At our “Developing your career as a technical author” course yesterday there was a great discussion about meeting the needs of “Generation Y” – the part of the working population under 27 who have grown up with the Internet. It’s a group that makes up about 13% of the working population.
We talked about the fact that they acquire so much of their information from the Web. From many of them, if Google can’t find your content, it doesn’t exist.
This led me to think, if your competitors’ Help is not available on the Web, then why not write it for them? With the majority of Generation Y using Google to find Help, there’s a good chance they would end up reading your version of Help.
This gives you the opportunity to explain the complexities of a particular competitor’s product and contrast it with your company’s offering. You could end up persuading prospects to buy your product instead of those of your competitors. You might even win some of your competitors’ customers.
[…] A different point of view from ours: why you should write documentation for your competitors’ products […]