to higher customer retention rates.
Hiring a technical writer is an investment that has many benefits for your business. It will help improve your communication and brand image. It will save time and resources. They bring a lot of value to your business. Content makes a huge difference in the world. As you consider the growth and success of your business, investing in a technical writer will reap many benefits. Technical writing is a lucrative career opportunity. According to Forbes research, the median annual salary of a technical writer is $ 79,960. They will help improve the visibility of your business in the digital landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do companies need a technical writer?
Technical writers are considered experts in their field of writing. They do extensive research on products, and procedures and collaborate closely with the subject-matter experts. They write, organise and structure the content so that the internal teams, stakeholders, and the audience can quickly access it.
How do technical writers add value?
Investing in technical writers is a value to the projects in your team. They are experts in creating the documentation of necessary information and provide a thorough explanation of a product or a service to make it easy for the end-user.
What is the main goal of a technical writer?
The main purpose of a technical writer is to simplify complicated content to make it readable and user-friendly. They create content that is clear, concise, and simple for the target audience to follow and understand.
What are the duties of a technical writer?
– Write and edit technical documents such as product manuals, guides etc.
– Collaborates with engineers, and subject-matter experts to learn about specific products and services.
– Conducts thorough research on product/service samples to fully grasp about their features and benefits.
– Plans and organises the writing process and sets deadlines.
– Gathers feedback from customers, designers, and manufacturers to improve technical documents.
When should I hire a technical writer?
You hire a technical writer when you need to produce instruction manuals, how-to guides, journal articles, white papers, and other technical pieces using simple language to explain complex issues. To determine the proper tone and style for various papers by analysing the target audience. To create high-quality deliverables. Conduct an in-depth analysis to gain knowledge of a topic area.
