Blogging in the SDL Tridion Community (2012)
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•1,399 views
This document provides guidance on starting a blog and blogging about Tridion. It discusses reasons to blog such as helping others and leaving a legacy. Good topics to blog about include observations, solutions to problems, and samples. Blogging is compared to programming in that it involves revising work over time. Permission is given to start blogging on any topic without worrying if it is perfect. Risks are low if topics are at a high level and avoid proprietary info. Organization is important using tags, navigation, and post templates. Reach can be increased using fascination triggers and by sharing posts on social media. Resources for platforms, images, and analytics are provided to get started blogging.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to Blogging in the SDL Tridion Community (2012)
Similar to Blogging in the SDL Tridion Community (2012) (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (16)
Blogging in the SDL Tridion Community (2012)
- 1. Blogging. Why? How? SDL Kick-off 2012 > Professional Services Alvin Reyes “Nivlong” on February 2012 (updated November 2015)
- 2. 2 Thoughts From the Week ○ “The less implementations we need to fix…” “…the more we get to do the fun stuff.” ○ We need more information on bulk importing options. ○ Modular templates will eventually be “new” again
- 3. 3 If you’re already ready… ○ If you can’t wait… Go to ○ http://blogspot.com or ○ http://wordpress.com …and start or create a blog post.
- 4. 4 Not harder than Tridion. “Is blogging hard?”
- 5. 5 Alvin’s Background ○ Formerly Project Management and ○ Web Development 2015 update: ○ Consultancy and ○ Now Product Management Deliverables Costs Time Quality
- 7. 7 Alvin’s Background Internet Research Associate (technical writing) Web Development Intern 7
- 8. 8 Alvin’s Background Updated Functional Consultant Now: Product (Priority) Management Priorities Stakeholders Market Customers
- 9. 9 Blogging on Tridion = 10x Growth in Pageviews in a Year
- 10. 10 Updated (2015): 20k page views/month last year
- 11. 11 I enjoy… The challenge Helping others Supporting the community Why do you blog, Alvin?
- 13. 13 You do. They do. Who Blogs about Tridion?
- 14. 14 2012: http://80000ft.blogspot.com http://albertromkes.wordpress.com http://albertteboekhorst.com http://amarchuk.blogspot.com http://asierfernandez.com http://blog.building-blocks.com http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=tridion http://codedweapon.com http://createandbreak.net http://curlette.com http://dominic.cronin.nl/weblog http://elenaserghie.blogspot.com http://esteewhy.posterous.com http://jaimesantosalcon.blogspot.com http://julianwraith.com http://monicamanzano.blogspot.com http://nunolinhares.blogspot.com http://netvibes.com/spiderbike#Tridion http://pkjaer.wordpress.com http://sdltridionworld.com/community/week_review http://stringwriter.com http://tridionarchitect.com/tridion/tridion-blogs.aspx http://tridiondeveloper.com http://tridionfanboy.wordpress.com http://tridionnut.blogspot.com http://tridionstrategist.blogspot.com http://tridionuser.blogspot.com http://urbancherry.net/blogengine/author/chris.aspx http://vvlasenko.blogspot.com http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0E10CC8C16CC4EEA http://yoavniran.wordpress.com https://github.com/search?type=Repositories&language=&q=tridion&repo= 2014 Update: ○ Albert Romkes ○ Albert te Boekhorst ○ Alexander Klock ○ Alexander Orlof ○ Alvin Reyes ○ Andrey Marchuk ○ Anton Minko ○ Arjen Stobbe ○ Asier Fernandez ○ Bart Koopman ○ Building Blocks ○ Charles Guo ○ Chris Morgan ○ Chris Summers ○ Dominic Cronin ○ Elena Serghie ○ Eric Huiza ○ Ferdinand Lugo ○ Gertjan Assies ○ Hao Houang ○ Jaime Santos Alcon ○ Jan Horsman ○ Jarno Henneman ○ Jeremy Grand-Scrutton ○ John Winter ○ Jonathan Primmer ○ Jonathan Williams ○ Jordi Vanderpooten ○ Julian Wraith ○ Manuel Garrido ○ Miguel Miguelez ○ Mark Saunders ○ Mihai Cadariu ○ Monica Manzano ○ Nickoli Roussakov ○ Nuno Linhares ○ Peter Joles ○ Peter Kjaer ○ Rob Stevenson-Leggett ○ Robert Curlette ○ Robert Jin ○ Rute Oliveira ○ Ryan Durkin ○ Stefan Shumanov ○ Taras Strypko ○ Tory Johnson ○ Thijs Borst ○ TridionDeveloper.com ○ Tridion Talk (podcasts) ○ Tridion Webinars ○ Vinoth ○ Visvabalaji ○ Vadym Vlasenko ○ Vesa Paakkanen ○ Will Price ○ Yoav Niran Some Tridion-Related Blogs, Sites, and Open Source Code
- 16. 16 But I don’t blog.
- 17. 17 You don’t have to blog. (but we’ll cover blogging in a moment) But I don’t (want to) blog.
- 18. 18 You can… Code 2015 Update: SDL-sponsored repositories • https://github.com/sdl • http://sdl.github.io/
- 20. 20 Update: Tridion Stack Exchange has 3,642 questions ○ Started in 2012 (proposed by community member Dave Houlker) ○ One of few CMS- related Stack Exchange Sites
- 21. 21 You can… Collect, gather, and share
- 23. 23 How do you keep up?
- 24. 24 Tridion World Community Review Update: Now see updates on SDL Community! SDL ^
- 25. 25 Google
- 26. 26 Connect. Learn. Teach. Share. Develop your online personal brand™. Help or guide consultants, content authors, customers. Complain. Write. Communicate. Demonstrate. Code Practice any of the above. Why would I want to blog?
- 27. 27 Good Reasons ○ To contribute to a community ○ To complain about problems ○ To offer solutions for problems ○ To improve your writing skills ○ To sell your business, organization, or mission ○ To further your career ○ To create intellectual property ○ To leave a legacy; record moments in your life; share with friends, family, or your future self ○ To fulfill other passions Bad Reason ○ Make money (okay secondary reason) Great Reasons
- 28. 28 Others blog about Tridion APIs. You blog about whatever you want. What should I blog about? What do others blog about?
- 29. 29
- 30. 30
- 31. 31 I want to but don’t have time. or I’m not interested. I hear two types of feedback when I mention blogging or sharing.
- 32. 32 I Don’t Have Time ○ Valid, practical concern. ○ Do you… – Think about work – Write online or offline – Use technology or social media: • Resume (Linked-In) • Tweeting • Facebook • Web browsing • Email? ○ If yes, then yes there’s time.
- 33. 33 When do you have the time? ○ For me: – Tridion’s a hobby. – I collect and connect issues and observations,. – I’m creatively lazy. I recycle. – Experience plus practice. ○ For you: – Find a topic that interest you. Don’t confuse your first post with your blog. – Find the problems or opportunities you want to address – Learn to spot the “blog-worthy.” – Find the shortcuts that work for you
- 34. 34 Blogging Time Cheats ○ Quick posts – Template – Email to post – Blogger App ○ Quick ideas – Frequent requests or issues (markup, SiteEdit proxy, content delivery, Anguilla, create component) – Wiki post, open source project, sample code, forum post – Approach, best vs bad practices
- 35. 35 I’m Not Interested ○ If you’re self-conscious, you will never post as much as, as clear as, as smart as, or as funny as _______________. ○ You can only share what you can and want to share… ○ On things – You care about – You want to change – That fascinate you For me blogging is not about Tridion. Blogging is a way for me to understand and engage my current World, which happens to be Tridion.
- 36. 36 Blogging Start! How do you start? By giving yourself permission. Who? Why?
- 37. 37 …is like programming. Engaging the community…
- 38. 38 Blogging is like Programming ○ Update and revise ○ Never prfect the first Time; ○ You will have syntax (grammar) errors ○ In the end, you must commit the code to deliver ○ In Tridion terms… …don‘t forget to publish.
- 39. 39 You start programming. How do you start programming?
- 40. 40 A: Being creative is all about… …permission. It’s okay to give yourself permission. Q: What will others think? Is it good enough?
- 41. 41 A: Being creative is all about… …permission. It’s okay to give yourself permission. Q: What will others think? Is it good enough?
- 43. Making a Post Topics, risk/reward, organization, and increasing your reach
- 44. 44 What should I blog about?
- 45. Pick a Topic
- 46. 46 You. ○ What’s your role ○ What’s your secret identity ○ What’s changed? ○ What do you want to change? ○ What are you most proud of? ○ What are you most worried about? ○ What do you like about helping others? ○ What are you tired of answering? ○ What could you answer over and over and wouldn’t mind? ○ What do you like most about work, life, family, friends? ○ What do you do for fun? ○ What’s unique about you?
- 47. 47 Choose a topic. A topic differs from your blog. ○ Hello World. ○ How-to information ○ Emotions ○ Headaches ○ Dreams and aspirations ○ “Aha” Moments ○ A ha moment ○ Complaint ○ Getting help, giving help ○ Observations ○ Techlink Question or Discovery ○ Old implementation ○ New implementation ○ Sample code ○ Emotions
- 48. 48 For your blog… ○ What would you name your blog. If you have one, what would you rename it. ○ Who’s your audience? Who are you writing as (IC, FC, TC, PM, PM, etc)? ○ Have a unique take? ○ What’s your url? Tip: practice writing in under 140 characters or less if you want to Tweet!
- 49. 49 Give yourself permission. You don’t need a point.
- 50. Risk and Reward
- 51. 51 ○ High-level ideas are safe, but other okay examples: – API example – IDE setup example – Answering a question – Functionality description – Comparisons, software versions, pros/cons ○ Think “advocate” or ambassador Advocates can still critique ○ Avoid sharing proprietary info (no internal PDFs, no full training materials) ○ Use royalty free images ○ Be careful with customer info, snippets might be okay ○ Consider TridionWorld SDL Community for “official” content What do you want to accomplish? Easiest to be genuine and authentic Risk and Reward
- 52. Get Organized
- 53. 53 Navigation, Tags, Posts ○ Each post has a link. Share your link. ○ Tag or label your posts to make tag clouds. ○ Add pages for “website structure”
- 54. 54 Organize Tell them what you told them Tell them Tell them what you’re going to tell them Preview Point 1 Point 2 Point 3 Summary
- 55. 55 Did you know that ________? Most don’t realize the three things on X. First of all, X is good… Secondly, X is sometimes bad… Thirdly, get the most out of X by… We see that X poses challenges, whether you think it’s good, by, or want to get more out of it not many know that ________.
- 57. 57 Use the 7 Fascination Triggers for Impact ○ Power ○ Prestige ○ Lust ○ Vice ○ Alarm ○ Mystique ○ Trust See Sally Hogshead’s Fascinate to learn more about these triggers.
- 58. 58 Power Control. Position. Freedom to choose. “You have the power to…”
- 60. 60 Lust Desire, senses, comfort Touch, Feel, Taste, See, Hear Descriptive phrases Vivid imagery
- 61. 61 Vice Bad behavior. Inappropriate actions. Taboo. Partying too hard. “What happened last night?!” Muppets. Idiots. FML. Epic Fail.
- 63. 63 Mystique
- 64. 64 Trust Is trust “Measurable?” What’s a credit score?
- 65. 65 Use Fascination Triggers ○ Power ○ Prestige ○ Lust ○ Vice ○ Alarm ○ Mystique ○ Trust
- 66. 66 Need an example? ○ Top 5 Things To Know Before Purchasing a CMS ○ Why Web 3.0 Doesn’t Apply Anymore ○ Your Career Path ○ What I Love About Site Edit 2012 ○ The 5 Worse Things to Say in an Interview for … ○ The Difference between Enterprise and Shrinkwrap
- 67. 67 Need an example? ○ Why the Tridion Culture Persists… What’s in a Name ○ Site Preparation Checklist, Don’t Ignore It! ○ PRINCE2 vs PMBOK for Your Tridion Implementation ○ How to Increase Visibility for your Open Source Project ○ The Best Demo Ever ○ The Worst Demo Ever
- 68. 68 Let’s Blog! Take 5 minutes to write down the following… Blog ○ What would you name your blog __________________ (title) ○ Pick a “handle.” Could be real name. __________________ ○ What’s your unique perspective? __________________ (think about this after today as well) __________________ ○ What’s your url (fragment)? __________________ Individual Post ○ What did you learn this week? __________________ or ○ What do you want to share? __________________ ○ What do you want to learn? __________________ ○ Post Title __________________ ○ Keywords __________________ (“tags”)
- 69. 69 1 Sign Up with Google Account on Blogger.com
- 70. 70 2 Click New Blog
- 72. 72 4 Click New Post
- 73. 73 5 Write. Click Publish.
- 74. No Time?
- 75. 75 No Time? Make a Template. ○ Settings > Post Template
- 76. 76 No Time? Email Post.
- 77. 77 Share! …and extend your reach You Posted. Now What?
- 78. 78 Extend your reach ○ Help and showcase others ○ Entertain, educate, or enlighten. Have fun. ○ Tweet, link, and share. Tell the community.
- 79. 79 Don’t forget to push publish.
- 80. 80 Resources ○ Blog platforms – http://wordpress.org/ – http://www.blogger.com/ ○ Syntax “prettify” – http://google-code-prettify.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/README.html ○ Microblogging – http://twitter.com/ – http://www.tweetdeck.com/ ○ Royalty free images – http://www.sxc.hu/ ○ Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics/
Editor's Notes
- As a relatively new in SDL, I presented this deck out our 2012 corporate kick-off. I’ve since updated the theme (originally this was presented in the red, gold, and green corporate theme) and added some interesting updates. I highlight new material with a post-it yellow background or prefaced with the word, “update.” Some of the information is now dated, but the idea that sharing matters has since been reinforced several times over since 2012. “Let me introduce myself. But has anyone heard of me before today?”
- I gathered some interesting advice and leads that could be turned into blog posts. This slide pointed these point out. The first point about getting to do the fun stuff sort of turned into a career redefinition for one colleague. The second turned into a blog post, then a series of posts. The third is a timeless point that keeps coming back in the community.
- “Give me 5 minutes to introduce myself, explain Tridion blogging and alternatives, and address your biggest questions sharing, but if you can’t wait…”
- I teased a fellow enterprise CMS consultant that asked if blogging was hard.
- From development, to research, to business analysis, to consulting, I’ve enjoyed this past decade in a career in Web technologies. I’m looking forward to what’s next!
- To my surprise, sharing this info got me a short congratulatory round of applause.
- My reach varies. Since I first started, my blog’s page views reached 20,000 page views per month in 2014. All time page views are up to 346 thousand.
- “Since 2008, I’ve found sharing helped with my own career development, first in implementing Tridion as a customer, then for my own learning, and finally my current job as a functional consultant. I got current opportunity indirectly from engaging TridionWorld forum.” “Being a customer, I didn’t have opportunities for boot camps, or work on other projects, but I learned best practices, saw frequent issues, met consultants, and other customers by giving and learning from the TridionWorld forum. “ “You’re already consultants, you don’t need to blog and you can have a great career without ever posting. But let me share a quick overview, then explain how sharing is about giving yourself permission. We’ll then jump into brainstorming your first or next post. Up to you if you want to publish.” “This is not company mandated; this is me sharing what’s worked for me and what might work for you.”
- “I can’t convince you to blog or share. You’ve either already started, are already thinking about it, or will never blog. That’s okay. There are plenty of ways to contribute, develop your career, and “leave a legacy.” It doesn’t have to be blogging.”
- We posted the last update on TridionWorld https://www.sdltridionworld.com/articles/community_power.aspx Since then, people have changed roles or companies and maybe have started/stopped blogging. We still get new sharers regularly and sharing is almost the new normal.
- 2014 Update: https://youtu.be/abCTrzb6ca4
- Since 2012, Google Code has closed down and in addition to the “organic” SDL-related source code repositories, SDL itself started an official Github account. SDL showcases a few of its open source initiatives on: http://sdl.github.io/.
- Much of today’s community traffic flows through SDL Community in the form of RSS feeds. Be sure to sign up and ask to get added!
- This has since been replaced by the new SDL Community at http://community.sdl.com.
- “An ultimate goal… A triple win: Win: Career satisfaction and rewards for you. Win: SEO for SDL Tridion, informal support, and practical answers online Win: Help for customers, implementers”
- “If you want to share, don’t wait. If you don’t want to blog, don’t blog. Share in ways that help you. Share in the ways you best help others. Doesn’t have to be Tridion, you can learn/improve anything. Teach-able, learn-able skills. Others have worked through your same issues. Don’t struggle alone.”
- “When you share, you get free, authentic feedback. People pay for this kind of feedback. School. People join clubs for this kind of feedback. Toastmasters.”
- “If you want to share, don’t wait. If you don’t want to blog, don’t blog. Share in ways that help you. Share in the ways you best help others. Doesn’t have to be Tridion, you can learn/improve anything. Teach-able, learn-able skills. Others have worked through your same issues. Don’t struggle alone.” This slide and my point that if you don’t want to blog, don’t blog started at least one blog in our community.
- “We blogged about our baby, now toddler as a snapshot of our life. Personal reasons are great reasons to blog. Authentic and honest reasons will make it worthwhile.”
- “Online contributions are not a ‘zero sum’ game. It’s not take one. Leave one (as in penny). It’s take nothing, leave a ripple. Leave knowledge, help, direction.”
- The secret to starting anything is by starting. Many need to first give themselves permission to start.
- A few new bloggers name their blog with the title of a topic, which is too specific. You typically start with one blog to which you add individual blog posts.
- In the SDL Tridion technical community, trust, prestige, and occasionally vice seem to frequent triggers. Community members love helping and enjoy the recognition they get in return. You can get the most impact by being helpful and open. Vice appears in the “RTFM” comments to those that really didn’t research a problem before asking. I suspect those with strong alarm triggers are too hesitant to participate “in the open.” Power is an interesting trigger because it’s challenging getting a loose collective of individuals with varying interests to do anything they don’t want to. “Community” might be a frustrating fit for those fascinated with power. Luckily bloggers in the community use mystique sparingly and appropriately in “this is sooo cool” type posts and solutions. When abused, you might see appeals to the mystique trigger in link bait captions in the form of “the top 5 things you really don’t know about XYZ. Number four will blow your mind.”
- Looking back, I wouldn’t recommend focusing on fascination triggers when starting a blog. Just start with something you’re interested in and try to make it useful to either your future self or others in the same situation. Fascination triggers are just one tool out of many of understanding and working with people.
- Linkbait has gotten out of control. You probably don’t want to follow this advice anymore.
- We have a joke about correlation that goes, “I showed up. And then this happened.” For me, that goes, “I showed up. And then everyone started blogging.” I can’t take credit for all the sharing in my last department since I joined, but a few colleagues have credited me for helping them get started. In the end, it’s your community, your sharing, and your communication development. In a world where anyone can self-publish, sometimes all it takes to get started is giving yourself permission to publish. Huge thanks to SDL and my peers for encouraging this type of “work-out-loud” culture, first though implicit acknowledgements such as the SDL Web Community MVP awards and now through a cross-product community site, official GitHub account, and Open Source projects like DXA. Remember, you don’t have to blog to share.
- These keep changing, so do a search or ask around for the latest and greatest tools.