The blogs: Roots of the tree of knowledge

[OttoGold]

Before I start about my opinions, I would like to ask you about yours. Do you blog? Why do you blog? What do you blog about? 

I often write the technical blogs (otto.gold2/blog) after answering the similar/ same questions in the SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe. If people ask the same question again and again, it means the problem appears quite often (and/or the question has not yet precisely answered). In fact I write theblogs to answer the question, that made me write the blog, and to create some persistent knowledge (for the people interested in the topic in future) as well.

Of course this can only work if people will search before asking, but I am sure most of the people do that. In that case they find (hopefully) my blog and can understand (hopefully) the whole story. In a question (in the answer) one tries to be quick, to share the name of the function module, to point to the documentation etc.

But the blog (in my opinion) is the right place to tell the whole story - to present the whole problem in detail, describe the background, the reasons, the options, the possible solutions and all the pros and cons. That should help the reader get much better picture than reading through the forum threads. In the threads all parts of the problem may be covered but a beginner (or anybody under the time presure) cannot add all the pieces of the puzzle together. Quite often you´re not even able to understand which threads you need to combine to get the whole picture.

Knowledge into your mailbox

Blog can also help deliver the content/ the message to the readers. As I mentioned above, I expect the people to search before asking. But sometimes you learn something new even if you didn´t know you wanted to learn that before! Isn´t it cool?

If you receive the blogs right into your email (like me), you can sometimes (most of the time, thank you, all the bloggers!) read some very interesting content (and learn something new and valuable!!).

The same could the reader probably learn from some other source (like the mentioned forum questions, eLearnings etc.), but he would have to work hard to find all the pieces and of course would need to pro-actively search for the certain topic..

Concentrated knowledge

I believe there is connection between the quality and the number of the texts.

In my opinion one blog post is worth a dozen of questions (and answers). Count how many questions/ threads do we have in the forums and how many blogs have been published. One has to work much harder to tell the story in the blog - has to watch the language, cover the details, keep everything in a balance. It is much more demanding than to drop a line as a quick answer for a question.

I also believe the blog attracts more readers as well. Check the views number of an average forum question. Check the views number of an average blog. The numbers tell me that the value for the Community is far better if the topic is covered in a blog.

And... (believe me) it could be a way of relaxation to read a blog or two after the lunch.

I hope you will remember all the facts (at least these are facts for me) whenever you will see the repeatedly asked questions. Do not ignore this question (like some of the people recommend), do not just add "this question has been answered many times, search a little". Write a blog about the issue. It will save time of the people with the same question for now and forever (if it takes you like 30 minutes to figure add, how to make something work, if there are 100 guys who need to make that work, what value have you created?). Hopefully more and more questions about the same will not drive you crazy any more. It worked for me.

Regards, Otto

p.s.: If you wonder if that will pay off to write a blog, just count all the views numbers of the questions about the same/ similar topic. You will find out how many potential users will your blog attract.