7 Reasons To Find A Technical Writer for Hire

​You’ve put a lot of work into creating your product or fine-tuning your service. You have some engaging marketing materials and people seem to be taking a serious interest. However, there is one thing missing. You need to communicate the in-depth features and specifications of your offering to your customers. You need to find a technical writer for hire to develop your documentation and technical content.

Depending on your field, your audience may have high expectations about the level of information that will be provided to them. For example, if you sell industrial hardware, your customers likely want exact specifications. Similarly, enterprise software customers often want full documentation, especially if you offer an API.

Hiring a technical writer can help you serve these customer requirements more effectively. Understanding what technical writers do and the reasons to hire professional content writers will help you make better choices for your technical content.

What Is a Technical Writer?

A technical writer is someone who creates written content to communicate complex ideas and information. This is typically in the form of instruction manuals, journal articles, technical documentation, white papers and other similar documents.

The main goal of a technical writer is to communicate complex ideas in a manner that is easy to understand for the intended audience. Even highly knowledgeable readers who are very familiar with the subject matter may have difficulty parsing technical documents if they are not written well or laid out in an easy-to-understand way.

Sometimes technical writers exclusively produce documentation. In other cases, a technical writer for hire may focus on marketing communication that is more detailed or technical than conventional copy. Of course, the majority of technical writers produce some combination of these forms of content. They may write for consumers, enterprise buyers, users and/or internal teams.

What is the Difference Between a Content Writer and a Technical Writer?

Although both types of writers create content for the benefit of companies, businesses and others online, there are a few distinct differences. Technical writers for hire are typically more qualified to create technical content. They have enough experience to understand difficult terms and ideas and can translate them into words that others can understand. And as mentioned above, many technical writers produce documentation and detailed instructions that are hard to create.

Content writers generally write content that is a little easier to generate such as blog posts and website pages. They don’t need to do the extensive research or receive the education that a technical writer has to write about difficult topics or explain technical terms, depending on their client. If you’re looking for writers who can write persuasive copy and use SEO practices, a content writer is what you’re looking for.

However, many freelance technical writers are also content writers or vice versa, depending on the work they pick up. It’s best to put in any job description specific requirements (such as a background in mechanical engineering or competence in writing user manuals).

7 Reasons To Hire a Professional Technical Writer

If you are considering whether you need to start looking for technical writers for hire, it is important to understand what your options are. Many companies simply have their engineering or marketing teams create technical documentation and content for their products and services. Others may hire a full-time technical writer. However, there is an option between these choices, hiring a contract writer.

There are many benefits of using a contract writer for all of your contract needs. But is it really worth hiring a writer instead of doing the work yourself? The following are seven of the best reasons why you should be looking for a contract technical writer for hire.

1) Clearer and More Concise Message

Professional content writers are dedicated to crafting clear and concise documents. Like anything else, writing is a skill that can be practiced and improved. So, it should come as no surprise that an experienced, professional writer can typically create a clearer message than someone who’s job isn’t focused on writing.

As mentioned, the main goal of technical writing is to distill complex ideas into easy-to-understand documentation. Therefore, having a writer who can communicate intelligibly and concisely is essential to creating successful technical documents.

Technical documentation produced by engineers often includes technical jargon and shorthand phrasing that may not be understandable for an outside audience. On the flip side, marketing teams may not be able to reach the level of depth that is desirable for a technical document. Hiring a professional technical writer is the perfect way to generate a document that balances clarity with information.

2) Highly Targeted Language

When writing anything, it is important to keep the audience in mind. A professional writer has the experience and skills necessary to put him or herself into the shoes of the reader. This special talent takes time and effort to develop. Teams that aren’t dedicated to audience-focused writing often struggle with this.

Considering the audience helps the technical writer for hire to focus his or her writing on the interests of the reader. Although customer wants and needs should be part of the product’s design, communicating to the audience how the features and benefits of the product relate to their needs can be difficult.

Furthermore, a professional writer can more easily manage multiple audiences. You may sell your product or service to enterprises that have different people making buying decisions than the people who will be using it. You may also have multiple audiences such as expert enthusiasts and average consumers.

Every audience needs content that is written for its needs. Working with professional content writers can help ensure that all your documentation is created properly for the intended audience.

3) 100% Focus on Writing

Sometimes you need a piece of content created quickly. However, your engineering and marketing teams already have a variety of other responsibilities. A professional writer, conversely, is focused completely on writing. He or she can prioritize based on which documents need to be finished first.

Besides, a professional technical writer for hire, whether full-time or in a contract position, will rapidly home in on the right tone and voice for your brand. He or she is focused solely on effective technical writing. Thus, the writer isn’t trying to master the basics of writing while also juggling other responsibilities.

In a lot of cases, expecting other people on your team to produce good quality technical documents is simply unrealistic. As with any other specialized skillset, it is important to have someone who is focused on technical writing authoring your documents. You will get better results and avoid unnecessary waste.

4) Reduced Costs

Typically, working with a technical writer for hire can help you save money versus using other employees to produce documentation. This is partly because technical writers may cost less than other employees, especially engineers.

If you are paying out large salaries to your development and product management teams, you don’t want them to be spending their time on tasks they weren’t hired to do. In a lot of cases, you can hire technical writers for less per hour than you pay your high-level team members.

Furthermore, technical writers are usually far more efficient at writing. They can complete documents in a fraction of the time it would take someone else to do so. Experience and skillset can pay off in a major way in terms of efficiency and cost reduction.

Finally, if you are working with a contract technical writer for hire, you won’t need to pay him or her for any time that you don’t need. If you need 10 hours of writing work one week and 20 the next, you aren’t losing any money to inefficiency. The writer will simply work on your content whenever you need it.

5) Better Formatting and Easier Reading

As mentioned above, clarity is one of the most important reasons to hire a technical writer. However, a clear and easy-to-read document requires more than just a well-written message. It also needs the right layout and formatting.

Technical writers for hire know how to structure their work to make it both appealing and readable. In many cases, good use of white space is as important to clarity as the content itself. Similarly, good use of headings, lists and other formatting features can make your content significantly more understandable for your audience. This is especially important with reference materials because the reader is likely looking up information, not reading through from start to finish.

From a marketing perspective, working with professional content writers can be the difference between documentation that explains your product or service and content that sells it. Technical writers can collaborate effectively with designers to present your manuals, articles, white papers and more in a sharp, professional way that engages readers and gets them excited about working with your business.

6) Impartial Perspective

It can be challenging for someone who has worked directly on a product or service to describe it well. When you are “too close” to something, it is easy to overstate the benefits or get overly focused on minor details. In other words, your perspective may be colored by your experience creating the product or service.

A technical writer can help solve this issue. He or she offers an impartial perspective on the product or service. While the writer still wants to make it look good, he or she can take a step back and view the offering from a more objective point of view.

This is important because it helps the writer see the product or service in its totality. Therefore, he or she can more readily communicate the full picture to the audience.

If you are dissatisfied with your current technical writing, it may be because the author is too involved with the product or service. Consider hiring an outside professional writer to help resolve this issue.

7) Scalable Writing

Contract writers for hire can work when you need them. This characteristic not only helps with containing costs but also helps with the opposite problem: rapidly growing your technical writing needs.

If you have a major product release coming up, you likely need extensive technical documentation to be prepared for the launch. This may require quite a bit more writing work per week than you have previously needed.

When you have someone on staff doing your writing, whether that is a full-time technical writer or a member of another team, you are limited to how much you can accomplish. Conversely, contract writers and writing services can rapidly scale up their writing capacity for you.

Most businesses require an inconsistent amount of technical writing done over a given period of time. Therefore, it is usually advantageous to harness the scalability of contract writing.

How To Find the Right Technical Writer for Hire

When you are searching for writers for hire, you need to take a structured approach. One of the best tools available for evaluating a writer is commissioning sample work. In other words, hire the contract writer to produce one or a few pieces before you commit to a longer-term relationship. This is an excellent way to get a clear sense of what a writer is capable of.

• Understands Your Product: First and foremost, technical writers should have a strong understanding of the field you are in. They should be sufficiently familiar with the subject to enable them to quickly study and understand your specific product or service. After all, the purpose of technical writing is to translate complex ideas into understandable writing. This is impossible without a strong understanding of the technical information.
• Demonstrates Strong Writing and Structure: Always look for professional content writers who can demonstrate excellent writing quality and structure. Again, the goal of working with a technical writer for hire is to present your technical information clearly and concisely. So, look for someone who’s sample shows this ability.
• Writes Well for the Audience: Someone who is a great technical writer for another brand may not have the right voice for your audience. It is important to find someone who fits your business and your audience well. Consider running a test on your commissioned sample before committing to a long-term contract.
• Has an Aptitude for Learning: For a technical writer to continue to excel, he or she needs to be able to learn about and quickly understand complex ideas. Consider setting up your sample prompt to challenge the writer to learn about something new. This could be your product or industry, for example. Examine the sample to determine how well the writer appears to have understood the subject and synthesized it into excellent writing.
• Shows Efficiency and Organization: Writing is complex work and requires a lot of preparation before the final document is produced. This is especially true for technical writing. If you want consistent and high-quality work, make sure that your writer has the organizational abilities to get the job done.

Find Professional Content Writers

Finding the right technical writer for hire can be challenging. However, it is worth it. You will get better quality manuals, journals, technical documentation and more. Your customers will appreciate the hard work whenever they need to reference the specifications and technical information about your products and/or services.

You can produce better quality technical and promotional work by choosing BKA Content’s professional content writers. Our team has the experience and skill set necessary to communicate your brand clearly and effectively to your audience. Contact us today to learn more.