Who is today’s content professional? Lavacon 2013

Kapil Verma | Sr. Product Manager, Adobe

and future’s

A little bit about myself..

• Manage the Adobe Technical Communication line of products

• Responsible for product strategy and

roadmap, and customer and partner relationships

• Prior to Tech Comm, worked in marketing, strategy and software engineering

So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?

Content Professional

Business En

d U

sers

Peers

Insights drawn from several surveys over time

Tech Comm Content Strategy & Tools Survey

Tech comm Tools and trends survey

STC

Feb’12 May’13 Sep’13

1 2 3

Who is today’s technical communicator?

STC Worldwide tech comm groups

So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?

Content Professional

Business En

d U

sers

Peers

Business

Business is demanding more efficiency

72% reported their software budgets

are either decreasing or at

best stable..

..while >40% reported increase

in workload

There is more to do –deadlines to meet, more devices, more languages and more technologies to comprehend

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490); The 2012 Writers UA Salary Survey Survey question: Over the last 3 years, what has been the trend for software spends in your tech pubs department?

How are content professionals responding to this changing expectation?

How to produce content?

What content “really” matters?

Structured Authoring

Content Prioritization

Adoption of structured authoring is increasing..

29%

42%

15%

28%

44%

2008 2009 2011 2012

Scriptorium SDL Content Wrangler

% of respondents who are already doing structured authoring % of total, various industry surveys

Source: Scriptorium 2009, 2011; SDL survey; Content Wrangler Survey Source: Adobe survey to STC NA 2012 (N=237) Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490)

20% 28%

19% 13%

2012 2013Adobe Surveys

Already Doing

Plan to

..And it is quite broad across corporation size

39%

24%

21%

34%

8%

6%

3%

7%

9%

11%

8%

5%

Structured Authoring Migration Trends Percent of total responses

Already doing

Migrating

Planning to migrate

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question:At what stage of structured authoring journey are you currently? Small”1-9; Medium=10-1K; Large=1-5K; Enterprise > 5K FTE

55%

42%

32%

46% Small

Medium

Large

Enterprise

..And by industry and geo

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: At what stage of structured authoring journey are you currently? % of respondents who said they are already doing/migrating/planning to migrate to structured authoring

32%

56%

32%

41%

50%

Healthcare

Telecommunications

Manufacturing

Prof Services

High Tech

Already doing/Migrating/Planning to do SA % of total respondents

Top 5 verticals

NA

APJ

EMEA

49%

40%

40%

Rationale for choosing structured authoring supports the desire for efficiency

3.3

3.8

3.9

4.1

4.3

4.3

4.4

Savings in translation costs

Savings in contentdevelopment time

Reduced content errors

Easier publishing to multipleformats

Ease of updating/maintenance

Document consistency

Content re-use

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: Please rate the importance of the following factors in your decision to move to structured authoring.

Importance of factors in migration to SA Average rating, scale 1-5. 1=Not Important and 5=v. important

Majority of the top reasons are related to driving efficiency in

content development,

localization and publishing

Structured Authoring is here to stay..

But, there is a skill gap which will need to be bridged

699

555

139

2,858

Source: Indeed.com

Only 10-15% may have the right skill set

How are tech comm professionals responding to this changing expectation?

How to produce content?

What content “really” matters?

Structured Authoring

Content Prioritization

Content that “really” matters

30% of respondents rated usage of web analytics tools as an important requirement

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey question: Please rate the following potential enhancements for Adobe RoboHelp according to their importance to you

CASE STUDY: Adobe Documentation team

Challenge Action Result

• Maintain 100K pages across 30+ products

• 27 people team • What to focus on?

• Implemented comprehensive web analytics

• Identified key metrics for tracking related to traffic, content engagement and discoverability

• 10-20% of content

generates >80% of interest

• Focused approach led to improvements positive ratings by 25% and reduction in support calls

• More empowered role for tech comm

+

Insight

Results

The second thing business is demanding is show the business value of content

Challenge and opportunity are two sides of the same coin..

Source: Google Trends

..but is there an opportunity?

Business views Tech Comm as a cost center..

Content Marketing

Technical content can drive business value

According to a HP study, 90% of users never even touch the product before buying. The knowledge users gain is from reviews and product content on the Web

..and there is evidence to show for it

A NA engine manufacturer repackaged maintenance/repair procedural content into interactive eBook, and plan to sell it to customers

Adobe team generated multi-million $ in revenues for CS by generating leads from documentation

MARKETING CAMPAIGN

AWARENESS

INTEREST

EVALUATION

COMMITMENT

REFERRAL

REPEAT

Technical content can add value in the purchase funnel..

A

B

C

CASE STUDY: ifixit

So, what is holding us back?

New areas to learn and new mindset to develop

Web Analytics

Content Marketing

Structured Authoring

So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?

Content Professional

Business En

d U

sers

Peers

Peers

Collaboration is becoming ever more important in organizations

Edwin CatMull – Pixar “A movie contains literally tens of thousands of ideas. They’re in the form of every sentence; in the performance of each line; in

the design of characters, sets, and backgrounds; in the locations of the camera; in the colors, the lighting, the pacing”

Survey shows that the need and extent of collaboration is increasing in our profession as well

Number of SMEs a technical writer collaborates with on average ~9

Percentage of technical writers who collaborate with engineers, other technical writers and marketing personnel respectively

30% Percentage of technical writers who reported that the extent of collaboration is increasing in their organization

2x Is the proportion of organizations which cited increasing collaboration and planning to move to structured authoring as compared to those who don’t have any plans

76, 57, 37% Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490)

CMS as a collaboration tool, has lot of headroom to grow and will do so in the coming years

49% 50%

2012 2013

2012 2013

CMS penetration % of respondents who are using any CMS

39%

68%

No plans of movingto structured

authoring

Already doingstructured authoring

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2012 (N=237) Survey Question: Which of the following CMS are you currently using or planning to use?*

However, the current tools and approaches being used to collaborate are neither efficient nor scalable

81%

70%

70%

49%

Email

In person / phone

PDF comments

MS Word

11% Common authoring tool

11% CMS

9% Shared cloud review

Tool

s us

ed to

get

SM

E fe

edba

ck

Are we using the right tools for effective

collaboration?

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490) Survey Question: How do you collaborate with SMEs to get their feedback?*

?

Collaboration skills will continue to become more important in the future as well

Slide which illustrates this point

Tools will need to change for effective

collaboration at a larger scale

CMS adoption will grow

Professionals will need to develop new skillsets and

learn new technologies

So, what is causing shifts in the content professional’s role?

Content Professional

Business En

d U

sers

Peers

End Users

What are end users demanding?

1. Content should be

accessible from anywhere

2. Give me the info I need,

quickly!

3. It is a 2-way street!

Consumers demand content to “live” everywhere

Smart mobile devices are displacing PC sales

139 172

299

472

722

919

1,078

1,516

19 70

116 197

266

468

293 305 347

357

341 315

302 272

2008A 2009A 2010A 2011A 2012 A 2013E 2014E 2017E

WW Units sales by category In million units

Smartphones Tablet PC

16%

32%

-4%

CAGR 2012-17

Source: Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Gartner and IDC research

..and consumers are changing their usage and consumption habits

38% of our

daily media interactions occur on a smartphone

24%

9%

Source: Google study, 2012. The New Multi Screen World

Organizations are clearly responding to this trend

Source: Google Trends, wikipedia

Responsive web design (RWD): A web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling—across a wide range of devices (from mobile phones to desktop computer monitors)

and that includes content professionals as well

15%

34%

2012 2013

2012 2013

Mobile publishing % of respondents publishing to either EPUB, Kindle or HTML5

5%

13%

25%

3%

5% 11% 11%

29%

44%

2012 2013 Future

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2012 (N=237) Survey Question: Which of the following output formats do you currently publish or plan to publish your technical content to?*

Secondly, attention spans are crashing..

You read David Copperfield?!

Gangnam Style

Image courtesy: http://www.killianbranding.com/whitepapers/the-post-literate-era-planning-around-short-attention-spans/

This trend will become even

stronger due to..

..and they will become worse

Image courtesy: http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/the-new-multi-screen-world-study.html

We need to “wow” the consumers with engaging content and give them info they need quickly

And that’s what the content professionals are doing

~58% of the

respondents

41%

33%

11%

18%

Use images/vector art in their technical content

Use videos

Use hotspot linked images

Use audio clips

Use 3D models Source: FrameMaker Survey to STC members (2012), N=237

“Traditional” help content “Visual” help content Impact of visually rich documentation

Impact of visually rich documentation

9,657

Page views

61,514

Page views

Source: Adobe LR team Page views for Photoshop Elements (Sep 23, 2012 - Oct 19, 2013)

“Traditional” help content “Visual” help content

Thirdly, it is becoming a 2-way conversation with end user

Source: Adobe tech comm survey 2013 (N=490), Cxontent Wrangler benchmarking survey Survey Question: How often do you interact with the end users of your documentation? Please specify the number of interactions per month? Which mediums do you use to interact with your end users?*

Content professionals are interacting with end users through a variety of channels

36%

5% 1% 5%

10%

16%

27% 1-2

3-5

6-10

NONE 4 end user

interactions on average

Distribution by end user interaction % by # end-user interaction per month

11-15 16-20 >20

1%

9%

26%

44%

53%

89%

Medium of interaction % by medium used

46% of companies provide ways for customers to share feedback and/or rate their documentation and training content.

Social media is an upcoming channel for user engagement

Currently using 17%

Planning to 15%

Not decided

14%

No plans 54%

Column1 Use of social media in end user engagement Distribution by status of mobile publishing

Source: Survey to STC members, N = 393 Numbers in red represent using or planning to leverage social media to engage with end users

32% will be using social

media

• Most popular social media sites

• Industry differences • Hi-Tech (38%) • Education (42%) • Manufacturing (31%) • Healthcare (25%)

• Generation differences • Baby Boomer: 28% • Gen X = 37%

68% 62% 29%

Some starting to leverage user generated content as well

17% of companies today allow customers to create documentation and training content.

20% allow them to edit

10-20% of organizations starting to use wikis for end user engagement Image courtesy: http://ejl179.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/crazy-dude-cartoon.jpg

Source: Content Wrangler Benchmarking survey 2012; Adobe Tech Comm Survey 2013

Need to think about user engagement

Need to engage the users in this

information heavy world

End users have a voice and they will use it,

whether you will like it or not

“Content curation” becomes important

with “democratization”

Content should be accessible from mobile “devices”

Changing role of the content professional

Illustration of changing tech comm role

World is changing around us..

AUTHOR PUBLISH

Traditional Content Creation Workflow

To this..

Author

Collaborate

Publish Engage

Curate

More seamless, more collaboration

Organize and assemble “best of the world” content

Drive user engagement

Finding efficiencies

New devices

In summary..

• Content Marketing • Web analytics

Early

Establishing

Established

Establishing

Establishing

Early

Thinking like a “marketer”

Making content “ubiquitous”

Looking for “efficiencies”

Achieving “scalable” collaboration

Creating “engaging” content

Becoming a “content curator”

• Mobile formats • Consumer behavior

• XML/DITA • Topic based authoring

• New tools • CMS

• Rich media

• User generated content

CHANGING MINDSET NEW SKILLS STATUS

Adobe’s solution..

Adobe’s solution in the tech comm space

Thank you! .com/adobetcs

@KapilVermaAdobe

blogs.adobe.com/techcomm