EN 
AI Summary
- Arshabhi Rai, Technical Writer Manager at Solace, discusses generating organic traffic through documentation. His background includes marketing, sustainability consulting, content development, data management software, and technical writing.
- Solace’s documentation process is based on understanding users: analyzing problems from their perspective, selecting the documentation type, considering how users will use it, deciding whether photos or videos are needed, and defining the documentation’s architecture and position.
- Good documentation improves user experience, reduces support costs, increases product credibility, provides a competitive edge, and enables spontaneous customer feedback for documentation improvements.
- Public documentation is freely accessible and searchable through Google. Solace uses appropriate titles, keywords, cross-referencing, and connections with other sites to generate organic traffic, while searchability requires team time and resources.
- Arshabhi advises mastering a language or specific skill that complements technical writing. He names colleagues, Tom Johnson, and The ELEMENTS of STYLE as inspirations.
AI-generated content. It may contain errors.
See Document360 in action
Arshabhi Rai, Technical Writer at Solace, joins us in this episode of Knowledgebase Ninja and shares his experiences in generating organic traffic through documentation. Check out all the other episodes of Knowledgebase Ninja here.
Connect with Arshabhi and Solace here:
Key Takeaways
About Arshabhi’s and his journey
Arshabhi has been a marketer and sustainability consultant. Alongside that, he has vast knowledge and experience in technical writing. He is an experienced content developer, data management software user, and technical writer.
Arsh is currently working as a technical writer manager at Solace. He also applies his reasoning and analysis keeping end-user in view for producing high-quality documentation.
User-friendly documentation process
Arshabhi explained how they write based on the understanding of their users. Their entire technique is dependent on how well they can recognize their user’s needs. He further disclosed that they initially analyse the problem; think of it from a user’s perspective, choose which sort of documentation needs to be done and how their users would use that particular document. Furthermore, he said that “we analyse if we need photos and videos in the documentation or not and decide the complete architecture of the documentation as well as its position.”
Effect of technological advancement on workload
“Good documentation improves the user experience in one hand and reduces the support cost in the other hand.” says Arshabhi. Support cost here refers to the time and other resources spent on supporting users. It becomes easy to guide the user or solve an issue based on the documented resources.
Arshabhi further said that this could be concluded that technological advancements have made it extremely easy to assist customers as the cost of the support has decreased extensively, and the product credibility has increased in turn. Proper documentation also gives a competitive edge by making it easy to receive feedback from customers spontaneously for further improvement in the documentation process.
Searchability and public access to documentation
Arshabhi explained that considering the SEO and search engine, you need to have the right title and appropriate content. He further said that your team will still need time and resources for searchability to enhance the documentation.
Documentation that goes out to the public is freely accessible for everyone. It’s not in any way a firewall or restricted user. Users need to go to Google and search for their company. They can find the relevant documentation there.
Organic search traffic
Upon being asked about whether Solace generates any organic traffic or not, Arshabhi disclosed that Solace does generate organic traffic. In fact, they were also incorporating marketing to enhance their organic documentation.
Arshabhi described that they are keen on using the correct titles and keywords. Apart from this, the documentation team at Solace also uses cross-referencing and connecting with various other sites to generate organic traffic.
What documentation related advice would Arshabhi give to he 20-year-old self?
If I were to give one advice to myself, I would say that I would master a language or a specific skill that complements technical writing. I considered myself a jack of all trades, and that is correct. Most of us focus on writing, but I think if you have that one specific skill that you’re really strong in, I believe that is a definite bonus in your career
Who has inspired Arshabhi in technical writing?
- His colleagues
- Tom Johnson
- The ELEMENTS of STYLE – By William Strunk JR. & E.B White
Arshabhi’s favourite documentation related resources
Subscribe to Knowledgebase Ninjas
Quote
