Archive for the ‘Technical Writing’ Category

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December 7th, 2011  Posted at   Technical Writing
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Persuasive content on your website is the essential key to driving and attracting potential searchers to your site. People expect unique, timely, and relevant information. The fast loading content with clarity, is easy for the search engines to index. Mere keeping the content out of grammatical error, spelling mistakes is not sufficient. There are so many things that play important role in making the content unique, pertinent, and up-to-date.

What makes the searchers visit a site again and again is the quality contents. The sites that are consistently top ranked in the search engines, is the result of quality content. There are number of ways with which you can write attractive content to make your site acceptable to the search engines. Brood over the points that follow to unlock your creativity of writing great web content.

1. Don’t make your content dull and uninteresting by feeding it dry information and tedious facts. Always make your content lively and entertaining whenever possible in order to make yourself likeable. Imagine yourself as clients, and try to write your content as if you were trying to convince yourself to buy, sign up, or request your own service.

2. Choose to write about things or information about which you are well aware. Fast across the message, and present the information in quality manner as someone is spending his quality time reading your site. If you try to cover a large topic in an unconvincing way, people will probably move on leaving your site reading unfinished.

3. Have a nice beginning. If the first paragraph of your article is critical and lifeless, chances are very rare that it would be read by visitors for prolonged period. Don’t write in a monotonous way for pages just to convince people for the products and services. You must keep their interest right from the start and drive them to buy what you intent to sell.

4. Coding and programming your page is very important. Don’t load your site with unnecessary features that slow the access to your content. Using of CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) is the customary standard in web design as compared to visual mark-up HTML tags. If you wish to use image, it should be small that gives the user option to enlarge. Never use music or sound, pop up windows, blinking text, Java applets, JavaScript, undue animation, Flash Intros and other unnecessary features that only slow the access to your content.

5. Avoid long text. Instead, provide content in broken up short paragraphs. The information given in short splits allows people to digest the content faster. Don’t replace images to text that requires longer time to load, and is not searchable by the blind search engines. Allow users to read your message easily in neat and clean non-irritating environment.

6. It is important that you have actual links underlined, if it is included in a paragraph of text. Your readers will be confused when they find underline text is not actual link, and they may fail to catch valuable information.

7. Using of banner at the top of your page might take your customers to another site. Even if your banner is for advertising, limit the number of banners to not more than two per page. Always be alert that your advertising is relevant to the content.

8. The final important point is to remember content without promotion is nothing but “just content”. Write industry oriented content to be listed in search engines, and to get the people visit your site to accomplish your purpose of selling. (more…)

December 6th, 2011  Posted at   Technical Writing
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Introduction

Groups putting together a policies and procedures manual frequently ask how a policy differs from a procedure. It’s an important question to consider before beginning work on a policies and procedures manual, as the answer will fundamentally shape how the manual is organized. The organization of the manual is critical, because it impacts the manual’s usefulness as a resource to stakeholders, as well as how easily updates can be made to the manual as the business or organization evolves.

This article, based on my experience advising complex organizations, outlines an approach for differentiating policies from procedures and efficiently organizing a policies and procedures manual.

Policies versus Procedures

Put simply, a policy is a rule established by the organization to achieve a goal supporting the organization’s mission and strategies. For many policies, the goal is related to risk management and/or regulatory compliance. Additionally, policies may support strategies for differentiating the organization’s products and services, developing new products and services, attracting and retaining talent, or managing costs.

Procedures describe how a policy or parts of a policy are implemented. Some procedures that describe single tasks or activities may not be governed by any policies.

Examples of Policies and Related Procedures

Many organizations have policies governing travel and entertainment. The policies generally include guidelines on eligible expenses, allowances, approval, and reporting requirements. The policy may also stipulate that a travel and expense report must be filed within a specific period of time.

The procedure “Submit Time and Expense Report” would detail how to complete and submit the travel and expense report. The report could be a hard-copy form that needs to be completed with receipts attached, signed by authorized signatories, and submitted to Accounts Payable. Or the process could be automated.

An organization may also have a policy related to building security restricting access to authorized individuals carrying a visible and valid photo security pass while in the building.

Supporting procedures would cover several processes, including “Issue/Terminate Security Pass”, “Control Building Access”, and “Monitor Compliance with Security Pass Requirements.” These procedures may be implemented in a variety of ways – for example, security staff might inspect each staff member’s security pass before allowing admittance to the building, or there might be an electronic barrier activated by the security pass allowing admittance. (more…)

December 5th, 2011  Posted at   Technical Writing
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Do you want to do business with the U.S. government? Federal government agencies buy billions of dollars of products and services from private businesses every year. To win a contract with the government, you’ll need to write a government contract proposal.

Government contract proposals have a lot in common with general business proposals, but they differ a bit in that they require specialty topics and follow a more or less standard format. You’ll need to familiarize yourself with official government channels like the gsa.gov website, where you can find all sorts of information about applying for contracts with federal agencies. This is one of the places you will probably be submitting your document to.

It’s crucial to follow any format requirements and supply the specific information requested by a government agency (these are often spelled out in the GSA requirements and instructions). That said, all business proposals, no matter the type of business or the potential client, have four basic goals and follow a standard structure. You want to 1) introduce yourself, 2) show that you understand your prospective client’s needs, 3) highlight your goods or services and present your costs, and 4) persuade the client that your organization is the best one to choose. Using pre-designed templates and samples along with some automation software in a proposal kit can help you write your proposal quickly and efficiently.

The first thing you need to do is target your prospective client: in this case, that will be a government agency. You can get information about agency budgets, missions, and goals on government websites, and you can also look at Government Accountability Office reports. Determine the best person in that agency to send your proposal to with a few phone calls or by studying organization charts.

The key to a successful business proposal is to tailor it to the party who will receive it. Put yourself in the other party’s shoes. Imagine that you are in charge of purchasing within that government agency, and try to figure out why they have a need for your products or services. If you don’t know the agency well, you may have to do some research about their functions and their history, but this effort will pay off in creating a customized proposal that is more likely to succeed.

Creating a customized proposal doesn’t mean that you can’t reuse a lot of the same pages for multiple proposals; it simply means that you need to tailor each proposal a bit to show that you understand the specific client’s needs.

A proposal is a sales document meant to persuade potential clients – in this case, government agencies – to give you their business. To do that, you must instill trust that you can deliver the goods or services they need.

If you look around the GSA web site at a variety of proposals you will see they follow this approach, they will start out with some standard introductions and a filled out list of details using a standard GSA format, then they vary widely in the information that follows depending on the company, product and services being sold. (more…)

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