Hey Startups, Don’t Wait Too Long to Bring on a Good Tech Writer

Documentation is more than just a checkbox item; it is a part of the product, an interface. It speaks to how you treat your customers, how you present your product and company to customers. It’s a customer touch point, and smarter companies treat it as such.

Here are the answers to five common questions around why you should hire a skilled technical writer sooner than you may think.

1. What happens if I wait?

Delaying hiring a skilled and dedicated writer means your other talent is spending time writing the documentation, and that has some major drawbacks:

• Obviously, they aren’t writing code, or Product Managing, or whatever other vital function they were hired to do.
• What you get likely isn’t of professional quality, which sends the wrong message to your customers.
• Kruft: unorganized, poorly planned systems grow “organically” and the longer you wait, the more inefficient and ingrained they become (and the more expensive to fix).
• You’re inadvertently/accidentally/haphazardly deciding the tone and voice you’ll use to communicate with users and customers. Is that something you want to leave to chance?

2. Why should I hire a skilled and dedicated writer?

You hired skilled developers and testers. You hired skilled marketing and sales staff. You need to hire a skilled writer, and you need the right kind of writer. Depending on your business model, you might need to hire a generalist (capable of writing for multiple audiences, Marketing collateral, User Guides, Release Notes, etc.) or maybe a specialist. Also, know what you need before you hire. If your product or service is very technical and you need someone to help with API/SDK writing, you may not want a writer who makes kick-ass videos and laser sharp context sensitive help (but I sure would!). A good technical writer can work closely with:

• UXD, to help put the right information in the UI/on the page.
• Engineering, to help provide useful/helpful error messages.
• Marketing, to help shore up the “technical” side of Technical Marketing.
• Product Management, to help ensure the features are being communicated to the users according to PMs vision.

3. What do I get when I do hire one?

First and foremost, you get high quality documentation. That kind of documentation has several benefits. It sends a powerful message to your customers, saying:

• You’re not a “beta tester”
• We are a real company with a real product
• We value your time and effort

It reduces support costs; informed and self-sufficient customers don’t need to call support as often. It can help enhance and bolster the UI and user experience via things like pop up text and error messages, adding a layer of consistency that reassures the reader.

Not helpful…

4. Why not just hire a contractor?

There are pros and cons to hiring a contract writer. A contractor may have a short-term mindset: get in, get it written, get out — not necessarily looking at long term goals. It takes time to build relationships with Eng/PM/etc., and when the contract’s over, those relationships vanish with the writer.

On the plus side, it’s a good way to find out what you like in writers and what you don’t. Also, there are plenty of very good contractor writers out there, and you can get high quality documentation from them.

The key here is longer term thinking. The writer needs to be thinking about the relationship with the customer: what will it be like, where will it go? What’s the goal? If your writer is focused on the quickest way to deliver something, that could lead to problems similar to just having a developer or PM write the documentation. Strategic thinking is where it’s at.

If the product is changing rapidly, a contractor with a known end date will have to “draw a line in the sand” — pick a date and work toward deliverables for that date. That’s not their fault, it’s just how the math works. As a counter, you might want someone around for the long term, to adjust as the schedule and product changes.

5. What else should I know?

Even though you have an awesome writer on board you will still need to review the writing, much in the same way that you have code review and testing, even for your best developers.

Not all writers excel at all types of writing. You may not want a very technical writer to attempt to write things like marketing collateral, for example. Know what kind of writing you need and what the writer will be responsible for, prior to hiring.

Depending on how far along you’ve gotten prior to hiring someone, you may have rudimentary documentation processes and tools in place. Remember what we said above about kruft. Your writer may need to purchase tools or set up software and processes to facilitate their work. Make that process as easy as possible — you want that writer up and running quickly.

Remember that you hired this person to do the job so you wouldn’t have to. Let them do the job!