Secret Sauce and Snake Oil: Writing Monthly Reports in a Highly Contingent Environment.
At a search marketing company, each search engine optimization (SEO) specialist writes up to 10 to 12 complex 20-page monthly reports in the first ten business days of each month. These SEO specialists do not consider themselves to be writers, yet they generate these structurally and rhetorically co...
| Publicado en: | Written Communication Vol. 27; no. 4; pp. 363 - 410 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Sage Publications Inc.
Oct2010
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=53793307&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 53793307 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 07410883 WRC jtl: Written Communication issn: 07410883 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Oct2010 vid: 27 iid: 4 pid: 344 pub: Sage Publications Inc. artinfo: ui: 53793307 10.1177/0741088310380518 ppf: 363 ppct: 47 formats: tig: atl: Secret Sauce and Snake Oil: Writing Monthly Reports in a Highly Contingent Environment. aug: au: Spinuzzi, Clay affil: University of Texas at Austin su: Report writing Business report writing Search engine optimization Specialists Business sug: subj: Report writing Business report writing Search engine optimization Specialists Business keyword: audience analysis contingency ethos genre knowledge work networks reports WAGR ab: At a search marketing company, each search engine optimization (SEO) specialist writes up to 10 to 12 complex 20-page monthly reports in the first ten business days of each month. These SEO specialists do not consider themselves to be writers, yet they generate these structurally and rhetorically complex reports as a matter of course, while negotiating a constantly changing landscape of a contingent, rapidly changing business sector. Under these conditions, how did the SEO specialists manage to write these reports so quickly and so well? What is the standing set of transformations that they enact in order to develop and produce these reports? And given the multiple contingencies, rapid changes, and high individual discretion at this organization--seemingly a recipe for discohesive practices--how did they maintain and develop this standing set of transformations in order to turn out consistent reports? In this article, I draw on writing, activity, and genre research (WAGR) to examine how Semoptco's SEO specialists produced monthly reports, specifically in terms of their constant networking, audience analysis, and ethos building. Finally, I draw implications for applying WAGR to knowledge work organizations. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2010 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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