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"Social Documentation" -- Cool but Problematic

by Tom Johnson on Aug 16, 2009
categories: technical-writing

I hadn't heard of the term "social documentation" before, but it describes the Twitter responses, video replies, and other social media formats that support centers use to provide responses to technical problems customers ask about. This post by LugIron shows an example of a video response. The problem with social documentation is that, if it's not incorporated into the documentation, the support center will have to respond again -- and again and again. So while it may seem powerful and make the customer feel like a king, a better solution that benefits the rest of the customer base would be to update the documentation (and perhaps include a video in the documentation) and send the customer that link. Maybe they're already doing that.

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

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