I have been surrounded by a vibrate community for a number of years. I have been online since 1992, really evoking community or at least a sensitive community since 1996 on Lockergnome.com and now this chat room that has been done in conjunction with the live video feed at live.pirillo.com has geeks.pirillo.com but of course geeks.pirollo.com is open to anybody, any geek. And even if you think that you are not a geek but you are passionate about certain things in your life, you are a geek. You are maybe a Lego geek, you are maybe a lighting geek, you are maybe a movie geek, you are maybe a garden geek, you maybe whatever geek. It is just use your passion about things. On our community site you can do a variety of things including posting in a forum, a general forum and posting your own blog. But there is certain rules that I think are going to be good for guidelines, I should say, not really rules to help keep you on track and being a good community member as well as creating something worth looking at and honestly this is as much as your web site is as is it is mine. So take pride in what you are doing. So this first video that we are going to do specifically on some community tips and this does not just apply to the community geeks.pirollo.com but really any community that you are involved in any where on the internet. So specifically this video I want to cover tips for better forum a blog posts.
The first one is lead with a strong headline. Sometimes it is a question, sometimes it is a statement that pulls people intoreading what is inside that post. Single words or simple phrases are to be avoided in the headline if it all possible. Again watch your capitalization. If you have never written a headline before, my suggestion is look up how to write a headline and if you do not know how you are going to learn real quick because you know my degree is in English Education and I do not care how old you are if you are a functional member of our community, I am going to teach you and you are going to learn and trust me it will benefit you. The younger you are, the faster you will learn this, the better off you are going to be for the rest of your life. And of course if you are my age or older, and you are still not sure how to write a headline, yes it is a different story.
Number 2, and this is a good guideline, remember your PUGS. We are all pug owners. Punctuation, usage, grammar and spelling in the content of the post. Again, punctuation, usage, grammar and spelling. This is not a text message and it is not a tweeter post, okay. You do not just want to throw something out there that is a sentence long and expect top just have mountains, and mountains of responses or certainly people that are going to appreciate the direction that you are taking it. And this kind of falls in line with that one.
Three, do not just ask a simple question. If you want responses, spend a great degree of time crafting your position in the matter. If anything, this is why I always like to do top 5 list people love digesting well thought out bullet points. If you are covering a new story or a product launch, what about some photos, videos, original texts. That is a big, big one right there. Never copy someone else’s content especially without permission. Always quote your sources. We want to know your perspective. Why are you taking the time out of your day, to post something? Why are you posting it? Do not just post what somebody else has written, why is it important to you?
And again it goes back to remembering your PUGS. If you cannot present this idea, this opinion, this new story, whatever it is in a clear, cohesive constructive manner, you are really not going to gain any friends. It is not that what all this social networking community stuff is all about. Finding people of like minds or at least respecting people even if they have a different opinion and a lot of the way that you present yourself in a forum, post whether it is a response or initiating post or it is something that is like a blog post where you want to take it to your own personal
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