Getting Started with SCN

End User Manuals & Customization documents in SAP PM

Sushant Kumar — Tue, 07 May 2013 11:30:24 GMT

Hi,

I need some end user manuals of SAP Plant maintenance as well as customization document(SPRO) for my reference.

i need ist urgent. please help.

Regards

Sushant

SAP PM

Search is a Tool: Tips for Better Results

Jason Lax — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:36:18 GMT

Anyone that enjoys making things with their hands will come to appreciate the benefit of quality tools and materials. They'll also realize that learning how to use those tools properly can make all the difference in the end product:

The same is true with search: search is a tool after all! When you think about it this way, you'll understand that the quality of your search results depends on:

How you use search
The quality of your search queries

With this in mind, here are some tips on how to improve your search experience:

Search for More 2 Terms or More

There are now trillions of pages and pieces content on the web to search from: do you really think a single word is enough to narrow down the results to exactly what your looking for? Put simply, you'll get better results by entering two or more terms in your search queries--guaranteed! This is the reason why there is Google Autocomplete, which is also present on SCN Site Search.

On SCN site search, 19% of search queries are for a single term: 41% for 1 or 2 terms. While I'm happy to see the majority of site searches are for multiple terms, next time lets first discuss the quality of the search queries before discussing the quality of the site search results .

Different Search Tools for Difference Results

My wife bugs me every time I bring home a new cooking knife ("why do you need another one?") to which I must explain how it serves a different and very specific function. Luckily, she backs down quickly given the quality of the results on Friday nights .

Similarly, there are different types of search tools available: there are external search engines such as Google and Bing, and then there are on site tools like site search, wiki search and filter by text. There's even a custom Google search for SCN that harnesses the power of Google on selected SAP user resources.

SCN Search Options

SCN Site Search
Content Text Filtering
SCN Wiki Search
Custom SCN Google Search
External Search Engines (Google, Bing, etc.)

Additional Information

Do Your Part: Rate, Comment & Share

Your active engagement is very valuable in helping optimize search results for others. Rating content, commenting and sharing in social media all have an impact in determining what should appear at the top of search results, for both on site and on search engines. It's really easy to click like, give a stat rating and click one of the social share buttons to share on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook. As a bonus, write a comment: someone might even like that and grant you a few points for your effort!

If you do your part, other will be encouraged to do theirs.

1984

Anyone that spends more than a bit of time on the web is allowed to develop some big brother paranoia and worry about the train they're leaving behind for all to see, whether malicious or not.

It's no secret that Google and other search engines take into account your location, IP address and search history (especially if logged on) to tailor search results just for you. While there is cause for concern, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to Google et al and assuming that they're doing this for altruist and profit oriented reasons only: basically to give me better search results that I can use. Truthfully, there are still enough things in the physical world that deserve more attention than pondering on how much Google is spying on me.

Be wary of free tool bars for your browser: unless it's directly from a major brand, chances are there are some funny things going on in the background that you should be worried about!

Shout out to Trevor Carlow and Audrey Stevenson (the latter who shared with me "How social media activity influences your search engine ranking") for getting me thinking about this topic.

User Adoption: ASUG Minnesota wants to learn more

Kerry Brown — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 16:00:14 GMT

I recently spoke at the Minnesota Chapter ASUG meeting about how companies can ensure user enablement and I wanted to share some of the highlights from that discussion with our online community.

The world is changing every day, driven significantly by the technology market, which is becoming more aware of people. For instance, most people have at least one, if not more, mobile devices. The challenge for companies is getting people to adopt and fully leverage these tools in the workplace as they do personally. Done successfully, managing change and user adoption will drive return on investment.

A major misconception is that companies expect ongoing improvement in user performance without ongoing investment in people/training, etc. For example, companies can get 20% greater adoption by focusing on change management directly. A typical barrier to training is that management teams have difficulty seeing the direct correlation between investments and results. Yet, employees say that without training, their skills decline. The good news is that it takes very little investment to make a difference – an increase of 1.5% investment in training can lead to 30% improvement in project success. Survey results show that investment in people results in increased productivity and reduces turnover, both of which drive ROI.

The way employees can receive training is also changing, there is a shift in social and virtual learning which can further reduce training cost while providing more convenient options for employees. How people communicate and learn outside of work should correspond with how they communicate and learn inside of work. We don’t want a social collaborative experience in our personal lives and then a “dark ages” experience in our work environments. Communities we work with are also broadening, and technology helps reach the broader audience.

To summarize the meeting discussion

- Innovation and speed of information are changing the way we do business and people/employees are behaving differently

- Consumer/user expectations are changing

- Resistance to change needs to be addressed in order to manage change and support adoption

- All learning is social

These ideas spurred discussions amongst attendees and have provided the Minnesota Chapter with ideas for future meetings. I hope this information provides some “food for thought” for you as well.

SCN Badge - An Idea

Fareez Ahamed — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:55:38 GMT

SAP Community Network has become a part and parcel of everyone’s life who works on SAP Products. The new SCN has shifted the community network to an entirely new level. I would like to call it the best community network compared to any developer community network. The new SCN is more people oriented now as it has grown more like a social network.

Features like maintaining a profile, following others, collaborating in spaces, profile pictures and avatars, notifications has made everyone feel that it’s more people centric. Everyone has got some identity in the network. It has become easy to identify people and their abilities, activities and contributions too. I can name at least a dozen people of my space and I’m able to remember some their valuable contributions as well and so do every one of us. SCN has developed a healthier professional relationship among its users

And I think it is time to take individuals identities within the network to outside the network making it reach widely. Already SCN has made it possible to make people identifiable through URL similar to Facebook and Twitter.

The SCN link http://scn.sap.com/people/fareez.ahamed uniquely identifies my profile similar to my twitter on http://twitter.com/fareez.ahamed. We are able to share our Twitter or Facebook profiles in our blogs or websites. ‘Why not SCN profile?’ I would like to suggest an idea named ‘SCN Badge’.

An SCN Badge should be generated by the user from the SCN, similar to the follow button generated using developer.twitter.com. And we can add the code to any website to place our SCN Badge there. On clicking the badge you will be taken to the corresponding persons SCN profile. I tried to imagine how an SCN Badge could be. I have added the image here.

This will make SCN reach a lot of more people than what it is doing now at the same time giving the members of SCN an identity. I would like to have everyone’s view on this and if it is feasible and expected by all of us, SCN would try to do that for us is my hope.

-Fareez Ahamed

Stakeholders – The Lifeblood of the New SCN

Patrick Flanders — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:27:31 GMT

The iconoclastic art critic Dave Hickey wrote one of the best treatises on the game of basketball, The Heresy of Zone Defense. In it, he explains the jazz-like quality of the game and how, when five players act in harmony with one another, some incredibly artistic and beautiful things can happen. If you ever had a chance to watch the Celtics or Lakers in the 80's, or the Bulls in the 90's, then you witnessed what he was talking about - players focused on doing those things that would lead to the optimal result. It meant that some players voluntarily took a backseat to others and sacrificed individual statistics for the sake of the team. But these players had a goal for their team and believed in a process. The result for those teams was a lot of success. A LOT.

(Photo courtesy of Chicago Sun-Times)

It would be easy to take this example, add some cliches ("There is no 'I' in team!"), and pawn it off as a simple unguent for all that ails groups. Certainly no one would argue that for any group to be successful, each member must showcase their strengths but also step back when it's time for others to shine. And of course, we've probably all seen this done at times, but more than likely we've also probably been a part of a group where people stepped on others' toes, egos were bruised, and the whole thing got repeatedly sidetracked. When you have a large project that requires the input of a lot of people, there are ample opportunities for this to happen - it's a challenge to keep everyone focused on the goal and refrain from acting solely out of self-interest.

As a member of the SAP Community Network team, and as one who was involved with working with our internal and external stakeholders on change and education, I had the opportunity to be part of something that was very close to what Hickey describes, albeit on a much larger scale. Our "team" is made up not just of SCN team members, but of 700+ SAP employees and community members who volunteer their time and domain expertise to ensure that SCN spaces are optimized for users and that we're delivering the right content to help our users become smarter about SAP products and solutions. Some of these people have this as part of their job description, while others just want to ensure an active and useful community. Without these stakeholders there just is no SCN.

Collaborating with a large and vocal group brings its logistical challenges. While SCN team members are communicating with stakeholders daily, for the purposes of our migration, we needed to have a forum for all stakeholders to hear news and get educated, and needed to be done in the same channel. To do that, we held 16 one-hour sessions, each with it's own topic about the new platform, and used the time to explain new features, functionality and our hopes for stakeholder involvement. As an open forum, we also solicited questions and feedback. Much of the feedback from stakeholders went in informing our decisions about how to improve the platform and make it more useful. From these meetings came hundreds of smaller group meetings; in some cases we wanted to go deeper on a topic, in others, we needed our stakeholder experts to help us make better decisions.

(Photo courtesy of Chip Rodgers)

Our migration meant disruption and additional work for stakeholders. In the course of managing already demanding jobs, they were also being asked to help us create a better platform. It would have been easy for many to put this in the bucket labeled, "too busy", or to devolve the discussion into criticism, but we were able to avoid getting sidetracked because our collaborative team (SCN + stakeholders) worked together professionally and respectfully. Out of these discussions came feedback and suggestions that resulted in better space layouts, metadata structure, navigation, and a host of other issues. While some issues emerged when we launched the new SCN in February, we're continuing to collaborate with our stakeholders to find solutions to problems and identify new and better features we can implement in the future.

Rational thought, albeit at times punctuated with passion, ruled the day, and it was incredible to see that in this large group, self-interest didn't distract us. Our stakeholders, who continue to be active as Space Editors and Moderators, focused on what was best for the community. And the result is much like what you get from a great assist and selfless teamwork in basketball - you may give up individual statistics, but you drastically increase your odds of success.

Get used to collaboration

Rohit Khetarpal — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:26:49 GMT

Sharing, community-driven, rating based – we must have all experienced it at some forum or the other in our day to day lives – while hotel bookings, car rentals, movie reviews or while buying a product online, we even read ratings and reviews, blogs and forums before we plan our holidays or do just to have credible knowledge about our areas of interest (best place to go for trekking?). Welcome to the world of collaboration. It is now established to such an extent that no individual or organization can dare to live without utilizing it, and, SAP is no different. It is quite apparent from the launch of SCN, moving from “SAP Developer Network (SDN)” to “SAP Community Network (SCN)”, that it is a step towards building and leveraging the community to have even more credible knowledge sharing.

I saw myself changing my opinion towards SCN over past few weeks and decided to pin down my thoughts. SAP did a fantastic job through “SCN Tip in a Minute” videos before go-live of the new SCN and that cleared many doubts over what the new look and features would be like. My initial impression about new features was positive, but I was not so excited about the fact that articles would now be open only for SAP employees, I had submitted an article previously and felt proud of doing a brilliant job at that and recognition I got (and points?) by that, more so because of the fact that there was an approval process involved, and extra care had to be taken to improve the overall content of the document, and I share that view with many colleagues at my workplace. Another view was - now that creating a document is open to everyone, without an approval process, it would lose its charm and one would not spend that much time and energy to prepare and submit an article as they used to previously. But I see where SAP is coming from, as the community grows, it must have become increasingly difficult to review and approve a document, and also, there might be risks of approving a document which is not authentic, or not 100% accurate – which would then be creating a wrong set of followers who follow the document contents blindly. And like any new product, new SCN comes with its own sets of advantages and limitations, it is also a risky proposition to some extent that might see old active contributors identifying a downward curve in terms of usability and stopping (almost) to contribute, which to me could serve as a wakeup call to SAP content team, which has already worked day-in and day-out to facilitate smooth transition ( very well put in this blog post by Trond Stroemme - http://scn.sap.com/community/getting-started/blog/2012/03/28/hasta-la-vista-sdn ).

Coming to collaboration part, I am confident that this model would be success, for most part. Allocating points based on user rating should encourage writers to engage more with the community and create useful content. Content that would attract community members to participate in the discussion, generate ideas and eventually lead to establish SAP as a brand that is evolving and adapting with changing times. It would definitely help in getting to know the experts and follow them, as is evident from the Poll on SCN, where leading feature that the community likes is “Following”, which is my favorite too, and of course, creating blogs is a much better experience now, and I hope this would encourage active contributors to create more blogs directly on SCN than in their individual wordpress/blogspot blogs. I would reserve my thoughts on other aspects for some time later, would just end this blog on a note - world is moving towards collaboration, and so are we!

Google's Penguin Update

Jason Lax — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 11:13:19 GMT

For anyone interested in search, Google has released the Penguin update over the past week. This is the first major update to Google's ranking factor and search result algorithm since the Panda release just over a year ago.

In the official Google blog about this new update, it describes it as "another step to reward high-quality sites." In other words, Penguin is just another effort at tackling what's now being called "black hat webspam:" the practice of trying to rank webpages higher with techniques like keyword stuffing and creating elaborate link schemes, among others. The same blog clearly differentiates "white hat" from "back hat webspam" search engine optimization and emphasizes the importance of "white hat" SEO in improving site content, usability and performance (i.e. speed).

I guess I don't need to mention that SCN is committed to white hat SEO.

Google's announcement came with a sigh of relief: over the past few weeks there was chatter about an "over-optimization penalty" forthcoming and no one was really sure what this means. I suppose it was easy to misinterpret what could mean and people were even more on edge after a glitch during a minor update two weeks ago. This glitch resulted in a huge drop in the number of indexed SCN URLs, which quickly bounced back after 24hrs. (SEO requires lots of patience...lots...) Overall, Penguin is just another attempt by Google to stay one step ahead of the webspammers and provide quality results for users.

Here are some good blogs about the Panda release that you should consider looking at:

Another step to reward high-quality sites - Official Google Blog about Panda
Google Penguin Update: 12 Tips Directly From Google - See: Google's not hiding anything! Well, someone already pointed out that these aren't always black and white...

Happy searching!

Personalization of SCN Content: Setting Up a Personal Homepage

Jason Lax — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:55:12 GMT

Over the weekend I saw a great idea on Idea Place from SCN member Stefan Luettke suggesting the ability to "personalize an individual working area to save and arrange the places and contents." I think we already have this by way of personal collaborative documents.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw Stefan's idea was that I needed something like this too because it was becoming cumbersome to go between the content feed on my profile and bookmarks to find what I'm looking for. So I created a document that I can use as a personal homepage:

The nice thing about these is that the access permission can be restricted to Just you meaning only you can see it. You can use this document to create your own homepage for storing information that is relevant to you, such as often visited links and reference information. You can optionally share it with anyone or a selection of other users, such as your team, by configuring the collaboration and visibility settings:

As a Global Moderator and Content Strategist, my personal homepage, which I'm sharing with everyone, reflects my tasks and roles within SCN. Images cannot be added to personal documents so I used colored tables to group links and content together: see Everything I know about... Tables on the New SCN.

I've bookmarked the URL but, being a document, the 5 digit ID number is easy to remember and all I have to do when using Chrome or FireFox is dial in.

Here's one more tip about customizing your SCN experience: have a look at my document Everything I know about... New SCN Quick Links and Browsing for information on easy to remember SCN URLs that can be customized to give you what you're looking for consistently when opening links like scn.sap.com/content.

SCN RSS Feed Page

Erhan Keseli — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 20:17:57 GMT

Hi all,

I created an HTML Page to track changes in SCN. There are a lot of RSS feeds. But I only added some RSS feeds. Because I couldn't find all RSS feeds. Page simply seperates "Discussions" and "Blogs". But now no blogs. Please feel free to tell me which content RSS want me to add. Or save the html page and use it on your pc.

And the url: nwturk.com/SCN

Knowing Second Level Delta Machenisam in BI 3 and BI 7

Nirmal Kumar — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:24:39 GMT

Well, We are now in 7.x version, but the people who travel from 3.x to 7.x, something confused in Delta mechanism. Here I am trying to give you brief idea about this. This document you can refer when you are confused at any time.

Here are 3 different scenarios with screenshots and step.

What we will see here?

In older version we use Infosource and infopackage to load the delta from one Cube to other cube but in 7.0 onwards we use DTPs.

Also, if there is a need to delete the delta and reload then there is a huge change in approach.

Here we will see how we load the delta from one source to other source in two different ways i.e. Old version and new version.

The Scenario

Here we will take one senerio in which we will load the delta from one source to other i.e. from one cube to other cube. We will also delete the delta and try to load it again and will see what is the difference between two approch.

Scenario 1 - Delta Load from one Cube to other in 3.x

Here we will see how we manage Delta in 3.x with the help of Infosource. We are using two cube. “CAPEX Allocated on Network Product Area – ZCAPKEY” and “Cognos 2007 onwards- ZCOG_C03”. We will load delta from ZCAPKEY to ZCOG_C03.

In 3.x we use inforsource and infopackage to load the data from one cube to another cube.

Step 1:

Here we are assuming that we have already done with init.

Step 2:

Now, we will upload the delta from ZCAPKEY Cube. For this we will find the Infosource and then we will run the infopackage for that Infosource. Infosource is created with the same cube name starting with 8. In our case the cube name is ZCAPKEY then Infosource will be 8ZCAPKEY.

Step 3:

Create an InfoPackage with Delta in Update tab and Schedule it.

Step 4:

Check the data in cube ZCOG_C03. Transferred Record should be same as Added records in cube ZCAPKEY.

Step 5:

Check data in cube ZCAPKEY, if the data is same or not. In our case it is 150 records.

Here we completed the delta load at second level. Now the issue is how to manage delta if we want to delete it and load it again? Below you will see how to reload the delta if it is failed or for any reason you want to reload it again.

Scenario 2- Delete Delta and Reload it again. Delete Data Mart Status.

Step 1:

Delete data from cube ZCOG_M03. Do not delete the init. Otherwise you have to init first and load the data with init.

Step 2:

Delete the data mart in ZCAPKEY. To do this go to ZCAPKEY and click on data mart button.

Step 3:

A new window is open. Click on delete button.

Step 4:

It will ask your confirmation. Click on yes and it data mart will gone.

Step 5:

Check data mart symbol and it is gone.

Now you can follow the same steps to load the data in Scenario 1.

Scenario 3- Data Load from one Cube to Another in 7.x.

In 7.x version and 3.5 onwards, Data can be loaded by DTP as well. You need to create the transformation and then the DTP. You can just run the DTP and data will be loaded.

To delete the data there is no need to delete the data mart status manually. You can just delete the request and reload it again.

So, here before you loading data at any stage and confused how delta Machenisam will work, you can read this and guess.

Please provide your knowledge in this Blog so me and other readers can get the benefits.

Cheers

Social Media Enables Relationship Marketing

Ginger Shimp — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 02:35:14 GMT

About 25 years ago, when I lived in San Francisco, I would frequent a wonderful bistro named “Lefty O’Doul’s.” Situated just off Union Square, near the theaters and shopping, Lefty O’Doul’s was the perfect place for a college student just scraping by. My husband and I would sidle through the cafeteria-style line past the glistening fresh carved turkey and beef, and head straight for the spaghetti special. Roughly $3.00 would buy a salad, pasta, dinner roll and drink. They had a big-screen television, and we’d buzz right through the line and be at our table exchanging small talk with other Giants fans before the national anthem. Lefty’s, named for a famous baseball player and plastered with baseball paraphernalia from front to back, has been in business since 1958. I am happy to say that they still have their spaghetti special although the price has risen to $5.49.

Across town on Nob Hill, another restaurant, Acquerello, opened about 22 years ago. You can get a three-course pasta dinner here as well, but it will cost you $70. Throw in tip, wine, valet parking and so on, and you’re looking at some serious cash. Granted, their bill of fare is somewhat different from Lefty’s’. The first course is pear and foie gras ravioli ― that’s “dry-farmed, organic Warren pears filled with truffled torchon of foie gras.” I’m fascinated by this for a number of reasons: I’d never heard of “dry farming”, I hadn’t realized “truffle” could be used as a verb, and I’m puzzled that an Italian restaurant features French “torchon of foie gras”.

Aside from these random musings, I find a great metaphor for marketing in this everyday conundrum, a common occurrence in my life. We hear a lot about innovation and I’m all for it, but we must beware getting caught up in innovating for innovation’s sake.

Just as an expensive restaurant doesn’t necessarily guarantee a palatable experience, innovation doesn’t have to be expensive to be effective. That’s why our companies need us. Marketers are the equivalent of a concierge, guiding our prospects to the right experience.

Let’s look at one example ― virtual events. Is the ROI worth it? Well that depends on why we’re doing them. If frequency is key to our strategy, we’ll wear out our teams and budgets by piling on too many events. But if we want to capture a far-flung audience with “live content”, I’d absolutely add a webinar. But then I’d … “innovate”:

§ Ensure your platform can handle application sharing and include a live demo or stream a video so the event rises above the norm.

§ Use live Tweeting during the event.

§ Host a LinkedIn Discussion the following week to continue the conversation.

§ Post a scaled-back version of the PowerPoint on Slideshare.

§ Add short clips from the event to YouTube.

§ Follow up with a related article or white paper, AND insert that same piece in your content syndication.

My mother used to tell me that necessity was the mother of innovation. Mom was right. (Who knew?!) Frequently, when looking for multipliers to extend our reach, budget and bandwidth constraints challenge us to be innovative. Social media tactics promise to stretch our imaginations even further because, like pre-game chatter at Lefty O’Doul’s, they offer us the opportunity to build a fan base along the way.

Promoting & Networking Events looking for advice

Jacob Valvo — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 23:46:16 GMT

I have some experience in networking , and found that it is a vast difference depending on persons ,groups that you making contacts with and the subject of topic..

and I am always eager to learn more, now with Promoting Groups & Events Diffidently found myself winging it, and would like to learn how to put both into a more professional outline. the Balance act,,,? so my Colleagues & Peers I humble before you. that "hey I don't know everything"..LOL

Getting Your Blogs to the Top of Search Results

Jason Lax — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:34:55 GMT

Say what you might about the New SCN, one thing that's for sure is that the new blogging tools and hosting has taken the community to a new level. SCN blogs are now getting indexed by external search engines so that they now appear in search results and the text editor is light years ahead of the old one. While getting into search results is one thing, getting to the top of those results is another.

With external search engines being a key source of site traffic, a higher search result ranking means more people will see your blogs and read them. Applying some basic principles of SEO (search engine optimization) will make you blogs easier to find and increase the chances of them appearing higher in search results.

I've broken this blog down into five parts that will guide you through the fundamentals of SEO for blogs on SCN.

It's for People, After All

Never forget this: you're writing for other people, not Google. Google wants to be the best search engine in the world and that means giving users great results they can use. To achieve this, Google is increasingly bringing human elements into its search algorithm. Frightening as this may sound, it was inevitable given the sheer volume of user activity now being shared online and Moore's law that lets Google do increasingly more with that information. Google's getting better at this and gone are the days where you can stuff a page full of keywords and link to it from all over and then see that page at the top of search results: Google's after quality pages and increasingly judging it based on human terms.

Choosing the Right Keywords

A keyword can be a single word or a combination of two or more terms. Getting a high rank for a keyword is easy when no one is looking for that keyword so you have to anticipate what keywords your audience will be looking.

Google's keyword tool provides you with keyword search statistics and synonym suggestions absolutely free. This is your playground to test keywords and their variations to make sure they're what people are searching for. It can also be used to validate that Google has made the association between keywords and their various abbreviations, acronyms and synonyms.

I have to admit that keyword selection for SCN blogs will mostly be a no-brainer because you'll mostly be writing about specific topics or products and Google has already established the connection between their spelling variations. Still, this is a handy tool for when you're not sure.

Strategic Keyword Placement

Keywords are what people search for and a search engines job is to match those queried keywords to a webpage. To help this process along, it's important to place keywords in highly visible, or weighted, positions: placing a keyword in the URL or title is more valuable than when it appears in the body text. This makes sense after all: if you put a keyword in the URL or title, I guess that means you're blog is going to be about that!

Put extra attention when you compose the title of your blog: on SCN, the blog URL is generated from the title (they're the same). Additional keywords should appear in headings within the body text, formatted as headers. Don't forget some often missed opportunities like the file name fore an image you're embedding and adding tags to your blog (under Properties below the text editor). Finally, don't overdo it: just add the keywords where it makes sense and don't go overboard!

Good Content

There are parts to this: you're writing and its formatting.

Writing & Composition

As I said earlier, you're writing for people: your audience wants to see fresh ideas, new insights and unique content that they can enjoy reading. Don't write for the sake of writing: write because you have a unique personal experience you want to share or have something valuable to bring to the community. And don't forget to inspire your readers: there's nothing like a great conversation happening at the bottom of a blog post!

Here are some basics:

Compose an attractive title that encourages people to click it from search results
Start with a brief introduction about what the blog is about
Separate main ideas with descriptive headers that contain additional keywords
Add links to other places and compose the linked text carefully (i.e. don't use Click Here)
- This will also save you from having to re-hash something already explained elsewhere
Conclude with some final thoughts and a call to action
Proofread and use the spell checker

Text Formatting

Use correct formatting to make the text attractive to readers and ensure that search engine crawlers read the text for what it is: headers (<h2>), paragraph text (<p>), and so on. Use the native formatting to avoid visual noise and clashing with other site content. I've already dedicated a blog to this where you can read more: SEO: The Devil is in the Detail

Generating Inbound Links

Sharing on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or wherever you hang out online also brings traffic to your blog. When other readers like, +1 or re-tweet, it provides search engines with quality signals about what people like and having your blog at the center of a trend will help boost its search rankings. At the same time, don't forget that no one wants to share boring or re-hashed information with their peers: they're looking for blogs that brings value to their lives, working or otherwise.

Truthfully, there's no magical formula for getting to the top of search results. Google is in the business of providing its users with what they are looking for and your efforts should be concentrated on providing just that: fresh, original ideas that appeal to the SCN community. Just don't forget to dot the "i"s and cross your "t"s in the process.

After launching SCN

R Karthik — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:40:41 GMT

Hi guys,

In this i like to share my experience of the new scn in last 20 days.First i thought that they messed up with the new scn but day-by-day it was becoming as a user friendly one.After reasing this blog http://scn.sap.com/community/about/blog/2012/04/09/whats-next-for-scn-in-2012.I got suprised about the future and scope of it.

The things they changed are as follows

They brought back our older forums, blogs and wiki back.
They made the new reputation in to new scn and stopped all the old company contributors thing
The blogs are moderated once it is posted and the moderators are active and so on.....

But there are still more changes to be done in the new scn as follows

Still the stop tracking has not been finished yet
we cant delete our photo in our profile
If we go on to wiki it again asks for a username and password

We know that you guys have did a wonderful job to make the new scn a success one and it would take lot of time to clear all bugs.We support your team for the work you done and proud of you guys

Regards,

Karthik.R

SAP new community has proving new style of blogs

S Bhavani Sankar — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 11:30:55 GMT

Wishing you good luck and bright wishes for your future and hope that you will achieve new heights and growth with a short time period.

This is good time have to share my personal experience of SAP Community.

When I was joined first time in SAP community, it was saying “You are coming to the right place”. But now all are saying “Go and see the new professional social network”. SCN help me to increasing the weight of my brain day by day. It helps to make us a simple person to an extra ordinary man. Feel free to use this and you should realize at the end of first month.

Its awesome ideas included in the new SCN and bring the extra light and bright features. SAP new community has proving new style of blogs, podcasting, discussions, profile management areas, following, bookmarks and communications, direct messages more informative things. It was some difficult to use but learn more things.

Thanks,