The Essential Guide to Topic-Based Authoring

From instructional guides and manuals to policies and complex technical documents, clear and organized documentation is essential. However, managing technical documentation can be a daunting task, especially when updates, collaboration, and content reuse are involved.

The good news? There’s a solution that can make your documentation journey smoother and more efficient: topic-based authoring.

Topic-based authoring is a method that involves breaking down content into smaller, self-contained topics or components. When using Component Content Management System (CCMS) software, each topic covers a specific subject or task, making it easier to create, manage, and update your technical documentation.

It’s similar to constructing an object with Lego blocks. You can easily assemble, disassemble, and rearrange the pieces to suit your needs, ensuring flexibility and precision in your documentation process.

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Where does this approach work best?

No matter what industry you look at, topic-based authoring is invaluable in a vast array of situations:

Financial institutions can create topics for different financial products (loans, mortgages, investments). If there’s a regulatory change affecting all products, only the relevant topic needs updating—and that change automatically reflects across all instances. Paligo customers report improved workflow efficiency, with content creation becoming 26% faster. By reusing structured topics, financial institutions ensure updates are consistent and instantly reflected everywhere content is used.

Life sciences companies use modular topics for medical devices, explaining setup, usage, and maintenance. Because it’s crucial to maintain consistent content across all products, a topic-based system guarantees a uniform approach in user instructions.

Manufacturing and software companies, in particular, benefit when they’re subject to frequent regulatory changes. Organizing information into sections allows companies to quickly update documents to follow the newest rules, instead of rewriting entire manuals.

The benefits are numerous and varied. It’s not only a more logical and efficient way to create content—it’s also more flexible and adaptable. You can create content that’s more targeted and focused, letting you easily make changes and adjustments as you go.

Let’s focus on four game-changing benefits:

Will your documentation stay consistent?

One of the most significant advantages is consistency. By creating individual topics, you maintain a consistent tone, style, and terminology throughout your documentation. This makes your documentation more cohesive and user-friendly, ensuring everyone reading understands the same basic concepts and terms.

Consistency also helps maintain credibility. When all your documents align, users are more likely to trust them.

Here’s how it works in practice: Say you’re writing a manual on assembling machinery. Break down the process into modular topics, each addressing a specific component or step. Create separate topics for standard procedures like safety protocols and tool usage. These standardized topics can be reused across different assembly processes, providing a consistent approach every time.

How fast can you make updates?

Documentation is never static. Updates and revisions are inevitable, and this is where topic-based authoring truly shines.

When you need to update information, you make changes to the specific topic, and with content reuse, those changes reflect in all the places that topic appears. This eliminates the tedious task of manually editing multiple instances, saving significant time and ensuring consistency.

Real example: In a corporate policy manual, if a company policy changes, you can modify just the “Code of Conduct” topic without reviewing and revising the entire manual. This focused update keeps your documentation current without the headache of reproducing the entire manual.

Can multiple people actually work together without chaos?

When multiple authors are involved in creating and maintaining documentation, collaboration can become a logistical nightmare. Topic-based authoring promotes collaboration by allowing different authors to work on individual topics simultaneously. This means your team can leverage their expertise efficiently.

Here’s what this looks like: Your team is creating software documentation. One person handles the ‘Installation’ section, while another works on ‘Troubleshooting.’ With parallel authoring in Paligo, teams can accelerate production by working simultaneously without stepping on each other’s toes, while ensuring the final output is unified and consistent.

According to Paligo’s Customer Insights Report, 60% of customers improved workflow efficiency, with content creation becoming 26% faster overall.

How much time does content reuse really save?

Content reuse addresses both consistency and speed. Without it, authors often create the same content multiple times with different terminology, which defeats the purpose of having standards.

When writing product documentation, manuals often contain overlapping information. A service manual might have more in-depth technical details than a user manual, but they share much of the same general information. By employing content reuse, you develop content once and use it for both manuals, ensuring consistent terminology.

Practical example: The same “User Profile Setup” topic can be used throughout guides for different software modules, cutting down on repetition while keeping all guides consistent.

Instead of rewriting or updating the exact instructions in multiple places, you maintain a single source and publish it everywhere it’s needed. 

In the world of documentation, topic-based authoring is a game-changer. It brings consistency, simplifies updates, fosters collaboration, and encourages content reuse. When coupled with a Component Content Management System, it becomes a powerful combination that streamlines your documentation workflow.

Your documentation team will thank you for:

• Reduced stress around content management
• More efficient workflows
• Better collaboration opportunities
• Faster turnaround times

Your readers will appreciate the clarity and consistency in your content. They’ll find information faster and trust it more.

If you’re looking to make your documentation process more efficient and enhance user experience, topic-based authoring with a CCMS is the way forward. Start your journey towards smarter documentation today.

Next steps:

• Evaluate CCMS platforms that support topic-based authoring
• Train your team on structured authoring concepts
• Identify existing content that can be converted to reusable topics
• Establish collaboration workflows and review processes

Can we convert our existing documentation?

Yes, you can migrate existing content by identifying reusable sections and converting them to modular topics. Most CCMS platforms provide migration tools and services to help with this transition.

What types of content work best with this approach?

Procedural instructions, product specifications, safety protocols, and troubleshooting guides are good examples. Any content with reusable information benefits from topic-based approaches.

How much training does our team need?

Most teams can start seeing benefits within a few weeks of training. The learning curve depends on your current processes and chosen CCMS platform, but the investment pays off quickly through improved efficiency.

What if our content doesn’t seem “modular”?

Even content that seems linear can often be broken into logical topics. Start by identifying repeated information, standard procedures, or sections that get updated frequently—these are natural candidates for topic-based treatment.

To get a deeper understanding of how topic-based authoring works, read our post: “Structured content authoring for complex documentation“.