[drupal-docs] Marketing subset of Team Documentation

[Liza Sabater]

On May 13 2005, at 02:38, Boris Mann wrote:

> I was just reading through some recent edits to the "features"
> section and came to the realization that the writing for that
> particular section needs to be completely different than documentation.
>
> As an example, check out the blogging features page:
> http://drupal.org/node/22728

Actually, Boris, everything needs to be changed starting with "Why 
Drupal?"

When people contract me to create a site for them using a CMS, they 
know nothing about standards, open source and all that geek speak. They 
come to me asking --what is going to make my life easier while giving 
me the most power and control. People want bang for their money. They 
want to know if it is flexible, easy to learn and easy to use.

The foundation of good marketing for any CMS is not the technology, 
it's the DIYability of the system. We are targeting "do it 
yourselfers"; people taking control of their publishing and community 
building "destinies". So if I can have a site running in less than an 
hour and in less than a week an "out of the box" community, I need to 
know that. I need to know this product is going to give me that.

I happen to be both a user and marketer of Drupal and CivicSpace --and 
I spent four years as the lead documentation developer for the Consumer 
Affairs department of Colgate-Palmolive. My job was to create not 
scripts but "conversation" documents the Consumer Affairs 
Representatives would use to better capture consumers' rants and raves 
about Colgate-Palmolive products. Reps needed to know inside out all 
the uses and abuses of the products plus how they compared to other 
brands. They needed to be "fluent" in the language of the company's 
products.

This documentation needs to capture exactly that : a fluency about most 
of the ways it can be used easily, effectively and powerful; as well as 
how it compares to other brands and products. So, for example, 
CivicSpace and Bryght would have to be included in a comparison chart 
as well as Movable Type, Mambo, WordPress, etc.



> I made some edits and inline HTML comments on suggested changes and
> added some notes to the log....but basically that whole page needs to
> be re-written in a way that hi-lights the cool blogging things that
> Drupal does. And the news aggregator deserves an entire feature page
> all to itself! Drupal is the *only* software that has such amazing
> aggregation capabilities.


ABSOLUTELY!

First reason why I moved away from blogging software to 
Drupal/CivicSpace. No question about it. Why? Think of the possibility 
of creating "affinity networks" using this feature.


> I'll volunteer to do a bunch of writing for this section, just wanted
> to bring it to everyone's attention that this is a part of the
> handbook that warrants a very different writing style. In fact, it
> might be good to have it very visually pleasing, maybe even with
> (gasp!) screenshots.

Count me in as well.

Liza Sabater
Blog Publisher
www.culturekitchen.com

culturekitchen network
www.blogsheroes.com
www.brownbloggers.com
www.dailygotham.com

AIM - cultkitdiva
SKYPE - lizasabater
Liza Sabater
Blog Publisher
www.culturekitchen.com

AIM - cultkitdiva
SKYPE - lizasabater
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