I have had the privilege of managing content teams for over the last 15 years. I started in the training space and that evolved to include managing technical communicators. One of the areas of concern that seems to arise from time to time is how content creators can better show value from all of the work they produce. My experience has been mainly in the software space creating courses, documents, release notes, help documentation, and training materials. But this could apply to anyone creating content internally or externally.
It can sometimes be a thankless job, especially in an agile development environment. From other team's perspectives, you just slap together a document, video, etc. and publish, right? It can be difficult to keep up with the pace of production. Content gets published to your CMS, LMS, or website and then you are back at at planning for the next release. But who can see how much work you put into that?
How can someone in this type of role show their value better? Here are a few suggestions from a manager perspective:
Align your content strategy with your reporting structure and organization. Make sure those stakeholders know their priorities are yours.
Document on a weekly basis what was edited, updated, and published. I prefer this to be a metric to track over time to see the workload being produced.
Communicate your changes to the appropriate teams on a regular cadence. If people aren't aware of it, they can't see the value in it.
Create a system and dashboard in which all of your work is visible in one location to you and the organization. Most teams use their authoring tools to do this, but most outside of your role can't see this.
We have written other articles regarding currency and the role that it plays in adding value.
What's in it for you? Being able to demonstrate value will help you get the resources, budget, and salary, and career progression you may be looking for. It is easy to keep the headphones on, write your content, and publish away. But if the organization doesn't see what you are doing and if your work is up to date, you are not maximizing your value. Thanks for reading!
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