AI is revolutionising digital communication, and the Firehead team has been brainstorming ways for technical communicators to upskill and lead the change. The professional landscape is transforming rapidly, and playing catch-up is no longer an option. One way to do this is by picking up tricks from neighbours in the field.
We’re starting 2025 with a new series of weekly blogs that will focus on 52 essential competencies and why digital communicators need to adopt them. Our deep dive will look at new career paths emerging in the AI revolution, door-opening skills, and how the magic of upskilling can transport you into areas of interest and new fields you’ve never dreamed of.
Skill 1: Appreciating the Scope of ‘Content’
To set the stage, we’re starting with something so foundational, you probably didn’t think of it as a skill. Posing the basic question: ‘What is content?’ may superficially sound as elementary as asking: ‘What is language?’ (to someone who is not a linguist, ahem). But when articulating the answers, you’ll soon recognise a huge definition overlap. Just as language is the basis of all human communication, interaction, understanding, and cooperation, so is content in the world of digital communicators.
This erudite definition of content suggests its vast scope, thanks to Carrie Hane, the women who wrote the book on Content Modeling (with Mike Atherton), in her article here.
‘At its core, content is meaningful information that is expressed through a medium for human use. Anything and everything can be content. It’s any digital asset or piece of information that you create or use for your audience’s benefit. Content might include text, media assets like images or video, or metadata, user data, and product inventories.’
Today’s content domains are so wide and vast that they cover interconnected disciplines such as content operations, content modelling, content design, content strategy, content lifecycle management, and semantic content, to name a few. There is an array of new sciences that revolve around the ‘quality’ and ‘curation’ of content, from how it’s garnered, filtered, rated, ethically tested, semantically categorised, and scrutinised for context, veracity, and domain value.
Once you understand the scope of ‘content’ you will understand the scope of the skills you’ll need as a technical writer. It’s a multichannel world that’s rapidly evolving and expanding.’
Developers think of Content as Some Form of Data
As technical communicators know, understanding how your developers think is a key skill in being able to translate information for the user. A Concentrix article titled: ‘Understanding How Developers Think About Your Data Content’, provides a useful analogy and example to remind us that content is multifaceted: If we consider that building a content management system (CMS) is like building a house, then the property developers would be the construction crew, focusing on the responsible procurement, integration. You can access the article here.
For content specialists, designing and tailoring the language of your message to reach a target audience likely involves working with a product developer. And developers tend to see content distinctly: as a form of data.
‘What’s the difference between content and data? As content specialists, we may think of “content” from the perspective of how it’s experienced by end users. For developers, “content as data” means zero-in on the information that makes up the content.’
Content marketers can use data-driven content to build relationships with their audience to create content that feels more human. Everyone in technical communication has a distinct but interdependent role in how they use, adapt, and publish content.
Content design is no longer exclusive to the channel in which it was published.
Content is now an ecosystem, and it’s almost impossible to separate one technical writer’s particular brief or discipline from other competencies associated with optimising the content. The terms ‘holistic’, ‘multichannel’, ‘omnichannel’, ‘interconnected’, ‘interdependent’, ‘reusable’, ‘adaptable’, ‘scalable’, accessible’, and ‘optimised’ proliferate the design of content management systems (CMSs). And the metrics by which success is judged will soon become the metrics of the competency of technical communicators.
There are now more than 100 types of content. Each has its own demands, idiosyncrasies, audiences, limitations, and ambiguities. Digital communicators and technical writers must recognise them or neglect them at their peril.
Omnichannel publishing is a strategic necessity due to the diversity of platforms and communication channels used by consumers and in internal corporate communications. Add human-interfacing to the list besides websites, social media, mobile apps, and online stores. Then we have SEO guides, blogs, infographics, podcasts and tutorials, eBooks, webinars and the ‘Internet of things’ (IoT), which now extends to smart home and wearable devices, medical machinery, and autonomous vehicle systems (to name a few).
The most dynamic fields of technology are machine learning and AI (if you dare separate them)… these will shape technical writing for the foreseeable future. They both need focused content.
For the IoT with high-tech gadgets that are connected 24/7 and communicate with each other without human intervention, technical documentation is essential because users – even machines – need an unambiguous support language. Technical writers must acquire new skills to navigate the content driving these complex systems.
Teams who deal with content are under more pressure than ever.
Carrie Hane’s article highlighted that in marketing, bold new strategies are needed to post more and better content to reach new audiences and fulfil multichannel marketing. According to New York Times Licensing (article here) platforms, marketing content growth is irrepressible:
- Content marketing will generate over $107 billion in revenue by 2026
- Personalised content raises sales opportunities by 20%
- 73% of marketed content appears on social media
- Image searches are going viral and need content keywords
- 50% of all content marketers outsource content activity
No matter where you sit in the Tech Comm world, you will be involved in the creation, editing, storage and publishing of content for in-house platforms or external consumers. Audience interaction and user experience (UX), ensuring clarity, employing up-to-date terminology, and exhibiting knowledge of the social, ethical, and cyber security challenges will be crucial in your interaction with content. And inevitably to your career.
Being part of efficient workflows, collaborating with team members, and analysing the output performance are all likely to be part of your purview. When AI infiltrates these roles, you will be involved in vetting the content to determine what elements and content ‘building blocks’ AI uses and chooses to perform.
As a technical communicator immersed in a world of reimagined content, ask yourself:
- Who will leading companies seek: proactive upskillers or reactive flatliners?
- What content-related knowledge do you have and will you need?
- Can you blend the mindset of content developers and marketers?
- Can you clearly define your place in the content world in an interview?
We think 2025 will be about breaking content silos: technical communicators will have to adapt or fail. So become knowledgeable by yourself, learn to work alone and part of a team, enrich yourself with the content jargon and terminology of the TechComm world, and don’t be afraid of change. It’s the only path to ‘contentment’ (see what did there?).
Firehead: visionaries of potential.
