Engaging Bloggers – Community selection of Blog topics
Enormous number of blogs and articles carrying immense knowledge are being shared on SCN. Our community always come up with innovative and interesting topics on SCN. But does that mean we are exploring the full potential of the community?
Were you ever itching to write a blog but were clueless about the topic to pick? Have you ever wondered if your blog topic selection would be interesting enough for the readers? Are you struggling to take your first step to blogging?
Well, I don’t have a clear answer to these questions either but I could try by throw an abstract suggestion.
Create a ‘blog topic bucket’ – This could be an link on SCN where community members – starting with Customer, then Partners and/or anyone can post a “topic” on which they would like to see a Blog/Article/Wiki on SCN. Community will choose the blog topic, SCN team will manage it and Community will write on these topics.
Here is a draft on how it could work:
- A Customer posts a “topic” to this bucket along with the most relevant space based on his/her discretion.
OR
- A Discussion is posted and the community has the ability to “Request Blog” from the Discussion topic.
- The Topic lands to our “SCN Moderators” queue. If approved (based on relevance or if some document already exist or if the topic is unclear), the topic is visible on to the entire community (through an area on individual spaces or a link?).
- (Optional) Community can rate the topics where they are interested to see the blog.
- Absolutely anyone can pick the topic, write about it and post it (under a new Blog sub-category?).
- (Optional) new bloggers can collaborate to write together
- Moderators do the Blog moderation (as there could be multiple people posting on the same topic).
- Blog is posted and the usual points and rating process follows. (Some additional benefits like all the “Likes” from step 3 above turn into points).
- Gamification – a new badge level can be added for those who write a Community-chosen blog.
Prototype Suggestion
- Start with giving Customers an option to Request KBA on SAP marketplace?
Pros
- More customer engagement on SCN as they can see what they want to see.
- Community chosen content on SCN.
- Providing new bloggers opportunity to understand the topics of interest on SCN.
- Many more……….
Cons
- More than Pros?
- It could be a mini project in itself for SCN or whichever team.
- This will bring in more work for Moderators.
- People posting the topic suggestion may get disappointed if they don’t see a turnaround in few days/weeks.
- If multiple people write on the same topic and their blog doesn’t get approved, it could be a disappointment. However, the good thing is you did write a blog. 🙂
OK. I know I didn’t think about lot of other important things. But that’s why I am writing this blog. Does this make sense at all to you guys?
P.S: I have also created an IdeaPlace entry for this suggestion. If you like the idea, please Vote on IdeaPlace.
P.S.2: I am willing to accept if you say this is completely stupid. 😉
I think this will again make the process complex. Here in SCN we have different spaces, any member can write a blog or start a discussion of their choice of their interest. If they are posting in a wrong space moderators are moving it to the right space too.
Also we have an efficient search in SCN to find blogs, discussion, docs etc.
But I like the idea on writing a blog by combining with other members. It will improve the quality of blog.
-Midhun VP
I actually thought about something similar.
A document (can be set as collaborative) with a list of topics that are often discussed but no blog or document exists about
In this collaborative document people could even add further requests or in advance reserve a topic (for lets say max 2 weeks) for their next blog or document.
But I argued with myself. While it could channelling the wanted content on the one site, it could as well lead to a poor result on the other side. e.g. a lot documents in a short period, then a big gap if no more open topics are listed...
I usually do not want 5 blogs/documents on the same subject. What should a moderator do if the first submitted blog has low quality? What if someone who is known for less good content reserves a topic?
So I decided to leave it as is to the creative folks, as I could see that those people who posts good documents and blogs are even good in picking the right content.
Thanks for your comment.
I am not sure if reserving a topic would be the best option. This could lead to duplicate work (as you said 5 blogs/documents) but that would be better than low quality content from the reserved blog. Instead, there should be just a specific number of days before Moderators (see step 6 in the blog) release the blog. This way it will be clear that no one else is posting on the topic.
>>But I argued with myself.
I have a similar problem when I post anything. If community agrees on any blog topic, wouldn't it reduce arguments with overselves. 😉
Cheers!
Prateek