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How do we - N2 - engage YOU better???
Happy Holidays, N2 community!!
I've been hush-hush for a while because the team over here has been discussing a critical issue - what do we need to be doing in order to get you all engaged a whole lot more? The N2 blog is not churning up the type of engagement we had hoped to see and we're scratching our heads wondering why. We're providing content - perhaps its not what you want or need? We're focusing that content on social media strategies - perhaps we're missing the mark? Essentially - we're rethinking our strategy and we want you, the community, to guide us.
We've kicked around many peanuts on the topic and JUST ONE of the action items we're going to execute is working hard to open candid conversations with all of you right here on the blog. After we work to get those conversations started, we're going to discuss how to document them and turn them into ongoing action. Social Media is all about being a two way street, but right now we're not certain why we aren't seeing much traffic on the other side of the road...so we're asking for you to honk at us.
So, first topicof conversation is this: Is the N2 blog AND environment making it easier or more difficult to locate, share, utilize, and benefit from the content published?
We're really going to work to get you the community to inform us on this topic and many others during the coming months. I'm going to be checking the comments and posting more and more about the topic to keep the conversation rolling. As well, here is my email - JAMESVITO@GMAIL.COM - if you'd prefer to email me there and then I can repost your content anonymously.
So consider this the beginning of a call to action, a call to engagement about the very foundations of what N2 is about - and now you hold the reigns in helping us understand what it is that excites you, helps you, benefits you... MORE TO COME!!
- jamesvito's blog
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Great post -
Also - I enjoy how you provided your personal contact information so that people could get in touch with you there. I know that this is a tricky area - some people don't want to acknowledge what they're looking for, as it could get interpreted as weakness by employers or co-workers, so it sometimes better serves them to contact us directly. I know that's happened in the past, and I'm always happy to help. Unfortunately, standards of transparency still don't make a lot of sense to some employers, so it makes it difficulty for us in the field to admit weaknesses in knowledge sets, as we fear how our employers might interpret that. I've been there and I hear that.
--
Alex Steed
Writer, Doer & Collective Action Enthusiast
p. (802) 999-2050
w. www.alexsteed.com
I'm not much of a fan of
I'm not much of a fan of regular blog comments in general but am becoming a fan of the disqus setup. Perhaps disqus comments or just more visible commenting settings would help. And there does seem to be a fairly broad range of topics for the blogs.. it might be helpful to have some sort of ratings so we can quickly see what the community values most. 5 star mod perhaps? Perhaps leverage these conversations on site? Just some thoughts. Happy holidays.
Hi James Munn, Thanks for
Hi James Munn,
Thanks for the comment. I've looked into Disqus and I can discern that its a cross platform tool which somehow spreads the discussion of comments across sites/posts relevant to the topic. However, I'm having trouble understanding exactly how it does that and why its valuable. Can you help me understand better and that will fuel N2's consideration of leveraging it for the site?
I did look at sites that use Disqus, but it didn't click with me just how the software decides what comments get shared across what platforms. Does that make sense?
And I hear you on the ranking structure - we're going to discuss that as a team and see what type of technical labors are involved. What with the current structure, it may or may not be possible/feasible to accomplish that.
Please - keep the ideas coming. I will also be writing them up as posts so they get more visibility, which backs up your point about visibility of comments not being optimized.
Best...James
disqus..
I don't mean to totally sell disqus here as I haven't used it that much but here are a couple of things i like about it. It lets you vote up or down on comments. I think it would let you admins decide if a comment with a score of -2 gets displayed or not. You get to see easily and quickly where else commenters are talking out on the web. Certainly there are downsides. Just relying on another outside service might not feel that good. Also... not too many people like signing up for yet another web service.
In terms of ranking maybe you could make use of slinkset.com somehow? You can just throw your feeds into it? Maybe thats reaching... but it would certainly be easier than incorporating some new rating/voting mod. Good luck
-james