Using Blogs to Educate Your Stakeholders
Thursday, June 30th, 2011 at 7:30am -- Kat Liendgens
Let me start by thanking William & Mary, one of our long-time customers, for tweeting out kudos to the Hannon Hill team and for including a link to a blog published by their creative team. We really appreciate the great feedback! Check out their latest post, in which they explain the new features implemented in Cascade Server 6.8.
Blogs are an excellent way to keep your users up to speed on what your creative and technical teams are up to. The more you communicate with your stakeholders, the more engagement you can foster. These days, with social media becoming such a prominent way of not just marketing a product, but also of communicating in general, blogs are quickly evolving into a tool of choice for many technical teams to interact with their internal customers.
There are several things that I really like about the William & Mary Creative Services Blog. For instance, in addition to how concisely Mark Windley, the author, explains how the new features, such as the Image Editor or the Context Menu, work, he also makes sure to point out the benefits of those features, which is an important aspect of educating your users and ensuring continued buy-in. Another thing that’s very effective is the overall tone of the blog, which is very conversational. I would be hard-pressed to find a single person on my team who enjoys reading manuals, and a great alternative to detailed documentation (which is tedious to write and oftentimes boring to read) is a set of quick posts that are easily digestible and mimic real life conversations.
After reading the Cascade-related post, I started reading other posts as well, and really enjoyed the broad spectrum of topics covered. They are quick reads with very specific take-aways. While the overall language and tone is consistent throughout, the contributors’ individuality still comes through. Comments are enabled on each post in order to give the readers the opportunity to directly interact with the creative team.
So I am reciprocating the kudos by saying great job, William & Mary’s Creative Services!
How does your organization’s web team communicate with users?
Category
- Product Upgrades