In my post about what I learned during 2011 as a technical communicator, I wrote:

Community collaboration is extremely tough to pull off. I can’t just assign a volunteer writer a topic and let them run with it. I usually have to either gather the information from a subject matter expert or connect the volunteer with a subject matter expert — and then see them through the process with more hand-holding than I want to provide. Still, community volunteers can generate momentum by the sheer number of assignments I have to follow through with. Overall, I have no idea how to engage community volunteers in an effective way, but I think I can eventually figure a strategy out. (See What I Learned About Tech Comm During 2011.)

In response to this post, Saul Carliner added the following insightful comment:

But the challenges of working with “volunteers,” is one that is rarely mentioned when discussing SME-authored and user-generated documentation. Having had worked with volunteers in a number of sectors over the years–from work-related ones to community ones–the issue of volunteer management is one that still challenges all of them. Incentives and clarity help, but not always in the way intended. Even in areas that have years of experience with volunteers, it’s more of an art than a science. Just because we’ve moved to community-based approaches to documentation and the wikipedia has been successful doesn’t mean that other ventures don’t involve nurturing.

The last sentence particularly stands out. Yes, many social ventures (such as Wikipedia and Digg) have been hugely successful. But that doesn’t mean applying the volunteer model to tech comm is a process or technique we understand. It’s an art, and one that most community managers still struggle to figure out.

The topic isn’t just limited to volunteer engagement. SME-authored documentation, as Saul mentions, also fits into this genre.

In a series of questions I responded to on Ugur Akinci’s blog, I reflected at length on what is the most significant change in the field of technical communication. It fits right in with collaborative efforts and social intelligence. Here’s an excerpt of my response:

QUESTION (3): What is the single most important change that you see in the technical communication sector since you first became a technical communicator?

… The greatest transformation yet to come is to drop the single-author paradigm of technical writing and to embrace the way information flows on the web. … For years help authoring has consisted of one person (or just a few people) writing help material. When content comes from one person, the content is usually limited in perspective, accuracy, and applicability. Writing needs to become much more collaborative, and not just from inside the corporation, but outside as well. Documentation is never finished. When I log off for the day, someone out there may be contributing to the documentation, making it evolve, adding sections, correcting errors, expanding on special cases, and so on.

It’s engaging to come into the office in the morning and review the latest changes to the wiki, to find that someone added a new section, or a new page. We no longer have documentation as static, standalone files that are written in haste by one technical writer and then “finished” as he or she moves to the next project. Documentation is a living, breathing body of information – like the web. The web is in constant flux. It’s full of a whole landscape of people – trolls, spammers, forum champions, lurkers, relentless volunteers, bloggers, programming whizzes. All of these people, like characters in a circus, come together on the same stage, interacting with each other in rich, multifaceted ways. Sometimes these interactions are exciting, other times they’re frustrating. But either way, documentation evolves to become more web-like in the ebb and flow of information.

This ebb and flow of information is what I find most rewarding about technical communication. Information no longer emanates from one source but rather connects into a greater body of people. This is the genius of the web. The web thrives because of this content interaction — one person building on the ideas of another in collaborative, interactive ways. (Read the full interview on Ugur Akinci’s blog.)

Let’s come back to the original question. How can you harness the enthusiasm and talent of volunteers in productive ways? The answer to this question wouldn’t just be a neat technique to enhance productivity; it would change everything about my job.

The problem is not content strategy; it’s content tactics. The strategy is clear: draw upon the talent and enthusiasm of willing volunteers to write high-quality content. The details of how remain a mystery. Let me continue my brainstorm.

Challenges

Several main challenges make this a difficult problem:

• Volunteer writers often don’t have the information necessary to write articles.
• SMEs with the knowledge often don’t have the interest to write articles.
• Content that volunteers write, even if informed, often needs significant editorial processing before it’s ready for publication.
• Writing assignments often need more detail before you can assign them to volunteers. If you can only gather this information internally, it makes it difficult to assign to volunteers.
• The remote distance between headquarters and volunteers makes collaboration and communication more difficult.

Known Principles that Work

Now that I’ve outlined the challenges, let me also outline what I’ve learned about volunteer engagement:

• People are much more likely to accept invitations when invited on a personal level.
• People are much more likely to accept invitations when they have a relationship of trust with you.
• People need a clear understanding of what you want them to do.
• People need deadlines to understand when you expect them to finish their assignments.
• People need regular communication so that you can address issues and other concerns that might be obstacles.
• Communicating on a personal level, building trust, establishing deadlines, providing detail, etc., takes significant management time.
• People need opportunities to pursue their strengths. Not everyone is a creative writer. Many people function better as editors.
• People need access to information, people, and meetings to write the content that is expected of them.
• Content often goes through successive levels of edits before it’s ready for publication.
• People have a limited amount of time to work on articles they are not getting paid for.
• People like to feel that their contributions are valued, not wasted.
• Coordinating, tracking, commenting, and following up on assignments for scores of volunteers requires an advanced system to manage all of this information.
• People often want to get something in return for their volunteering, such as more experience, understanding, improvement, portfolio samples, and more.
• People often overestimate their writing abilities.

Formulating a plan

I recognize that my brainstorming and analysis is specific to my own volunteer situation, and one situation may vary dramatically to the next. Hopefully the tactical plan I form may be of interest to others who work in other volunteer situations, even if the details vary. Given the challenges and known principles, what would work well for success?

Here’s are a few potential first steps:

Step 1. Create a body of work that volunteers can do. This means crafting assignments that are important and worthwhile. Creating a body of work may be the most difficult of all steps, as this requires me to add detail and potentially outlines to topics. Sometimes I may only have an idea for a story, or a name to contact, not an actual story in hand. But having a tenuous idea doesn’t work well for volunteers, who may be playing guessing games at what I want. The details of the assignments need to be clearly spelled out. Each writing assignment needs to have a basic level of clarity to be something that users can actually accomplish. Contact points, key messages for the article, length, tone, and other details should be clearly defined.

Step 2. Personally invite volunteers to act. The second step would be to personally invite volunteers to work on the tasks they’re assigned. The invitations should ensure that the writing assignment is a good fit for the volunteer (that is, matching the volunteer’s strengths and interests), that the volunteers have a good idea of what you expect, and the due date.

Step 3. Regularly review, track, and follow-up with assignments.  It would be a good idea to review all the items stored in the system (in my case, JIRA) on a daily basis so that I don’t let some assignments languish and become forgotten. Volunteers may run into insurmountable issues and challenges; they may realize the assignment isn’t a good fit for their interests. By following up and checking in regularly with volunteers, I also demonstrate the value and importance of the assignment.

Step 4. Have volunteers edit volunteer writing. This is one of the steps that I’ve never implemented, but it might be good to have volunteers edit other volunteers’ writing. Writing often needs successive levels of editorial review. I could provide some quick comments and feedback, and then either have the volunteer make revisions or pass it to another volunteer to make edits, and then potentially to another volunteer. This way by the time the writing falls on my desk, it’s already to a level that is near publication quality. In some situations, I could ask SMEs to write content and then pass it along to volunteer writers to edit.

Step 5. Communicate regularly. Without regular communication, people lose interest. They quickly drop off. The communication also helps build trust, and people may feel as if they’re learning more from discussions. It’s not possible to build a lively community without regular engagement through e-mail and other online interactions. Perhaps contributing an e-mail a day may go a long way toward building trust and helping volunteers feel that they’re getting a lot out of the experience.

 Conclusion

No system works if one doesn’t use it. These five steps aren’t rocket science. I could probably have a decent amount of success implementing them. The problem is maintaining regular activity, sticking with the system week after week, especially when other, higher internal projects get in the way.  This is perhaps why breaking the tactics down to even a more concrete, daily to-do list might be a good idea.

I’m interested to hear what strategies you use for managing volunteer writers.

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I touched briefly on Google’s search engine algorithm. Since Google is such an important search engine for content, including help content, I want to dive deeper into strategies for maximizing the visibility of help content on Google.

Putting Help Content on Google

Since many users turn directly to Google to find answers to questions, rather than turning to the help file, it makes sense to put your help content on Google.

Additionally, help files are rich in keyword density. An online help file with more than 200 topics adds hundreds of keywords to your company’s site, making your product more findable.

If you have optimized your help content with synonyms and other terms that people actually use, the help file can be a wealth of highly search-engine-optimized content that increases visibility of your product and company in Google’s search engine results, right?

Let’s Try a Test

Let’s try a test. Let’s say that I’m using a software application, Madcap Flare, and I want to know how to insert concept keywords. Using Google, I search for “insert concept keywords flare.”

Google search results for insert concept keywords in Flare

Why is it that the search results didn’t find the topic in Flare’s online help file, which is on the web? It did find a Madcap KB article, but not the topic in the webhelp file.

The exact topic in Flare’s help is titled Inserting Concepts into Topics. Even if I search for this phrase, the Flare help topic doesn’t appear in Google’s results. In fact, the results for this search aren’t even related to help authoring or Flare.

When I search for inserting concepts into topics flare, one of the results points to a topic in Flare’s online help: Creating Printed Output. But still not the webhelp topic I’m looking for.

Why didn’t Inserting Concepts into Topics, the topic from Flare’s help file, appear in any of my Google searches, even when the topic is online and apparently indexed by Google? Why is it that Eddie Van Arsdall’s post, Madcap Flare Tip: Helping Users Find Related Information, appears at the top of the list for both of my Google searches?

What Is PageRank?

Eddie’s post itself has just a couple of inlinks, that is, links pointing to it from other sites. But to Eddie Van Arsdall’s domain, Simplifying Complexity, there are a lot of links pointing to it. These incoming links give Eddie something called PageRank, which helps his topic dominate the search engine results.

PageRank is a trademarked term created by Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, that describes a ranking of a website’s credibility and authority. Every time you link to a site, Google interprets that link as a vote of confidence for the site. You’re vouching for the site’s credibility when you link to it.

For Google, PageRank is a major variable that determines what sites appear in the search engine results (SERPs). Sites with a high PageRank get more visibility in SERPs. If a site has 1,000 links pointing to it, Google knows that it must be a credible and worthwhile site. Therefore the site appears higher in the results.

Each site on the web is assigned a PageRank between 0 and 10. You can check PageRank here or more powerfully with the SearchStatus Firefox extension.

The New York Times and Wikipedia have a PageRank of 9. TC.Eserver.org and my site have a PageRank of 6. Simplifying Complexity has a PageRank of 4.

In contrast, the webhelp for Flare has no page rank at all. Ouch.

Help Content and PageRank

Help content on the web will always be at a disadvantage with PageRank, because people are less inclined to link to webhelp topics than to blogs or other user-created sites. Why is that?

One reason is that it’s hard to link to a webhelp topic. Webhelp files use frames, so even if you’re looking at the Inserting Concepts into Topics topic, you can’t grab the link to it unless you click the TOC accordion tab at the bottom, find the topic in the TOC, right-click the topic, and copy the link address. It’s non-intuitive to see the link.

Additionally, it’s just not common to link to help files. We tend to link to content created by people like us, especially when the content includes unique insight and perspective from a person’s point of view. Plain procedural topics are boring. We don’t have cause to link to them.

Frames and SEO

Another reason the Flare webhelp topic doesn’t appear in the SERPs is because Flare’s webhelp uses frames. Using frames in general is a poor practice for SEO on web. Many people point out that frames aren’t good for search engine optimization. For example, Webconfs.com: SEO Tools and Webmaster Utilities says ”Frames are very, very bad for SEO. Avoid using them unless really necessary.” Almost every HAT’s webhelp output I’ve seen uses frames, unfortunately.

Index Keywords and 2% Keyword Density

Not only do webhelp files lack PageRank and use frames, they also run into problems with index keywords. Google dislikes repetition of the same keyword over and over in the topic because Google thinks the site is trying to trick it.

The optimal keyword density is about 2%, meaning that if you have 300 words in your article, about 6 of them should be the keyword phrase you’re trying to rank for. If you have a keyword density of 20%, Google sees this as trying to game the system. The excessive keyword density works against you.

If I were to include my string of sample keywords that I referenced in my last post, would Google interpret this list of keywords as an attempt to game keyword density? Here’s that list:

• burn notice
• deliver burn notice
• drop off burn notices
• burn notices sending
• how to present a burn notice
• cutting off undercover agents
• severing ties with field agents
• burn notice protocol
• best way to handle burn notice
• give burn notice to operatives

Assuming Google even sees this content (questionable since the index keywords are tagged using Madcap’s unique markup in the code), would Google penalize me for overusing the keyword “burn notice”? I’m not sure.

Moving Towards a Dangerous Conclusion

As the importance of visibility on Google grows, and as companies recognize and treat their help content as an SEO asset for the online visibility and ranking (not to mention marketing) of their products, shouldn’t we put our help content on web-friendly platforms that will maximize their visibility in Google’s search engine results? Are traditional help authoring tools holding us back from realizing the SEO power of our help content?

Jing, TechSmith’s quick image and video capture tool, has their help on a blog platform (Movable Type). When I search for capture video with Jing, the help appears in the top five results.

Are blog platforms the future of help authoring?

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• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
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Ginny Redish -- Letting Go of the Words

Ginny Redish has just written a new book, Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works. I had a chance to meet up with Ginny at the STC Summit and interviewed her briefly about her new book. Redish told me,  “Every use of your website is a conversation started by the site visitor.” Here’s an extended description:

People come to web sites for the content — for the information that answers their questions and lets them complete their tasks. In Letting Go of the Words, Ginny Redish provides easy-to-read guidelines with many full-color examples to help you plan, organize, write, and revise web content so that it is easy to find and easy to use.

You can buy the book here. It really is in full color with a lot of attractive diagrams and illustrations.

I haven’t read it yet, but the writing-as-conversation metaphor is appealing. The basic idea, I believe, is to anticipate the reader’s questions and then construct your writing as a response. This type of writing focuses you on your audience and gets you thinking about the specific questions, concerns, issues, and other problems your users might have. Each sentence you write should somehow answers those questions — you construct the conversation. Sounds like a brilliant technique, though I’ve never fully implemented it.

More Resources about Ginny Redish and Letting Go of the Words

• Other interviews about Letting Go of the Words
• Ginny’s blog listing articles related to the book
• Ginny Redish’s website

Blog Sponsors

• Webworks ePublisher
• Scriptorium
• Help Generator help authoring software
• Southern Polytechnic: Information Design and Communication
• Simplified English
• MindTouch
• Madcap Software
• Dr.Explain
• Adobe Technical Communication Suite
• Congree