What Are Some Essential Things to Know About Freelance Technical Writing?

 

Everything to Know About Freelance Technical Writing

Technical writing is a complex field that is a step above other areas like copywriting and content marketing. As the word suggests, technical writers write more technical content. Today, there is an increasing demand for such writers. It has paved the way for freelance technical writing to emerge as a viable career option for many people. Today, organizations and businesses find it increasingly beneficial for them to hire freelance writers for technical content instead of full-time writers. However, many people are still a little unfamiliar with this field. If you feel like you are one of them, don’t worry. This post will explain to you all about freelance technical content writing.

What is Freelance Technical Writing?

Technical writing refers to writing complicated technical information and concepts in a way that ordinary people can easily understand. It is different from other content writing areas like report writing, blogging, and article writing. It is because it uses complex information and a different type of writing style. 

Technical writers create user manuals and other types of technical documentation. Some common examples of this type of writing include 

• case studies
• instruction manuals
• orientation manuals
• whitepapers
• release notes
• API documentation
• FAQs
• financial reports
• Company documents. 

Freelance technical writers need to possess full technical knowledge regarding their subject matter. At the same time, they must also have fluent writing skills. If you want to be a technical writer, you should be aware of different writing styles. Freelance technical writing has become popular mainly because of the proliferation of small businesses. These small-scale businesses find it costly to hire full or part-time technical content writers. It is where they can give their work to freelance technical writers and get it done. 

 

Is Technical Writing Different from SEO Writing?

Before understanding the difference between technical writing and SEO writing, it’s essential to understand what is seo writing? SEO (search engine optimization) writing is the incorporation of key phrases and keywords in the web content. It is commonly made use of by copywriters and marketers. They do it to boost their website’s organic search visibility and search engine result’s page ranking. SEO writing has targeted keywords and searches terms in it. It allows people conducting searches on Google to discover specific content according to their requirements on the internet.

 

Both technical and content writers need to have strong grammatical, writing, and research skills. But that is where the similarity ends. The significant difference is in the kind of content technical and content writers create. Technical writing needs more in-depth and specific knowledge. In contrast, content writing does not need a lot of specific knowledge. Also, freelance technical writers must be objective to make complicated content clear to the readers. Content writers can create content based on their own opinions and figures of styles.

 

What are the Features of a Good Technical Content?

Now you know well what is seo writing and the difference between it and technical writing. If you want to forge ahead in freelance technical content writing, then there are certain features that all your content pieces should have. 

 

Here are the seven most important features of freelance technical writing. 

1. Correctness – Among all the types of content writing, technical writing should be correct. It means that you should convey 100 percent accurate information about any product or service that you are writing.
2. Suitable for the target audience – The audience of a technical content writer can be anyone, like business people or a particular group of scientists and engineers. If you do not mould your writing style as per the needs of your target audience, then your writing will not be understood correctly. 
3. Conciseness – Technical writing should be very concise. There is no need of using any kind of literary device like metaphors or similes. 
4. Comprehensiveness – A technical writer needs to explain everything in detail. For example, if you're writing about a gadget with two functions, you need to explain both the functions in detail. 
5. Sequential and logical – Every sentence of your freelance technical writing must be linked to the other. The writing should flow in a logical sequence. 
6. Action-oriented – Technical writers write with the aim of enabling users to take action. It is important then that you use action verbs whenever you can. 
7. Systematic and organized – All technical documents are kept and organized in a ‘tree-view fashion. Your writing should start from the general facets of a system and then go into particular details about it. 

 

Conclusion

A good technical content writer explains the product or program they are writing about in a simple, concise, and straightforward manner. Freelance technical writing is all about communicating a complicated message in a simple manner. Now that you know much about this type of writing, you are better placed to explore this field further.

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