Re: Client Newsletter
Hey, I just noticed your e-mail address. Is this the long-lost Dood? What are you doing masquerading as some guy named Bill who posts 100 messages a day? ;-)
Donna
No, can't be. I remember Bill from when I first subscribed 5 years ago. Just two different styles of writing! Or, he's really good at "tentacling".
I read Lynda's situation differently than Bill seems to have:
*] There's a newsletter in the works.
*] From my reading, tech support will be writing it.
*] Editing will go to people in the Comm dept who are more experienced
with marketing and/or internal business communication.
She wrote: "We are already focused on writing for the
client which is different than writing for sales or
for internal use."
I'm assuming the point is to provide a newsletter that addresses the latest hot issues tech support is seeing and to use a "push technology" (as they used to call it years ago) -- where you push info at the user/cutomer. (I think I've got this right, it's been a long time in INternet time.)
Lynda's group believes they should _edit_ the newsletter for a number of reasons, one of which is that it will build better relations with tech support. She's pitching tech comm as the best choice because, in addition, they will be more sympathetic editors. If I'm correct, that tech support will be writing it, then they will probably need solid editing!
I gather Lynda's team has concluded that trying to convince anyone that a newsletter is a bad idea is the wrong hill to die on. There's going to be a newsletter, so they're going with it. We frequently talk about ways to make tech writers more valuable to a company, wouldn't this be one way? (I can imagine, though, that the concern might be that a newsletter won't work.)
As for newsletter vs. knowledge base, my experience (limited, of course) is that users *hate* being told to use a knowledge base -- particularly when it comes to training materials. I'd like to hear the other side of the story though -- because I know my experience is limited and confined to infosec.
To answer Lynda's question, I can walk you through newsletter writing. You may want to set up guidelines for the writers. Am I right that the material will be written by tech support and then edited by another team -- and your group is trying to be that team? Oh, and yes, marketing writing is different from internal com is different from tech comm -- but to produce a newsletter, you'll need to work with all three types of writing.
Kelley
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References:
Client Newsletter: From: Lyda Woods
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