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Creating a Tech Writing Web Site
For a tech writer, creating a web site is a sort of online resume. You can
use this as something for potential clients to look at once you've established
contact in some other way. Invite them to see your web site, and they will get
an impression, hopefully good, of both your experience and your writing and
design abilities.
Web Hosting, Domains, and Software
There are companies out there who will help you design a web site. But as a
tech writer, there's no reason you can't do it yourself. Find a domain (use your
business name or as close to it as you can get) and a hosting service, get
yourself some web design software (e.g. FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Flash, etc.) to
do the work (unless you're a Notepad diehard and want to code your HTML by
hand), and show the world what you can do. See our
Links page for some ideas.
Designing your site
Your goal in designing a web site like this is to think of it as an
introductory brochure.
Keep it professional, leave out the personal photos and the story about your
dog, and keep the design simple and clean unless your specialty is
graphics-heavy interactive design using Flash or whatever. Remember that your
primary audience will include people who don't know, and don't care, about the
details of tech writing tools that you've used. They've got business needs that
they want to know if you can help them with.
Samples and project summaries
What you want is a summary of the kinds of projects you can do - since this
isn't an actual resume, it's fine to talk about what you can do and not
limit yourself to things you've done. Put a few brief samples on the site so
visitors can get a suitable impression - but don't place entire projects there
for the world to see. Remember, your web site is just an introduction, not an
encyclopedia, and you also don't want to make it easy for someone to download
your work and pass it off as their own.
Industry focus - identify your target market
If you focus on one or a few industries, highlight this. Probably this is the
single most important feature of your site, because visitors will be able to
find you in search engines when they seek someone in that specialty. Who knows,
you might even help create some of your market in this way. Say someone is
putting together a project on intergalactic marine biology. They might not even
know that they need a tech writer. As they search for the relevant terms, your
site comes up because it highlights your specialization in just that field. With
a good site that explains how you can add value to such a project, the visitor
will be on the phone to you soon enough.
E-mail as marketing tool
With your web site will come an e-mail account (usually several). Use one of
these as your professional e-mail, and include a signature with your site
address and a one-line description of the services you provide. (Keep your
personal e-mail separate; there's no need to tell Grandma about that
intergalactic marine biology specialty of yours every time you write to her.)
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