Preparing for content migration: Essential tips for Technical Writers

Dedication: Before starting, here I would like to say thanks to my team: my lovely Technical Communicators and the perfect Project Manager. Without you, it would be hard to pass this rollercoaster challenge.

In the life of every Tech Communicator, sooner or later, there comes a moment when you have to change the platform for posting your content. This can be due to various reasons: changes in the audience’s requirements, product growth, the company’s need to improve technical capabilities, or the desire to optimize the work process.

This article is based on the experience of three Technical Communicators who successfully migrated one of the biggest corporate sites (more than 1,000 pages) manually. It was an important stage in our professional life, which required careful analysis, planning, and adaptation to new conditions.

Let’s look at the key aspects that we considered when switching platforms and how to make the transition as smooth and efficient as possible.

Analyze the content creation requirements

The first significant step is the analysis of the current and future platforms to prepare for the content migration and see which requirements you have for content creation. You need to identify clearly the features the present work environment provides and if it is possible to have the same in the new one.

The best decision is to create a table for comparison. Make your table simple and create just three columns. One for the requirements for the pages, and the others for comparison. An interesting task for a Tech Writer).

Take a look at your current site. What features were used? What opportunities did you have? Write them in the first column. This is the basis for the technical content that you need to implement on a new platform:

Then, it’s time to think about improvements. Is there anything you wanted to implement within your content but never got around to it? Right now, you have a perfect time to make changes! Write your ideas in the first column, maybe they will also get a chance at life, who knows😊.

Study the new platform features

To fill in the table and see the potential benefits of a new platform, pass the learning process. Use all possible resources to get to know the opportunities of the new working environment: YouTube, Udemy, Coursera, product, technical and marketing documentation, etc. Only this step will give you a chance not only to compare the possibilities of the old and the new platforms but also to move to the next step.

Find solutions for difficulties

No matter how similar your platforms are, there are always things hard to implement in your new space. Don’t hesitate to consider them before migration, pay special attention to the realization of critical things for content creation and management. Think about the approaches that you can use to create user-friendly documentation. Here are some examples of the questions to consider:

• Can I create a similar content structure and hierarchy?
• Do I need to have a similar structure for content, or it’s better to reorganize it?
• What elements are the most critical and needed for the users? How to highlight them?
• Do we have clickable elements that should remain clickable?
• What are the features of technical writing on my current site? Can they be the same on the new one?

Spend enough time thinking about all those details. It will help you to avoid confusion and speed up all content creation processes after the migration.

Visualize the future space

After analysis of the platform features, don’t hesitate to imagine your future workspace. Technical Writers should be professionals in content structure and organization in order to create good user-facing documentation. Migrating a site is not an exception.

First of all, you can simply ask for a test space before the migration. This will provide you the chance to test a new working environment and outline its pros and cons. Try to recreate the existing page look and see if it is entirely possible or not. And don’t be afraid if the answer is “No”. Perceive this challenge only as a chance for improvement.

In case when it’s impossible to try the new platform out, don’t worry. You can use PowerPoint or Figma as simulators. Watch the YouTube videos, check out page examples, and try to recreate the possible page structure.

Plan the migration process

This stage took my team a lot of time, but as a person who is keen on planning and organizing, I adore it. Besides its complexity, the planning step is really subjective, and it’s impossible to find a single planning approach that will work for everyone. So, here is a story about the experience of my team.

Our decision was to use the Asana app to manage our migration tasks and align them with the daily team’s tasks. How did we manage to cope with it? I have no clue, but honestly think the answer lies in close collaboration, teamwork, and a perfect Project Manager, who supported us and believed that we would succeed.

To cut a long story short, the content we planned to move was added to Asana in the form of tasks. For example, if you want to migrate a page, you add a separate task for that. At the beginning, the process may be daunting, but the result is worth it as it helped us to control the status of every page, see which action items were opened, and what would be fixed in the near future.

Using statuses is another exciting idea that I highly recommend using. The following statuses helped us better understand where we were:

• New — the task is created but not processed.
• In Progress — the page is in the process of migration.
• Open AI (Action Item) — there are some things that should be fixed (crosslinking, information update, etc.).
• TC Review — the page is being reviewed by another Technical Communicator.
• Ready for PM Review — the page can be published but requires an additional review by the Project Manager.
• Published — the page comes to life and is ready for users.

Migrate the content

Well, now it’s time to start the actual migration. No matter how you move your content by using some apps or manually, this stage is the most challenging one. You will definitely face some issues that you will have to fix. The reality may not be the same as expectations, and that is okay during such a difficult process.

Remember that human errors can occur. Try to avoid them but don’t panic when something goes wrong, you can always fix it.

The other recommendation is not to forget about your work-life balance. Yes, that’s cool to be the first team to finish migration to another platform because you may be proud of your results, but it isn’t worth burnout. Stick to the deadlines that are set by the company, take some time to plan and organize your work, and only then deep dive into it.

Notify the users about the new space

Let’s imagine you did it and came to the end of this content-moving challenge. Now, it’s time for the last stage, and this is communication about your new space. And yeah, this is also the job a Technical Writer can do.

Just a few tips:

• Prepare a short notification, and don’t overload the user with information flow.
• Inform that you have migrated, remind a little bit about the site which is migrated, what information is available on it, and in which cases it’s useful.
• Add a link and inform the users where they can leave comments and questions.

Congratulations! Besides all the challenges, you did it! Just imagine how much work was done, as you:

1. Analyzed the requirements for the content creation.
2. Studied the features of a new platform.
3. Compared current and future platforms.
4. Found solutions for the adaptation of the content to new platform features.
5. Visualized new space and prepared for implementation of new ideas.
6. Planned the content migration.
7. Passed through the content migration process.
8. Notified the users about the new home for your content.

After such a complicated path that we took, delight, incredible joy, and relief at some point covered our entire team. It was a challenging but exciting period in my Tech Writing career. And I believe that with the right approach, you can also do it. Just remember to work in a team, value your colleagues, and rely on them. Together, you are a force capable of much more. By the way, in case you want another inspiring story on migration, check out my colleague’s article on a knowledge base migration.