Best way to share out articles?
People in my company love to share out the articles they read on LinkedIn or in trade journals. A recent user survey has made it clear that an articles channel (particularly a channel where you can share articles about COVID!) is a priority. I'm toying between setting this up as:
1. Articles microblog. Quick and easy. In one click, you can send your article to the entire division (which is usually what people like to do). The downside is that if you are trying to look up that article that you remember being posted a few months ago, it can be clunky to find it. No clear history of articles, so a microblog would be about the current sharing, not future cataloging.
2. Articles forum. A channel template prompts you to name your forum post after the article and provide a summary in the body. More robust, better tracking. Clear history of past articles. But from experience, I know that things like templates and summaries can scare users away. If they are sharing an article simply because it interested them, they don't want to stop to think about summary.
As I write this, I'm leaning towards microblogs...make it easy and give the users what they want. Anyone out there feel differently?
10 Replies
This is a fantastic question for everybody to answer!
I am torn. I am really leaning towards that microblog. There is nothing better than tossing a short note in a bottle out to sea and seeing what comes back. Couldn't agree more - this route also presents the least possible effort for a user and we really do not want to over-layer our users.
Forums could be better if you or admins are starting the forum with a theme and people continue the "story" with their shares, but I really cannot think of a programmatic way of keeping on top of that.
Edita Svoboda, Steven Spadt, April Morris, Judy Headrick, Emily Hall, Rupi Sandhu, Corrie Horne, Angela Williams, JanRene Ashman, Molly Sproatt, Bill Mayers - what would y'all pick?!
We currently use blog channels for a similar type of sharing across a variety of industry pages. That being said, we have a group of super users who primarily do the posting. Thinking of my audience specifically, a microblog is by far the easiest way for them to quickly execute. I'd consider what's most important - easy participation, or the need to follow-up/catalog the posts. My vote is microblog!
Great Question Jocelyn. And I suspect that your gut won't lead you astray. I am inclined to agree with Tom that if there is a *topic* then a Forum would be good. We have forum of Journal Articles, that are mostly about Higher Ed or International Ed. But people sometimes forget and post their links in Chatter anyway, so the microblog sounds like a good idea.
Interesting topic - thanks for bringing me in Tom Ryan. I'm going to go against the grain and recommend a forum. I absolutely see the benefit of either option, however, I'm also one that supports organization and self-service from an information consumption standpoint.
While it may be easier for users to post using a microblog - how to they want to consume their information? For me, I may not have time to sift through all the blogs, but if they were organized by categories then I can go back and read when I have time and prioritize what I want to read by the topics.
I think the solution depends on the size and the culture of your audience - and how they interact with all your communications channels.
I love this community so much! THANK YOU for these great insights.
I am still leaning towards microblog, but I think you raise a great point, Corrie Horne --the key question is not just how users create content but how they consume content. So as a next step, I need to find out what percentage of users has actually found themselves trying to locate earlier articles. My guess is that the vast majority of users reads, comments, and forgets, but if I'm wrong and a significant group values having previous content as reference material, well then there's my decision.
Jocelyn Flint - we definitely want updates on what you ultimately decide!
I would also poke the box of contribution after consumption. It might sway you away from Forums entirely and into full fledge blog land if there is less dialog once something is posted, but still a need for cataloging.
Jocelyn Flint, I was thinking microblog first for the ease of use, but come down in the camp with Corrie Horne on wondering if your users would need to find the articles later. How robust is the sitewide search when it comes to the microblogs? I find that my users don't automatically turn to that function when they need to find something (I do, though!).
We are using blog channels for this but we are very new users. I'm not sure why, but our users are using blogs far more than microblogs.
We use blogs for this and I have a short video showing them how to embed an article into the post. Basically, all I have them do is embed the article, copy and paste the title, and press publish. It makes it really easy for them, visually appealing for users, and pretty easily searchable.
Mindy Montgomery - this is a rock-solid approach and shows that with a little prescriptive education there really are additional options for solving!