No need to complicate! Or how can redpolitika help promote your solutions to users?

Problematics

We make work tools for corporate users. We do them well. Beautiful and clear.

But we do not have access to the users themselves. And it often happens that the way our solution is presented to the user spoils the impression. And instead of wanting to use the new user-friendly functionality, it is boycotting and protesting.

It was painful and sad for us, and we decided to fight it. And we want to share our best practices, how to ensure that your solution is presented to the users with dignity.

As the saying goes, a picture is better than a thousand words. Here are two of you. Where to start. Our interface and instructions to it from the customer technologists:

Since this is a working tool, people still have to start working with it and in the end everything is good, but we want everything to be originally from love.

We realized that rescuing the drowning hands of the drowning people themselves, and began to draw layouts, write texts. But they quickly realized that there are many products, new versions come out often, and if we carry all marketing communications on ourselves, for a minute, our customer with his users, we will not have time to make new products.

It is necessary to transfer the groundwork to the customer and involve him in the transformation of communications with the user.

You probably had a couple of questions right away.

• First: why should he?
• Second: and how do you plan to teach him the beautiful?

The first is simple. Just time. We already wrote in the article about the design ecosystem : the time when corporate systems could look like anything, just to work, has passed. This is also a marketing channel. And we just showed how to do well, and enlisted the support of the leadership.

The second question is much more interesting. This is what we want to share with you today.

So, how to implement editorial policy in company communications with users of their corporate systems

It is clear that the word “redpolitik” was invented by ourselves. We, like everyone else, were subjected to 2017 hyipu - read “Write, abbreviate”, we realized that in general, everything about common sense is written there and we have it. We systematized our intuitive practices and developed our editorial policy.

Our policy is a set of text templates, rules and layouts for self-layout of materials and recommendations on the language of narration. But it does not begin with rules and patterns.

Step 1. Understand who our readers are and how to communicate with them.

First we determine who our reader is.

• Does he know the materiel and the accepted terminology or not?
• Did you use this or similar systems (does it know the business process)?

In general, from what beginning we need to start.

Further, we admit to ourselves that the reader is not so interested, overloaded with information and probably does not remember anything that happened before. Therefore, we agree to write so that the picture as a whole is clear.

Step 2. Determine which communication channels are at our disposal.

The next step is to determine the information space that is at our disposal. How information about our products comes to users?

In our example, this is:

• targeted news on the portal,
• targeted mailings,
• instructions on the portal,
• instructions in the informational section of the information systems themselves.

Not so much. So it is quite possible to restore order.

Step 3. Developing a communication structure for each of the channels

We write news on the portal on the principle of an inverted pyramid - from the most important to the details.

The main difficulty here is that the news on internal resources is not written by marketers and PR managers. They are written by managers, technologists ... for whom the language of reports, notifications, orders is more understandable. As a result, instead of a capacious text about what happened and how to live with it, we get the classic:

Dear partners!
In connection with ... (3 lines of lifeless formulations) to all partners who (3 more lines of something indigestible) ... it is necessary to change the password for entering the system specified in clause 35 of annex 5 to regulation 8.

This, of course, is an invented version of the extreme case of merciless writing. But all of life. Most of the internal texts in a large bureaucratic structure seeks this. But we are very sorry for our users, who have to read all this, and therefore we agree to write according to the “inverted pyramid” principle.

• The first paragraph of the news broadly answers the basic questions: what, where, when? So that the reader can immediately understand whether the news concerns him, and if so, what is the main point.
  You do not need to start with “Dear partners, we are informing you that ...” is not respect, but clerical, does not bring any benefits, but spends time.

  
  
• Below are all the details of the message. Continuing the logic from the main to the secondary. More significant - above, particular - below.

The mailing list is used to bring the key innovations / benefits of the product or version. We talk about the main point in a clear, confident way.

The structure is again the same - from the main to the details.

The key (informative!) Information we put in the title and subject of the letter
its more complete decoding - in the first paragraph.

And then comes the confirmation of the stated theses. We came up with a formula for arguing: quickly - flexibly - conveniently.

And at the moment everything that we wanted to tell about each new product or functionality perfectly fits into it:

Quickly - what you used to do with your hands, is now automated and done by a button.
Flexible - you can customize whether to perform all actions without your participation or certain events you want to view and process manually.
Conveniently - the entire history of operations is collected in one place and you can find the one you need according to any parameters you like: name, type, date ...

Plus, a beautifully written letter allowed us to add at once a vivid argument to each item - screenshots of the interface.

You can also include all the necessary links in the message body:

• on the transition to the system
• full instruction
• on contacts.

The instruction is a longrid, where we can not limit ourselves, well, except in the office and the bureaucracy, and we write everything we need to write. So that the user who saw the system for the first time or encountered any non-standard situation, could find the answer to his question.

(We impose on PPT, our “office” users are so quite comfortable. By the way, the redpolicy was completed with a similar presentation. Everything is clearly displayed and shown there).

In the manual the main thing is to tell everything and follow the logic:

• from start to finish,
• from basic scenarios to non-standard ones
• from rules to exceptions.

By the way, this is usually not a problem.

But with what we face everywhere - this is a wild complication of the presentation of information. When a simple instruction to an understandable system turns into a Talmud of scary page formulations from 10-20-30.

We will fight this by the forces of the great and mighty.

Step 4. Agree on the language of the story

Simple language
As a friend, we tell the user what to do to make it work.

• We write in simple language.
• In the paragraph of the text or on the page of the presentation we carry out no more than one topic.
• Do not confuse, do not say too much, but do not tear logical pieces.
• We try not to use highly specialized terminology and not common abbreviations. Or at least decipher first. In general, it is good to give a thesaurus at the beginning of the documentation - to define all the terms and decipher abbreviations.

Short sentences
We try to write in simple and short sentences. We do not use complex structures - they are very difficult to perceive.

We put everything into simple, consistent, exhaustive steps.
Do it once, do it two, do it three ... Success!

If one page is not enough - we lay out the topic into several, but divide between pages into logical blocks of information.

Remember that people can read
It is not necessary to list in the instructions section menu items that are already signed in the interface and are not internal narrow terminology.

Modern technology to help us
It is not necessary to describe everything in words. A screenshot in a letter or a presentation with the highlighted necessary area will say much more than long phrases.

A separate word about the headers and topics of letters
We forget everything that we heard or saw about selling texts, yours are not like that. You send service letters to your users. This is not advertising, not spam, this is information that is USEFUL. Therefore, in theory, recipients are interested in opening and reading these letters.

BUT! Not all the information is needed for each of the recipients, and a lot of letters arrive. In such a situation, the recipient is trying to understand by the title whether the information concerns him, and then decides whether to open or not.

Therefore, the rule is very simple: provide the most complete (complete, not bulk!) Information. And avoid unnecessary words (stationery, "water").

In the title as clearly as possible and specifically specify what will be discussed next:

What happened?
Who will be affected?
What to do?

If these items are in the title and they are relevant to the person - he will go in and read the details. And if they are not relevant, they will still be aware of the main events.

Step 5. Design and prepare templates to design without a designer

We impose templates.

• Mailing list,
• Presentation template with all fonts and styles for text and interface screenshots.

We prepare and hand over to the managers of the customer a package of illustrations:

• news and newsletters,
• covers and "jibs" for presentations.

We are preparing the redpolitics training manual itself (we have described all sections here, just fill them with your realities).

Step 6. We carry out architectural supervision and fill our hands with managers, technologists and all those who will continue to live in a new way and bring beauty to the masses.

The most discouraging question from the customer - and you can arrange a demo redpolitiki?

Unfortunately, this does not work, it’s not an automated workstation. We here write 5 years corporate news , but no matter how much we laugh at the fact that it is time to create an automated news generator in the “summary”, of course, we will never do this.

Each project is a new solution. Every communication on it is an author's product. Meaning will have to formulate themselves. Redpolitika only help to draw it in an easy, understandable and beautiful way.

therefore

• Please send the materials for review.
• We comment on everything that confuses and offer our own variants of logic, formulations, design. We systematically explain (with links to the editorial board) each choice. And send for revision.
• And we repeat this circle as many times as necessary.

Our practice shows that progress is fast. Evolution is a strong and irreversible thing.

All beauty and satisfied users!