A mini-guide on the main mistakes of tech copywriters from Yarr Starchenko, Senior Full-Stack developer in SAAS projects, Chief IT-expert in Contenteam editorial office. What are the core things to pay attention to when working with IT authors?
- Hi Yarr! Could you tell us what the main problem you notice in texts from tech authors is?
- The main problem with new IT authors is the lack of context, of course. It can be traced through many aspects - unclear explanations, poor examples, misused terms, incomplete definitions, and outright factual errors. Readers' evaluations of such a text will range from "They don't understand the topic at all" to "So-so, weak" at best.
- IT copywriting is distinguished, first of all, by complicated terminology. Where are authors most likely to get it wrong?
- Even in relatively superficial IT topics, there are a lot of traps for the beginner. Terms similar in usage but different in meaning - authentication, authorization, verification, identification. It's easy to get lost in the families of software products from big companies - Amazon Web Services and their thousands of acronyms, Microsoft and Oracle products.
What is the service's target audience, which one is payable and which one offers subscription, which is cloud-based and which you can deploy on your servers... and dozens of similar questions. Abbreviations, abbreviations, abbreviations! CMS, ERP, VM, AWS, MS, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS!
- Are there any particular examples of an author's errors that have surprised you?
-The other week, I read a text where the author claimed that unlocking a smartphone with a fingerprint is "very expensive in terms of hardware and software, but facial recognition is easy and simple; you just need to have a front-facing camera." Although, in reality, budget smartphones, even five-year-old ones, offer a fast fingerprint scanner, while fast and reliable facial recognition is still not available in cheap gadgets.
- So how can we quickly identify the difference between a novice tech copywriter and a cool and experienced one?
- A novice IT writer rarely takes an interest in industry news on a regular basis. That is how we get weak test cases. For example, writing on cybersecurity mechanics, the author can mention some harmless virus from a century ago that hardly anyone has heard of (and presents it as the latest scoop). Meanwhile, the tech news reports claim that hackers break Facebook servers and steal tons of unencrypted user data in a text file several times a year.
- And how do you revise texts on technologies? What is the main task of the IT expert?
- Certainly, there are cases where you just have to do some of the work yourself. Make screenshots of some program for a particular OS, make code inserts, write a complex paragraph. Over time, we come to the point where a good writer does not think he knows the topic at the level of an expert but feels his weaknesses and starts to ask questions in time.
I select strong sources, explain the topic, make an outline of the article, add some paragraphs if it comes out faster than the editing, highlight errors, and tell all the authors about them. If the author is literate, he can always use my help so that later he does not have to rewrite.
To summarize, there are four basic steps you can take to quickly check your IT text for quality and adequacy:
Check the terminology used in the text. Look for gross errors in the transcription of abbreviations. For example, HTML is not code, it is a markup language, and CSS is not a code either.
Conduct a fact check. Links should not lead to 1-year-old news. IT materials lose relevance super-fast. The author must remember about it.
Do not forget to check the relevance of given information on user services: paid/free subscription, the trial period, the list of options in subscription plans, what are the available languages of the interface, and so on.
A quality text should be easy to understand, with no abrupt logical leaps or incomprehensible conclusions. The more narrow the subject matter of the article, the more difficult it is to make it pleasing to the eye and ear. Complex IT material is always a heavy load for an unprepared author. You should always remember that the result may be worse than the work of the same author on simpler topics and require additional editing.
It is a type of digital marketing solution focused on converting prospects into customers and customers into repeat buyers.
Content marketing means advertising a product or brand, driving sales, and encouraging a direct response from the prospects-turned-customers.On the other hand, copywriting is meant for advertising or other marketing purposes and gets readers to take a specific action.
It might seem ridiculous right now, but many marketers, freelancers, journalists, and students looking to start their careers ask the same in dozens of variations.
So if you have thought this before, you are not the only one.So while content is crafted with an indirect marketing goal in mind, it still carries some information about the brand.
When you present information about a topic that others find helpful, they consider you an industry expert.
Dull headlines: If your headlines are not attractive enough, people don’t have a reason to click through to the rest of your writing.
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