Category Archives: Social Media

Value-oriented outcomes with Sara Feldman – Content Content podcast

Sara Feldman, customer success enablement advocate, talks with Ed Marsh about job hunting during a pandemic, achieving outcomes, “pre-charging” before conferences, and more.

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We’re gonna do this together with Viqui Dill – Content Content podcast

Viqui Dill, Senior Technical Writer at American Woodmark in Virginia, talks to Ed Marsh how everyone is a project manager in some form, life in the (literal) hardware industry, her day of 500 hugs, what is just-in-time documentation, and more.

Viqui is also an accomplished “bad-ass bass player’ and a self-proclaimed techcomm evangelist.

Viqui Dill – 2017 STC Technical Communication Summit

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Experiences have to be assembled with Cruce Saunders – Content Content podcast

In an intense episode focused on intelligent content, Cruce Saunders of [ A ] and Ed Marsh discuss content in the enterprise and how to make it an asset in the C-suite, job titles in the content world, lightweight markup languages, and much more.

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Cruce Saunders of [A], Content Content podcast guest
Cruce Saunders of [ A ], Content Content podcast guest

 

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Holding somebody else’s place with Sean Heckman – Content Content podcast

Sean Heckman was a racer, a figure skater, a TV writer and producer, almost a lawyer, and finally owner of The Media Barons and a podcast mogul. Learn what it’s like to drive across the USA for 30+ days interviewing racing legends, while running a content creation business that caters to small businesses.Sean Heckman, owner of The Media Barons, and co-host of the Dinner with Racers podcast, on the Content Content podcast

Find out why Sean calls a “sport with science, technology, and a lot of nonsense” his home.

I’ve never met Sean, and he was as curious about me as I was about him. Sean says he’s not a journalist, but he is. He gets people to talk, listens to their stories, and responds to them. He also has an immensely dry sense of humor. I literally had to stop dozens of times while editing this podcast to stop laughing. Give this a listen.

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Same mess different tools with Liz Fraley – Content Content episode 19

Elizabeth Fraley runs Single-Sourcing Solutions in Sunnyvale, Ca. We geek out about the history of structured authoring, how her opinions have changed in 17 years of technical writing, and how many books a year are too many to read.

Mentioned in this episode:

Liz Fraley, Content Content episode 19 guest
Liz Fraley, Content Content episode 19 guest

Single Sourcing social media and public projects
TC Camp
TC Dojo
Liz’s books
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Net Neutrality is important for content creators

Today, July 12, is Net Neutrality Day. This is an important time for all people who use the internet, but particularly for those who use it to create content. For a good run-down of what’s happening, see Ars Technica.

As an example, the Content Content podcast I create costs relatively little to produce. It costs nothing for people to download my work. This is how net neutrality is supposed to work – it doesn’t matter who creates the content, what kind of content it is, or where it’s hosted. Bits are bits.

The current FCC commissioner, Ajit Pai, wants to remove the Obama-era Title II designation, which designates the internet as a utility. What this means for content creators is that the cost of your bits could go up — and it might also cost your users. For example, if your Internet Service Provider (i.e. Comcast or Verizon, who have purchased many content properties), creates a major podcast network with a technical writing podcast, they can increase download speeds for the properties they own, making their bits more important than my bits. If I can’t afford to pay for faster access out of my pocket, it’s likely my podcast will lose traffic due to the higher profile of the ISP’s podcast network. It then would be even more difficult to monetize my podcast through advertising to offset the access fees.

On a larger scale, if a news organization like Breitbart pays for faster connections than the NY Times (or vice-versa), their pages will load quicker and be perceived as more credible or worthy of users’ time. Or your provider can decide that you’ve downloaded enough Netflix this month. Or it will cost you less to use your ISP’s service than a third-party that you love like Spotify or Pandora. These are unfair advantages when the whole point of the internet is global, democratic information access.

It also stifles creativity: If I knew I would have to pay a lot of fees to create my podcast, or if it would have cost exponentially more than just a text-based blog, I probably would not have made the effort.

If you create or consume content of any sort on the Web, I encourage you to comment on the FCC’s site before commenting closes on the 17th of July. For an easy way to participate, see BattlefortheNet.com.

From competitors to colleagues: STC as community

I considered everyone else in my field the competition early in my career. I had to fight them for jobs; they were the enemy. I didn’t really get the value of professional memberships or conferences. I didn’t join STC, the Society for Technical Communication, until I was laid off from my first job, after 12 years in the field that I fell into.

I went to my first STC NY Metro chapter meeting, and right away someone said ‘you look just like Bernard [Aschwanden]’. I had no idea who Bernard was. Now, he’s a good friend and twin. Several years and several meetings later, I connected with someone who got me my current position, which I’ve now held for over six years.

Ed Marsh and Bernard Aschwanden at STC Philadelphia Metro Conduit 2016
Ed Marsh and Bernard Aschwanden meet at STC Philadelphia Metro Conduit 2016

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Users or people with Jack Molisani – Content Content episode 15

Jack Molisani, president of ProSpring Staffing and Executive Director of The LavaCon Content Strategy Conference talks about technical communication hiring, rebranding, content strategy, and how he’s seized opportunities his entire career.

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Episode 15 guest Jack Molisani
Episode 15 guest Jack Molisani

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Napoleons and Shakespeares featuring Teresa Meek – Content Content podcast episode 14

Content Marketer Teresa Meek has had a varied career path in journalism, real estate, and more, but always focused on writing. She is currently based in Seattle, Washington, from where she talked about how content marketing and technical writing have similarities, her brief career in technical writing, how to transition to content marketing, and more.

Content marketer Teresa Meek
Content marketer Teresa Meek

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Top 10 questions from Content Marketing World

I’m not a marketer, but I played one for two days at Content Marketing World in Cleveland, Ohio in September, 2016. I was surprised to find that content marketers have similar problems to we in the technical communication world –  proving value, understanding users, correctly using and re-using content, and most surprisingly, dealing with budgets – or lack thereof.

Content Marketing World 2016. Cleveland, OH
Cleveland is the center of the Content Marketing World in September, 2016

However, there are ways that content marketing is very different than technical communication. First, the conferences are much larger than ours, and ours don’t feature Cheap Trick or Mark Hamill.

Even with all I learned at the conference, I still have some questions. I admit that I ask these with tongue-in-cheek, but as someone from outside the marketing world, I’m also genuinely curious. Hopefully some content marketers and/or #CMWorld attendees can chime in and answer.

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