Photo by Rob Ireton used under CC BY NC SA 2.0

Technical writing tends to baffle a lot of those who went to college for English or other Arts majors. There’s a lot of writers out there who want to get into technical writing but they don’t know where to start. This is especially true of those who had English majors in college and graduate to find that tech skills are in high demand. You have to be a bit technically inclined in order to get a job even as an entry level content writer. If you’re planning to get into technical writing or have a career, you should start reading before you jump in with both feet into a job you might end up really hating.

For technical writing skills specifically, you should read a lot of technical papers, instructions etc. and then write a lot. When it comes to writing skills, practice does make it perfect (no matter how cliché it is). Ask yourself what niche market are you going to focus? Do you want to write software manuals? Manuals that come with electronics like cell phones, digital cameras and so on. Or are you interested in writing “how to” articles on using a particular system?

Find that niche first and start reading those articles, manuals etc. in that field so that you’re aware of the vernacular. I find Wordpress Codex to have great information — the information is well organized and easy to follow, even for a non-technical person. They write stuff on how to use Wordpress and things that you can do with it. It acts as an online manual for the masses. It is also a very popular blogging platform. For every great product, there is always a great support system. Technical writing IS first contact between the consumer and the product. Firefox support is another great support online. More and more people will be looking for support online in the coming years. Instead of calling customer support, consumers will be Googling and contacting other consumers. That’s why online written support is going to be really important for Web 2.0 products.

Once you’re familiar with the format, you should start writing your own manuals/technical articles, posts etc. You can do it on your own blog as tutorials. You can also join a community like Ubuntu and contribute to documentation. There’s a ton of open source projects that need help with documentation. What’s more, the open source community will support you as a writer, and as someone who is learning the ropes. Later on, you can even become an expert and you’ll be known for that.
Personally see technical writers as translators between geeks and the laymen. Geeks are great when it comes to developing new technologies but some of them don’t know how to communicate to the rest of the population who speak “English”. As a technical writer you need to understand geeks and translate that into English, breaking things down to the simplest level that everyone can understand. So, don’t forget to test it out on your mom after you’ve written something!

LinkedIn Smurfs Lunch

When people write and talk about LinkedIn, they usually focus on getting a job, connecting with the right network, and marketing your individual profile. All of this is career based and is focused on the individual. LinkedIn is a great platform for businesses, too, especially for startups, small and medium size businesses. LinkedIn can be a valuable business tool if you’re able to use it effectively. Here are five effective ways you can use LinkedIn for your business:

1. LinkedIn company profile
In order to have a brand presence on LinkedIn, you must have a company profile. Click here to start one now. It gives your company a face and the visitor an overview of what you’re all about without having to visit your website. Read more about setting up a LinkedIn company profile here. This gives your online presence a boost.

2. Network with thought leaders and potential strategic partners
LinkedIn groups are one of the best places to network with thought leaders in your industry and listen to what others are thinking and saying about in your industry. You’re allowed to join 50 groups on LinkedIn but don’t join all the groups in your industry. Pick and choose wisely because there’s a lot of messages that comes through active groups. You’ll have to test and see how it will work out for you and respond to discussions if they’re useful. This is a place where you can meet professionals who have the same interest and are on the same level as you are.

3. Do market research and get feedback
Depending on how active the people in your industry are on LinkedIn, you’ll be getting a lot of answers if you put your question out there. Ask a question in the LinkedIn Q&A Section it’s one of the best places that experts in your field will respond because they are listening. This is something that you can incorporate into your marketing research. Now you can even use LinkedIn Polls and get sample data from your professional network.

4. Become a LinkedIn expert
Just because you can ask questions doesn’t mean you can’t answer them. Make sure you’re monitoring questions that are related to your vertical, industry, or area of expertise. Depending on how often you answer and how you answer questions, it may take a while before someone marks you as an “Expert”. It’s worth your time if you can answer things the right way, and really think about the answers. If you’re an expert in your area already, you won’t have to think about it much. Besides, you’ll be getting good LinkedIn karma by helping someone out, and others will contact you if your answer is interesting enough.

5. Nurture and generate leads
eMarketer reports that online social spending happens because of marketing — not ads. While online ads still can’t be ignored, it’s the personal one-on-one connections that will make you network grow. In my experience, the contacts I get are usually people who are curious and have specific questions, or want to clarify things before they invest in online marketing. You might get different questions from different people but usually they all want to start a conversation. Now, it’s up to you to keep that conversation going and see if it leads to something else. [non-ad conversational online marketing spending rose from $650 million to $800 million between 2008 and 2009. It's expected to rise to $1080 million this year.] Small and medium size businesses might not have a big marketing budget, but spending the time to engage with your network can yield results, give you other sources of traffic, and get you leads. Engaging in conversations will get you prospects to look at you as an expert. If you have the right answers, they might even hire you, but first you need to put yourself and your business out there and market your expertise the right way.

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Photo by 99Zeros used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

A LinkedIn profile is like a CV or resume that you have online so that people can easily find you and know more about you if they choose to do so. In the last six months there has been an influx of “fake profiles” who are looking for connections, spamming groups, and sending out messages with just links back to their sites. A lot of us use LinkedIn to work and grow our business network. Throughout the past years that I’ve been on LinkedIn, I keep seeing a professional network growing and lapsing into just another social network. The number of users have increased from a little over 2000 unique visitors in November 2007 to a whopping 15 million plus by the end of 2009. Those who are serious about LinkedIn keep their profiles clean and network with a purpose. LinkedIn is there to build professional connections and growing your business network. So mistakes are a big no-no, epecially the following 7 unforgivable sins:

1. Your LinkedIn profile has no photograph
We live in a multimedia world, we like the Internet because it offers a personal touch. We like knowing what the person on the other end looks like. Make sure you have a professional smiling photo and not in some weird costume cap. Stock images or images that came with Windows are also easy to spot, it’s better to have no photo rather than looking at a photo that you might not have the license to displaying. Remember, this is your face, your photographic representation we’re talking about.

2. Spelling mistakes and typos galore
Having one or two typos is fine but there’s really no excuse when every other word is misspelled, especially on your profile. Would you have your resume with a bunch of spelling mistakes, letters without any cases, or worse, typed in like an SMS? Check your profile and make sure the formatting is right, don’t just put stuff in it. Even when you get recommendations from people, don’t put it up unless you’ve checked spelling and grammar. You can always politely point out the typos.

3. Your LinkedIn profile has no connections
Or what we call a “social media light weight” — it’s ok not to have a lot of connections if you just finished school, your profile would say that. But if you’re in a senior management position for an Internet company with little or no connections, it begs the question what your business is really all about. It also raise questions as to whether or not you’re even real, which gets us to our next point…

4. You’re using a fake LinkedIn profile
Fake profiles are easier to spot than you think. It’s also very hard to come up with a fake profile. It takes a lot of creativity and energy to make sure the person is who they really say they are. Using poser profiles that act as influencers, or part of your guerrilla marketing campaign but they just don’t work when it comes to LinkedIn. If you’re marketing on LinkedIn, it’s going to always be business-to-business. What’s the point of using a fake profile then? Once you’re found out, it’ll create not just mistrust but a bad reputation, too. Having a company’s profile or profiles with the name “Recruiter Company-X” doesn’t really make sense. If you want an official company profile, you should get your company a LinkedIn company profile. LinkedIn has different places for different things, use those to your advantage.

5. You haven’t updated your profile
The Internet operates on a real-time basis. It’s understandable that if you just joined a new job that your profile might not be updated but if your LinkedIn profile doesn’t match your resume, how can a company asses your Internet skills? A lot of people also have the habit of updating their profile right before an interview and start asking for recommendations, and start connecting again with people. Those people are just annoying. In the business world, you need to be connected with your key network and influencers no matter what.

6. You copied and pasted
Plagiarism is something that can get you expelled in school. In the professional world, it means that you have no credibility and if it’s a serious copy pasting job, it can get your company in a law suit. Write your own advice if you’re writing in group discussions or the LinkedIn Q&A section. The most common copy-pasting I’ve seen are on people’s recommendations. It’s ok if the person reciprocates recommendations but when both of them look the same, it looks a bit fishy. Write your own original recommendations by thinking about the person and what he or she did that was remarkable and outstanding. This is for their career as well as yours. What did you accomplish as a team? What were the challenges and how did you face them together? What did the person do that made all the difference? Don’t just write, “He is a very professional person,” we’re all ‘very professional’.

7. You don’t introduce yourself when you’re adding people
When you’re active in forums, discussion groups, and in the real world people get a lot of connection requests. If the person is a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) they’ll forgo the formalities and add you. For the rest of the people on LinkedIn, they don’t really have the time to add Tom, Dick and Harry. A personalized introduction makes all the difference. Otherwise you’ll not be connected and will be marked as “Do not know this person”. Ask yourself why you’re connecting to that person. Did you meet them? Did you read their blog? Are you interested in getting their expertise or offering them their services? Write that, make sure you have the person’s name right. Give them a reason to connect to you. What’s in it for them?

What are some of the things you’ve faced in LinkedIn that made you cringe? Can you think of more deadly sins that are big NO-NOs for a professional network? Leave your comments below.

You can always connect with me on LinkedIn (with an introduction of course) or follow my rants and raves on Twitter.

Take a look at your marketing plan for this year — what percentage of your sales forecast or marketing plan is from your website? Your website exists to serve your business and marketing goals. Your website is the face, the store front, and it gives the first impression to your potential customers. A lot of small and medium size businesses now have a web site, which acts like an online brochure. There’s nothing wrong with that but is your website a cost to your business or is it generating revenue? You can’t think of elaborate social media marketing campaigns before your website is taken care of. The first thing you want to do before doing your online marketing push or even before contacting website designers and developers, you want to set goals for your website.

Your Website is An Asset to Your Business
We’re accustomed to thinking that a website is a necessity to have — where you can tell your prospects and customers about services and products. I’d like to challenge you to think beyond that mind-set. Think of your domain as a company asset, think of the design and content of the site as the components that make up that asset. Now, what do you want that asset to do?

Expanding Your Brand’s Reach
Your website IS the focal point of your brand online. You can use it to market your website online via search engines, social media marketing, email marketing etc. All your marketing activities should come back to your site, even if it’s just to check out who you are after the sale is done. What is the brand image that your site is projecting? Are you giving out the right impression? Once this is taken care of, you can start thinking about having other assets like social network profiles, which will expand your brand presence.

Generating Quality and Relevant Leads Through Your Website
There are two parts to generating quality and relevant leads. One is to have clearly written search engine optimized content on your website. You want visitors to come because they’re looking for your product or type of service you offer. Make sure you target local customers in your area or niche visitors in your industry. What would they type in Google to get to your site that is not your company’s name? The reason behind this is to reach out to those who don’t know about you yet.
Once you already have information about your products, services, and what your business stands for, what would you like your visitor to do next? If you’re asking your visitors to leave their information or schedule a consulting session, make sure they have the right tools on your site. These should be easy-to-use forms or social media sharing tools. What are you offering in return? A white paper? A report or study? Or a discount on your services and products? Make sure you have a clear call-to-action at a visible place on your website.

Make Your Website A Profit Centre
The leads you generate through your website can cover the cost related to the site but what if you could do more? The basic way to generate revenue is to sell products but you don’t have to have a cumbersome e-commerce site if you’re selling your services. You can sell a simple ebook or an industry report if you are a service based company. Think of something you’re already doing and an area that you’re an expert in. If you’re a personal financial consultant for example, you can write a guide book on how to save and manage personal finances for a regular Joe. It becomes an even more powerful product if you say Joe can save x amount of dollars in x amount of time using your guide book. Make sure that you have your contact information and a way to engage with your services if the reader likes your ebook.

Putting It All Together
Let’s recap:

1. Your website is an extension of your business — it is an asset.
2. It should generate quality and relevant leads for your business.
3. It is the focal point of your brand and should give the right impression to your customers and prospects.
4. Your website should be able to generate revenue either by direct or indirect sales of products and services.
5. Your website should be an integral part of your business or marketing plan.

Now you can go ahead and set goals for your site. Feel free to contact me via Twitter, LinkedIn or leave a comment below.

Photo by KTDEE used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

LinkedIn rolled out the beta for company profiles around July of this year. It was a necessity to boost a company’s presence online as well as a tool for attracting potential employees. There are several reasons why you should get your company profile up there if you haven’t done so already:

1. LinkedIn company profiles gives a snap shot information about what your company is and the services you offer.
2. It provides links to your organization’s parent company, brand, and links to the profiles of your senior managers. This is important when it comes to attracting investors and partners. It shows that you’re part of a larger trusted group and that you have a track record.
3. It tells the visitor who is working in your company now and who had worked with you in the past. This is very useful when a potential employee searches information about your company. They’ll know immediately who are in the leadership positions, the kind of work they’ve done, and the past talent that had passed through the company. They’ll also realize what your company can do to their careers by checking out how your past employees had grown, nurtured their careers, and are doing great things.
4. LinkedIn company profiles also gives you another extra link coming into your site — another way prospects can visit you.

Having said that, there are some things you should consider implementing the effectiveness of your company profile -

1. Track your visitors: put a link that tracks specific unique link from the LinkedIn profile to your side. You can do this with services like Bit.ly (check out our post on how to have your own shortened URL service here.)
2. Have the right keyword: Make sure the right keywords are in place for your company profile. This should be part of a larger social media or online marketing strategy. Keep your keywords consistent throughout all your online profiles. You can read more on this on the LinkedIn official blog here.
3. Feature your leadership: Your senior management should have strong profiles on LinkedIn i.e. make sure they’re connected to the right people, have the right recommendations, and are displaying the right experience and highlight their strengths.
4. Put someone in charge: Designate a person for putting up, monitoring, changing, or keeping an updated company profile on LinkedIn. If you’re already managing other social network profiles like a Facebook fan page or group, get that marketing executive o be in charge of this, too. This brings us to our next point…
5. Implement a social media policy: As of now, anyone with a company email can change your company profile on LinkedIn. If you don’t have a social media policy in place for your personnel, you might want to let them know that they shouldn’t be changing the company profile without the knowledge of your marketing department or at least the head of marketing. This way, changes will be more orderly, targeted, and coherent with your brand image.

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Social media marketing gurus might be out there telling you all the tips and tricks that you can use, but how will you know that you’re marketing campaign is really working? In the world of social media and the Internet, you can monitor information by monitoring conversations on Twitter and Google Alerts. But how does that translate into the offline world? One thing that will always be true about social media is that humans are social animals. If they do stuff online, like play with friends and share tips and tricks and tell other people about what they’ve learned, they’ll also do that offline. I always talk to my friends about Twitter and Facebook and the coolest latest game online. That’s not because I’m an Internet marketer, I actually like the platforms and things that I do online.

This weekend, I went to Startup Saturday in Delhi with my friend Jeanne, who is the AVP of Marketing for VNL. (Disclosure: Our CEO, Pankaj Jain is one of the co-founders of Startup Saturday.) If you haven’t heard about VNL, they’re the newest, coolest kid on the renewable energy block. They make solar powered GSM towers and have been bagging tech innovation awards left and right from Wall St. Journal to the World Economic Forum. Jeanne and I are both passionate marketers and we talk about ads, social media marketing, and the coolest things online almost 80% of our waking moments. I was particularly interested in going to Startup Saturday because I read that Gaurav Mishra (@gauravonomics) was speaking about social media. It’s really rare in India to listen to someone of authority talk on social media. It’s a brand new marketing field here. He spoke about what entrepreneurs can learn from activists who use social media. I enjoyed the discussion that followed because it gave me a whole new perspective on what entrepreneurs really think of social media in India. It also gave me insights on how views are so different from that of western thought. Gaurav was trying to drive across the point that if entrepreneurs position themselves like activists do of an idea, there would be more brand recall and brand recognition. Most of the audience members — who were made up of mostly small business owners, students, of roughly 30 to 40 men and 4 women (including us two) — disagreed saying that you need a solid business model first and start making profits before you try out all those things.

The main question became can entrepreneurs really use a positive image and message without having the message overtake the brand image that they’re trying to project. It was interesting to see that they didn’t connect “brand message or image” and “the business” together. The general feeling I got was that social causes just weren’t worth doing because there is no profit in them unless you’re a big company like Tata, or a US based startup like Twitter. Stuff like that just doesn’t happen in India. Then VNL came up when Jeanne provided an example of a company who is doing building a business and pushing for social causes. It was a great example because it’s actually an Indian startup focusing on a huge challenge: getting cell phones to the next billion users without harming the environment. VNL, as a green company, provides all of their information online and utilizes Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn Groups, and Twitter to discuss not only their products, but what they call the triple bottom line – increased opportunities for people, better quality environment, and viable profit margins for mobile operators targeting rural networks. Because their content focuses across these topics, influencers that are only interested in green technologies read about them, people interested in the telecom industry follow and connect, and so do social activists interested in economic development in developing nations. To our
surprise, Gaurav picked up on the topic immediately and told the audience what VNL was all about without Jeanne having to explain. We looked at each other and were both very happy and impressed. The
feedback loop is complete!

As marketers in the conversation age, you can only send the message out and hope to engage with the right people, influencers, and monitor that as best you can. But when it comes back to you in flesh and
blood, and when you hear a thought leader telling your message to other people, that’s when you really know that whatever you did worked.

URL Shortening services like Bit.ly have been all the rage with the popularity of Twitter and other micro-blogging services. As some of us use Twitter quite a bit for sharing links to various sites and blog posts, we’re sending lots of traffic to people that isn’t easily identifiable beyond the URL shortening service being used.

Bit.ly does a great job of providing statistics on the URLs that you’re sharing. However, it doesn’t allow the receiver of the traffic to easily know anything about who you are or your brand. I felt if I was providing enough traffic to a publisher, it would make sense to use my own URL shortener so the publisher could easily get more information about me.

I dug around and found quite a few open source shorteners. I eventually decided to use Yourls for a few reasons:

1. It’s open source
2. It’s written in PHP and can be deployed easily, even on shared hosting services
3. The developer of Yourls, Richard Ozh is really quick about fixing bugs and implementing new features.
4. The feature list may not be as complete as Bit.ly but it comes really close.

Setting up Yourls was a breeze, now came the fun part of doing something with it beyond the bookmarklet. I decided that I would convert all my shared Google Reader items to use Yourls. To do this, I created WWW::Shorten::Yourls which I had introduced in this post.

Below is a small Perl script which uses the WWW::Shorten::Yourls module to give you a shortened URL for use on Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, email, whatever.


#! /usr/local/bin/perl
# $Id: yourls.pl 165 2009-10-23 16:58:32Z pjain $
# $LastChangedRevision: 165 $
# $Author: pjain $
# $Date: 2009-10-23 22:28:32 +0530 (Fri, 23 Oct 2009) $
# Author: Pankaj Jain
# Copyright: (c) Teknatus Solutions LLC 2009
# License: This code is available under the same terms as Perl itself
########################################################
use warnings;
use strict;
use Carp;
use WWW::Shorten::Yourls;

my $url = “http://www.teknatus.com”;
my $uid = “my_yourls_id”; #change this
my $passwd = “my_yourls_password”; #change this
my $base = “http://yourls.teknatus.com”; #change this to a valid install of yourls

my $yourls = WWW::Shorten::Yourls->new(USER => $uid,
PASSWORD => $passwd,
BASE => $base);
$yourls->shorten(URL => $url);

print $yourls->{url}; # print the shortened URL
print $yourls->expand(URL => $yourls->{url}); # print the original URL by passing the shortened URL as a parameter

# or do it like this
print makeashorterlink($url,$uid,$passwd,$base);
print makealongerlink($yourl,$uid,$passwd,$base);

1;

The holiday season is the most hectic season for businesses and individuals — there’s a lot of things need to go out the door before the office is closed for the long Thanksgiving weekend or for Christmas and New Year. This is when you can use an extra boost in your business process by hiring freelance writers, editors, proof readers, or even testers, and programmers. This is where Semblr can help you get the help that you need.

Photo by D3 San Francisco used under CC BY 2.0

All you have to do is sign up here and post the requirements that you need. We’ll be here to help you with the sign up and job posting process on our site. Once your job requirements are posted, we’ll help you broadcast your job postings to our network across Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. All for free! We’ll also keep you posted on the features that we’re launching soon. Don’t forget to let us know what you liked or didn’t like about Semblr. Remember, your feedback is always welcome. You can also contact us with questions and comments!

Yourstory.in which profiles entrepreneurs and startups in India did a feature on Pankaj and Vaishali – founders and the directors of Teknatus, Semblr’s parent company. You can check out the feature here.

As American leaders in the Capitol voted for the much debated health care reforms, LA Times ran an interesting op-ed earlier this month on needing a check on insurance companies offering medical tourism or overseas surgical procedures. What I found interesting is that the author, Judy Dugan, who is a health policy advocate for Consumer Watchdog puts medical tourism as ‘medical outsourcing’. Of course in India when people talk about medical outsourcing they speak of it in terms of medical process outsourcing, one of which includes medical transcriptions, medical billing, to medical insurance processing.

The great thing about the LA Times article is that it highlighted the fact that outsourcing doesn’t have to be on paper or virtual process. It can happen when a person from the west goes east to get health care. Medical outsourcing doesn’t end with ‘knowledge process outsourcing’ or back end processing but the actual surgical procedures can also be outsourced. What Ms. Dugan did not cover though is how even wombs are also outsourced to India. Folks know enough about people in India or those who are poor enough in the developing world selling their kidneys and livers to feed their families. What’s been a rising trend for the past couple of years in India is for young mothers to rent out their wombs so that couples in the west can have babies.

It’s done via in vitro fertilization (IVF), usually the couple needs to visit only twice to India — once to give sperm and eggs then another time to collect their child — even for that you’d only need one parent. Outsourcing pregnancy happens in the low down right now — as in everyone pretty much knows about it but there aren’t really any laws — and if there were, ‘the powers that be’ just ignore them. While I can understand why a young woman would rent her womb to strangers, I still cringe at the idea. Even more so I’ve been thinking a lot about the mother and how much she really gets paid in the end after all the agencies, doctors, and middle persons have taken their cut.

Have you heard about pregnancy outsourcing? What are your thoughts on the subject?