7 essential tools for content developers and technical writers

Content developers in customer education are often in charge of creating and updating critical customer-facing resources such as documentation, tutorials, learning paths, guides, and videos in an education portal, academy, or help center. 

While every organization is set up a little differently, the goals of customer education are often quite similar: to help customers solve problems, confidently adopt best practices and new features, and get the most out of their technology investment. 

Transforming complex information into engaging, easy-to-follow information for users at various skill levels and with different job duties is no easy task. So whether you work as a documentation specialist, technical writer, or learning & development professional, your success often hinges on the right mix of strategy, creativity, and supportive tools—tools that allow you and your team to create and distribute content efficiently. 

In this blog, we look at 7 must-have tools for content developers, including their pros and cons. What tools would you add to the list?

1. Planning with a task management tool like Jira

Content developers work cross-functionally to ensure training materials are accurate, relevant, and aligned with product updates. They often closely collaborate with development teams, product managers, and marketing, as well as customer success managers, consulting, and support. That’s why having clear task prioritization is essential for a smooth workflow. Many content developers and technical writers use Jira to help organize and track progress, keeping content teams aligned with their development and product counterparts. 

Pros

• Clear assignments: Clear tasks, deadlines, and responsibilities help teams manage workloads.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Keeps teams on the same page and ensures accountability.
• Practical prioritization: Helps manage complex workflows and needs effectively.

Cons

• Can be overwhelming: Too many features for simple task tracking.
• Requires setup: Customization takes time to configure properly. 
• Requires maintenance: Custom workflows and boards require ongoing maintenance to keep them relevant and effective with evolving team needs.

We use a custom prioritization framework in Jira to assess tasks based on urgency, educational impact, and effort required. This helps us focus on creating high-value content for our learners while keeping our backlog organized.

Martina Farkasova

Customer Education Team Lead, Kontent.ai

2. Collaborating in a platform like Confluence

Confluence serves as a centralized platform for collaboration and knowledge management. It allows teams to create, share, and organize personal and team meeting notes, planning and retrospectives, and process decisions. With collaborative editing and integration with other Atlassian tools like Jira, content developers can maintain seamless workflows and align content projects with broader team efforts. 

Pros

• Team home base: Keeps everything related to your team in one worksapce.
• Collaboration: Supports real-time team editing, comments, and version history.
• Integration: Works well with tools like Jira, especially if you’re already using the Atlassian ecosystem of tools for project management.

Cons

• Content discoverability: Difficult to find existing content, especially when managing a lot of it.
• Learning curve: Takes time to master for new users.
• Costly: May be expensive for smaller teams or startups.

3. Creating content in a headless CMS like Kontent.ai

A headless content management system (CMS) provides flexibility for structuring and distributing content efficiently across multiple platforms. One example is Kontent.ai, which enables modular content creation, ideal for creating and delivering easy-to-navigate documentation, interactive learning paths, downloadable PDFs, and more. 

We’re proud to say that our Learn portal at Kontent.ai is run on Kontent.ai and the quality of our materials is appreciated by our customers. Read more about the latest G2 badges we received and see why we’ve become known for our exceptional customer services and support.

Pros

• Modular content: It’s easy to repurpose and update content without disrupting workflows.
• Efficient content authoring: Writing, editing, and collaborating happens in the doc-style authoring experience.
• Flexible content delivery via API: Distributing content to different platforms is done dynamically, instead of manually copying and pasting it.

Cons

• Learning curve: Requires some time to master its structured approach.
• Cost considerations: The robust feature set and ability to scale serves global teams.
• Dependency on integrations: Integrations are a double-edged sword; some advanced features require third-party tools.

Another interesting benefit of going with Kontent.ai? The ability to speed up the content production process with AI content reviews. Simply input your content guidelines, and AI will check your text against those guidelines and flag specific problem areas. This extra eye during reviews ensures content meets your standards from the start. Content reviews help catch consistency, readability, and compliance issues early, reducing stress and endless revisions.

4. Video storytelling with creative tools like Vyond and Play.ht

Sometimes, users want more than text-based tutorials; they want to be guided through their education journey with video. Enter Vyond. This animation tool helps create engaging educational videos. Want to scale your content production with voice overs for tutorials? Pair your video tools with AI voice generation for text to speech tools like Play.ht to satisfy all your users.

Pros

• Great for storytelling: Animated characters make complex ideas easier to grasp.
• Easy to use: Drag-and-drop interface simplifies video creation.
• Rich media library: Offers a variety of assets for diverse content needs.

Cons

• Limited customization: Some visuals feel generic.
• Subscription model: Can be pricey for occasional users.
• Rendering time: Processing videos can take longer than expected.

5. Editing code with a tool like Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code (VS Code), developed by Microsoft, is a lightweight, open-source code editor. It’s designed for web and software development with support for various programming languages and extensions, making it ideal for creating technical tutorials, coding examples, and interactive learning material. Features such as debugging and Git integration streamline the development and documentation process. 

Pros

• Extensible: Wide range of plugins for customization.
• User-friendly: Easy to navigate and lightweight.
• Collaboration: Supports real-time code sharing.

Cons

• Resource usage: Can slow down with many extensions.
• Initial set up: The initial set up requires extensions for full functionality
• Feature overload: May be overwhelming for new users.

6. Tailoring messaging with intelligence tools like Gong 

Creating content without listening to your audience may lead to ineffective lessons, gaps in documentation, and time spent inefficiently. Using a tool like Gong, which primarily positions itself as a revenue intelligence platform, gives customer education leaders a front row seat to customer delights and frustrations. 

What’s more? It can act as a tailor-made messaging guide for how your users actually talk about your product and its features. This insight is so valuable for creating documentation that is both accurate and approachable. 

Here, you can see the weekly digest for the “ Training and documentation” stream. What other streams might be useful for your teams to set up to ensure the right customer insight is delivered regularly and incorporated into your discussions and plans? 

Pros

• Customer insights: Helps identify common pain points and questions.
• Data-driven content: Helps drive better messaging based on real feedback.
• Improved messaging: Ensures terminology aligns with customer language.

Cons

• High cost: Premium pricing may not suit all teams.
• Requires adoption: Needs buy-in from multiple departments to be fully effective.
• Data overload: Can be overwhelming without proper filtering.

7. Measuring success with an analytics tool like Power BI

You’ve built the content, but how do you know it’s working? Microsoft’s Power BI provides visual analytics, helping content teams measure engagement and effectiveness. Let's see what our content developer in customer education has to stay.

We use PowerBI to understand how likely people are to complete lessons, learning paths, and certifications. We also evaluate the feedback they leave behind to improve our materials. I like that it tells a story of a customer’s experience and their engagement. Engagement means a lot to us, and we always want to ensure that our content performs well by consistently resonating with learners’ needs.

Samina Minda Hossain

Content Developer, Customer Education, Kontent.ai

Pros

• Detailed performance insights: Tracks content engagement and effectiveness.
• Customizable reports: Tailored dashboards for different needs.
• Plays well with others: Works seamlessly with analytics platforms.

Cons

• Complex interface: Requires training to use effectively.
• Heavy data processing: Large datasets may slow performance.
• Limited free features: Best features require a paid plan.

The right tools and the right mindset make the difference

Choosing the right combination of tools is key to ensure that technical writing, documentation, and content development professionals create high-quality customer education materials, centralize knowledge management, and move toward the holy grail: enthusiastic product adoption. But it’s not only the tech that makes the difference.

At Kontent.ai, we’ve learned that effective change management is the key to success. It’s less about the tools and more about how your team embraces them. The best system won’t help if no one uses it. Technology is just part of the solution. Bringing your people along is what makes the difference.

Lukas Martinak

VP of Customer Success, Kontent.ai

Whether you’re planning and collaborating, managing content, creating videos and code, listening to customers, or analyzing impact, each tool you meaningfully adopt into your tech stack should serve you, your team, and the shared vision you have to create great work. 

Want to learn more about how our customer education team leverages Kontent.ai to create and publish high-quality documentation, API references, learning paths, and more? Check out the blog, Lessons learned from building a reliable education portal or schedule a demo with one of our experts.