Research your topic.
Writers cannot be experts in everything. They need to learn before they write. We prefer first-hand knowledge, which should come from actually using (as an expert) what you’re writing about. We don’t compile material from other sites to produce our content.
Hands-on Product Testing
Your purpose, when learning a product is to really know it, inside and out. Start by learning what the product is intended for. Then, set up a real project, where you’ll use the product to accomplish something similar to what real users will accomplish. Of course, it’s going to be a lot of work and require a lot of background.
For example, if you’re going to write about a financial calculator app, you’ll need to know the topic before you learn about the product. If you’re not able or willing to learn about compounding interest, don’t bother learning about the financial calculator and don’t agree to write marketing or technical documentation for this project.
Remember that most products that you can document don’t cost millions of dollars, so clients expect to learn how to use them in a matter of minutes, maybe hours. If it takes you weeks to learn the topic, maybe you’re stepping into a project that it’s right for you.
Interviewing Clients
Interviewing clients is a great (and critical) method to learn how clients feel about the product(s) that you’re writing about. By interviewing clients, you can understand how clients recall using the product. Keep in mind that clients are not maintaining an accurate and complete log of how they really felt when using the product. Clients will recall anecdotes. Typically, clients will recall one highlight (good or bad) and the overall result of using the product (they succeeded or failed). This means a single interview tells you how that one person remembers their experience, not how the product actually works or what most users need.
To get a comprehensive (not complete) picture of what clients feel about the product you’re writing about, talk with different people at different stages of using the product. Aim to talk with people very shortly after using the product. Take organized notes of everything that you hear so that you don’t need to rely on your memory. Always take notes of the context (who the client is, what the client is trying to achieve, the client’s experience, etc.). With comprehensive notes from many clients, you’ll be able to notice patterns.
Want to know how many interviews are enough?
You’ll know you’ve interviewed enough clients when you notice two things:
- The issues repeat with new learning becoming very rare.
- You’ll notice clusters of clients with similar issues and highlights (for example, agency clients often need different things than one-off clients).
You will see that there isn’t a “typical client”. There are clusters of clients with similar backgrounds and needs. You’ll notice what clients value most in the product. What they’re missing. What confuses clients. With this information along with your own knowledge of the product, you can create effective technical documentation and marketing materials.
And, finally, remember that clients have their own agendas. Many clients will want to advise you, and help improve the documentation and the product itself. Keep notes of advice but understand them for what they are. You’re not receiving organized research material from someone who methodically went through the whole product and took organized notes. Often, clients provide advice meant to improve the product for their use case. Often, what’s good for one client is great for many others, but it’s not always the case. An expert client will advise you to omit “background information”, which is great for him, but will confuse beginners. By understanding that everyone has an agenda, you’ll be able to write material that helps many clients and not just the ones you’ve interviewed.
Secondary Research Has Limited Use
LLMs can summarize what others have written about a topic. This is useful for:
- Understanding technical terminology before hands-on testing
- Identifying what competitors emphasize
- Checking if your approach aligns with industry standards
Of course, this research is useful to orient yourself, quickly learn about industry terminology and get the “general idea”.
But never write content based solely on secondary research. If you haven’t used the product or talked to clients, you’re just rehashing what others said. That’s not the content we want.
But this is what you’d do anyway, right?
Remember our vacuum cleaner example from the first chapter? You wouldn’t want to read a “how to use this vacuum” pamphlet by an author who never assembled or used it, right? If the author only read and watched YouTube videos, but didn’t assemble the machine or never used it, you’d be wasting your time reading his pamphlet. Same for your writing, about much more complicated products.
But you’re one person, and you won’t encounter every issue that confuses others. So, before you’d write that how-to-vacuum pamphlet, you surely want to speak with different people who assembled and cleaned with that machine, to get the complete picture of what your pamphlet needs to include and highlight.