The document discusses the role of technical communicators in influencing social media strategy. It outlines that technical communicators can take on roles as spokespeople, analysts, SEO experts, and subject matter experts. They are well-positioned to build content strategies and distribute content across multiple social media platforms. The document also provides best practices for social media engagement, including a case study on using Twitter effectively for technical communication. Following these practices can provide long term business returns through increased brand awareness, easier access to information, intellectual property generation, and improved customer experiences and satisfaction.

1. Saptara Gupta
Mainak Roy
How Technical Communicators Influence Social
Media Strategy?
STC India Annual Conference
December 2015

2. The Voyage
• Influence
- Join the trend over MSmP
• Roles
• Best Practices
-Collaboration
-Twitter Case Study
-Best Practices for Twitter
• Business Returns

3. Connect,
Engage,
Interact
–
Follow
customer’s
base pattern
Spokesperson,
Analyst, SEO, SME
–
Product Wikis,
Forums, Blogs,
Videos
Influence Best PracticesRoles
Respond to
Customer
Queries
–
Video Playlists,
L10N support
for videos
Business Return
The Pillars
Analytics
–
Feature and
Product
Improvements
–
Intellectual
Property

4. Influence

5. Influence of Social Media
• Social media helps to make the information available for
customers via multiple platforms using a single source.
• Different social media platforms have their own audience,
consider the massive spectrum.
• Knowledge sharing and information exchange.

6. Roles

7. Roles of Technical Communicators
• Spokesperson, Analyst, SEO and SME.
• Familiarize with social media and linked content.
• Build content strategy and be a part of content marketing.
• Understand, develop, and deliver content via multiple platforms -
key role in content distribution.
• Virtual warriors.

8. Best Practices

9. Best Practices adopted from MSmP
• People will talk about your company, product and services.
• Encourage the dialogue, do not defend or avoid.
• Start slow and gradually build rapport. Participate in a meaningful
way, this builds trust.
• Be flexible and honest in your communication.

10. Collaboration on Social Media
• Product Videos
• Twitter Best Practices
• Engage with Customers (DTC,
YouTube & Twitter)
• Make use of Analytics
• SEO, BRAND and SMaC
Certification
• Engage other teams
• Contributes towards TCD
initiatives
• Better availability of documents
/information
• User-friendly access to data
• Simplifying the overheads for the
customers
• Better customer experiences
• Exponential growth in Brand
values
Proactive Initiatives Aligning with Business

11. Twitter

12. Twitter: Best in Technical Communication
• No.1 platform in content dissemination and aggregating information.
• Use the supremacy of # in your favor.
• 150+ followers initiates lead generation.
• Has the most progressive self promoting algorithm.
• Provides better search results.

13. Twitter Best Practices and Statistics
• Keep the user names short.
• Including Dell as a prefix is not mandatory while creating Twitter accounts.
• Do not use more than 2 # tags in 1 tweet.
• Tag influencers and relevant people to your tweets.
• Re-tweet and favorite other’s tweet.
• Follow other Dell channels.
• Allow others to follow you, however keep an eye on the content which is appearing on the
page.

14. Business Returns

15. Business Returns and Long Term Gains
• Easy access to information.
• Reduces OpEx, maximizes ROI.
• Leads to Intellectual Property (IP) generation.
• Improves Net Promoter Score (NPS).
• Soft Metrics increases media effectiveness, leads to revenue generation.

16. Thank You