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Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation

Cover of Conversation and Community, linked to Amazon.com
Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation
by Anne Gentle. $29.95.

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Writers and content creators are witnesses to a shift from the age of information to the age of interaction. The volume of information available is huge and the ways in which people access that information, communicate, and collaborate are changing constantly. In the face of this subtle yet powerful movement, technical communicators can experiment with techniques for working with social media and social networking tools.

Anne Gentle has been in the trenches working with the social web as a technologist and a community builder. Her new book will help you understand the social web and will teach you techniques and best practices for working conversation and community into your documentation using tools like tag clouds, blogs, wikis, and syndication. It will help you find a role in a landscape in which content must be constantly available and help you ensure that your content helps your company’s products or services stand out.

Inside the Book

  • Reasons for using content blogs, wikis, forums, and other social media tools for technical documentation.
  • Descriptions of the many types of social media tools and best usese for each tool
  • Strategic suggestions for fitting technical publications into a wider social media plan
  • Ideas for integration conversation and community in your current documentation set
  • Metrics for measuring the success of these connective methods for documentation
  • Best practices for wiki authoring and building community around a wiki
  • Collaborative authoring strategies that work
  • Models for wiki publishing that work for end-user documentation

About Anne Gentle

Anne Gentle is a community and social publishing consultant, providing strategic direction for professional writers of all kinds. An early user of social media, Anne has been blogging since 2005. She writes about social media, writing, wikis and information design at JustWriteClick.com, where she has an engaged and loyal readership.

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What are They Saying?

“…the book has value to web workers of all stripes. The book is practical, up to date and isn’t just a “me too” social media tome.”

— Will Kelly, WebWorkerDaily.com

“The consistent, confident, professional tone kept me riveted…”

“I highly recommend this book to both technical communicators and those involved in social media and community. My copy is going straight to my boss’ desk.”

— Jeff Osier-Mixon, jefro.wordpress.com

“Could be best TC read of the decade”

— Michael Hughes, on twitter, @michaelhughesua

“If you think community participation in your documentation is coming soon, read this book immediately. If you think that it’s not coming, you’re wrong, and you especially need to read this book.”

— Sarah O’Keefe, Full review at scriptorium.com

“The book is brim full of useful information and, even better, great ideas”

— Sarah Maddox, Full review

Book Extras