Musings and learning about technical communications issues from your TechCommGeekMom–a geeky mom who is into tech comm…since 2012.
Author: TechCommGeekMom
Danielle M. Villegas is a technical communicator who currently employed at Cox Automotive, Inc., and freelances as her own technical communications consultancy, Dair Communications. She has worked at the International Refugee Committee, MetLife, Novo Nordisk, BASF North America, Merck, and Deloitte, with a background in content strategy, web content management, social media, project management, e-learning, and client services. Danielle is best known in the technical communications world for her blog, TechCommGeekMom.com, which has continued to flourish since it was launched during her graduate studies at NJIT in 2012. She has presented webinars and seminars for Adobe, the Society for Technical Communication (STC), the IEEE ProComm, TCUK (ISTC) and at Drexel University’s eLearning Conference. She has written articles for the STC Intercom, STC Notebook, the Content Rules blog, and The Content Wrangler as well. She was very active in the STC, as a former chapter president for the STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter, serving and chairing on several STC Board committees, and most recently was the STC Board Vice-President before the organization closed.. You can learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemvillegas, on Twitter @techcommgeekmom, or through her blog.
All content is the owner's opinions, and does not reflect those of her employers past or present.
This is a really excellent article about world languages. When thinking about your global strategy, this could be a big help with understanding where to translate, or rather, what languages you’d be best to translate to in order to reach the widest audience. I knew English was not the most spoken, but it’s interesting to see it’s the most studied as a second language.
The images in this helped this point hit home for me. Let me know what you think.
I know what you’re thinking. “Here we go again!” Social media, the one topic everyone likes to discuss but no one really understands from a business perspective. But I’m going to be bold and tell you that I became the No. 1 real estate agent in the nation because of my social media; $3.5 billion dollars in closed sales don’t lie. So give me a minute to explain, and hopefully at the end of this you will give me a thumbs up, and more importantly, access your own bottomless bank vault tha
Heaven knows that one of my guilty pleasures when I have free time (which isn’t too much these days), I like watching the evening line-up on the Bravo channel. Fredrik Eklund, the writer of this article and one of the stars of Bravo’s show, "Million Dollar Listing: New York", is an over-the-top personality, so when I saw this article and that it was written by him, I rolled my eyes . I did that because of his claim of being the #1 real estate agent in the nation. This might be true, but I would try to be a bit more humble about something like that. But that’s my personality–I will let people know about great things I do, but I’m not about to think that I’m bigger or grander than anyone else about it, even if people tell me that I’m the "it" girl. I’ve seen Eklund on TV enough to know he’s not above shameless self-promotion. So I was curious, if nothing else, to see if he actually had some words of wisdom here, or if it was actually a big plug to promote himself.
You can imagine my surprise when I read a great, relatable article about social media and how he uses it, and how easy it really is to use as a marketing tool. It comes down to providing a personal touch, which is something I’ve often said is missing from corporate social media blasts, no matter the outlet, and has been verified by what I learned in my digital marketing class over the past few months. Eklund actually has some great advice here that is easy to follow, and he’s proof that it works!
Read this, and tell me what you think of his advice. I think he’s spot-on from a marketing perspective.
Over the last few weeks I have been asked many times about creating an audience for your blog, especially when you are just starting out. This is a vital topic and one that is covered extensively in the book Born to Blog, but here are a few ideas that helped me in the early stages.What is your approach?First let me say a word about how your goals as a blogger may relate to your approach to building an audience.Some bloggers may be seeking raw “traffic” for their blog. This does not necessarily b
Mark Schaefer, digital marketer extraordinaire and one of my Rutgers digital marketing instructors, wrote this great article. These five steps are pretty much the way I figured out how to start getting my content broadcast about–but I had to learn the hard way on my own.
Read Mark’s tips, follow them, and you’ll be ahead!
Copy editors, dictionary officials and language experts seem to be coming around to using the gender-neutral ‘they’ in the singular, instead of ‘he or she.’
I used to be "old school" about the use of "they" as described in this article. I would certainly use it in speech, but I would never use it in written content. But as this article points out, as I become more aware of transgender issues, it makes total sense to use "they". I would rather refer a person as "they" than "it" because "it" refers to a thing, and a person is far from a thing.
What’s your take on this? Would this be a positive or negative evolution in the English language? Add your comments below.
As a follow-up to my blog post from a while back comparing weight loss to a content strategy, I thought I’d provide you with an analytical progress report of sorts.
Yes, this is really me.
I had posted this set of photos about a week ago on social media, and didn’t share it here! The foundation of my weight loss strategy has been sound, but there have been bumps along the way. I found that I couldn’t always follow a “waterfall” process because of holidays, stress, weather (can’t get outside to do my walking in cold weather with my asthma), work–lots of things that have gotten in the way. So, I had to employ an Agile plan of sorts. Eat less when I couldn’t exercise, still eat those brownies but account for them in my food tracking, and just walk at the mall when I had an opportunity. So, my plan slowed down, but the proof here is that it didn’t stop–the process continued. Even after several trips to various fast food restaurants and chocolate treats, I account for it, and get right back on track.
I am still far from done losing weight. I’ve lost about 56 pounds so far, and it’s been about 10 months in the making to get where I am now. I still have about 30 more pounds to go, and it gets harder as I continue. There are some things that will get easier to do during this summer that will help, like warmer weather to get outside to walk and bike more, and more fresh fruits and veggies to eat for variety (less calories), and hot weather makes it easier for me to want to drink those 8 glasses of water each day. But the process continues, and these photos of “before” and “after” (yes, these are me–nothing has been altered in Photoshop except brightness in the second one so you could see it is actually me) are my analytical report for now.
I thought I’d provide everyone with an update to show that as long as you have a sound foundation and can be agile as you move along, it can get done, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be well-organized, and have room to make mistakes and recover quickly from those mistakes.
I’d also like to thank those who have supported me so far. There are several technical communicators I know who are in the same battle, and have been a great source of inspiration and support–crowdsourcing at its best!
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