Tell Me How…

…A Note about Technical Writing and Help Documentation:

“Technical writing is the art, craft, practice, or problem of translating
that which is logical into that which is grammatical. Technical writing
forms a bridge between the logical (the primarily binary concepts understood by computers, robots, lawyers) and the illogical (the haphazard, inconsistent concepts misunderstood carbon-based life forms, highly intelligent computers, lawyers) via the medium of the grammatical, the haphazardly logical system incomprehensible to both. The practice of technical writing presupposes that you, the illogical, actually want to learn about the logical subject, which of course is in all cases false. This basis in a false presupposition makes technical writing a pursuit typically favored by those with arts degrees from obscure universities.”

–The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Of course, being a Technical Writer, I found the preceding quote to be very entertaining! And while this quote may strike a chord, here at SRT, we’ve tried very hard to make sure that using our products is a breeze, whether you’re configuring LDAP, ODBC, SFTP, or FTP/S. We have a large repository of help documentation and add to our Knowledgebase frequently. If you need help connecting your WebDrive FTP client to a Sharepoint server, or want detailed information about how to configure Microsoft clustering services, we have step-by-step guides available on the South River Technologies’ website. If you have a unique Titan MFT Server configuration, you can find troubleshooting tips in our Knowledgebase. And we want to hear from you! Please tell us how we can serve you better.  We want to get you up and running as smoothly and stress-free as possible. We love our products. We think they’re easy to configure and use. And, if we can do anything to make it easier for you, please, let us know.

By the way, I have a B.A. degree from SUNYA, double major in Communications & Theatre. Very funny, Doug Adams, very funny.

FTP Client, SharePoint Client or Multi-Protocol Network Redirector

Technology marketing is hard. On the one hand, you want to position your product or service in clear simple terms that most people can understand. But at the same time, you don’t want to dumb it down so much that you insult the intelligence of the tech savvy buyer. Non-techies want to hear about how your product or service will benefit them, while techies may have a long checklist of acronyms and geek-speak that needs to be addressed before they can move forward.

Our WebDrive product is a perfect example of the challenges technology marketers face.  In simple terms, WebDrive maps a drive letter to web servers that run supported internet protocols. Because it extends the functionality of the Windows operating system, it’s not really a client application, technically it’s a network redirector. And because it supports many protocols, it’s not really an FTP client in the pure sense of the word.  What further complicates the issue is that some users may not know what protocol they are running – they just want to connect to their MyDocsOnline account or their corporate SharePoint server.  Both of these run WebDAV protocol, but if you don’t know that, you won’t search for “WebDAV Client”.

So in a world that loves to categorize everything, how do you categorize WebDrive for marketing purposes?  As it turns out, no one in history has ever googled the words “multi-protocol network redirector.”  Well, except for maybe me.  So you have to market WebDrive for each of the individual purposes it can serve:  both SharePoint Client and WebDAV client.  You specify the protocols for the techies amoung us and the applications for the less techie folks.  And then you rely on your excellent technical writing staff to guide the SharePoint Client users through configuring a WebDAV Client that happens to talk to a SharePoint Server. 

Maybe in my next career, I’ll market toothpaste. 🙂