Meet Susan, Senior Director of User Education at Hootsuite

Everyone who uses software is constantly learning. From your first minutes exploring a new platform to your ten thousandth hour in the software you use daily, there’s always more to learn as you explore possibilities and develop your skills.

User education is the art and science of building the educational content people need right into the software they use, helping them discover features, supporting tasks the customers want to get done, and learning at their own speed. We’re building a brand-new User Education team at Hootsuite, so we wanted to get to know the leader who is bringing this team to life.

We spoke with Senior Director of User Education Susan Potter about her career, her passions, and what she’s building at Hootsuite.

Susan was born and grew up in the UK, where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in computer science. She started her career in the startup space, where she worked on everything from programming and testing to customer support and documentation — and discovered that the part she loved most was technical writing.

Susan loves exploring new places with her friends and family — her favourite vacation spot so far is New Zealand. When she’s at home, she enjoys spending her time with her partner, Ben and their dog Morris. 🐶

In 2001, she decided to make the move over the pond to the US, where she joined Microsoft. She stayed at Microsoft for 19 years and spent that entire time in user education, working both in leadership roles leading large teams and in hands-on senior roles. She has worked on a few products you’ve probably heard of, including Office 365, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype, Exchange, Commerce Server, Windows, and Windows Server.

With an amazing career under her belt, we had a few more questions for Susan, so we’ll let her tell you the rest.

What made you make the jump from Microsoft to Hootsuite?

Leaving Microsoft is not an easy thing to do, but the opportunity I have at Hootsuite is unique. I’m building an entire organization from the ground up. The business is at a good place, there’s lots of opportunity within the company and industry we’re in, and the level of priority and investment towards the user education organization is second to none. I knew this was an opportunity that would open things up for my career.

Being in a leadership role, it’s very important to report to someone who is a great leader. I worked with Ryan Donovan, CTO, at Microsoft and the opportunity to work together again was something I couldn’t pass up. He’s an incredible leader, always positive, understands the business needs and is very visionary. He sees strength in those around him and helps them build those and take their career as far as they can. I knew this was the right opportunity for me.

What does your typical day look like? What are you responsible for?

My typical day is consumed with working on building relationships between User Education and other parts of Hootsuite. I presented our new strategy at our annual kick-off in Vancouver, Rome, and Bucharest and I continue to ensure our priorities are aligned and that the team’s responsibilities are being met.

A few key goals the team will be working towards include:

1. Developing a best-in-class help experience for our customers. Our goal is to keep our customers in the product and not searching around for help.
2. Developing a reimagined help centre: make ours the best in class and ensure it is scalable and measurable.
3. Retooling our writing and publishing pipeline to better support writers and customers.

To help us reach our goals of a reimagined help center and a truly integrated experience with the product, there’s a current opening for a Director of Content Publishing and Localization.

How does the User Education team fit into the overall product strategy for 2020 and going forward?

The User Education product strategy is aimed at supporting customer retention, as we make the product easier to use. We are ultimately providing a companion to help customers as they use the product. This will ultimately reduce the number of “how-to” questions that our support team is answering.

Tell us three reasons why someone would want to join your team and three reasons why they wouldn’t.

Why this could be the team for you:

1. You want to build from the ground up. You’ll be able to contribute to a new team and help build something great together. You have resilience and grit in the way you approach your work and you’re proud of that.
2. You want to work with an amazing team focused on helping our customers. You’ll work to develop modern content formats with writers and coworkers in other disciplines. You’ll all be working towards a common goal of making a difference for our customers and the company.
3. You want to grow your career. Defining roles and career growth is something that I’m very passionate about. We’ll work together to ensure you can grow and develop.

Why this may not be the team for you:

1. You’re uncomfortable dealing with change. We’re looking for writers who can adapt and know how to develop content in modern formats.
2. You are looking for a start-up workplace. Hootsuite has an established customer base that spans a range of audiences, including enterprises. We’re looking for writers who can draw from experience supporting multiple audiences, including enterprise.
3. Your world is about writing formal user guides. We are pursuing a modern approach to user education by creating content and articles you can find directly in the product. We’ll be concise and writing with conversational, everyday language.

What advice do you have for someone wanting to start a career in technical writing?

To be successful in technical writing you must be passionate about writing great content. If you’re unsure, test your interest by doing a short online course. If you have that drive to develop technical content, consider these three tips for starting a career in technical writing.

1. Take a technical communications course. A technical writing certificate is very valuable.
2. Build your portfolio. You can do this through a technical communications course. Share links to your work on LinkedIn and as your career progresses, develop your own portfolio website to showcase a selection of different writing styles and formats.
3. Get exposure to technical subjects. Technical writing has more of a post-sales purpose and you’re helping people in real-time. Understand how others learn about technology and communicate in a way that makes sense to the reader.

Interested in working on Susan’s team? Check out our roles in Customer Support and User Education!