This article describes how bloggers could approach the Wiki. It also explains why bloggers should join and participate and the benefits for contributing.

Why Bloggers Should Join the Wiki

By contributing to the wiki:

  • Your name is associated with the articles you create
  • You can link to your blog, which increases your search ranking
  • If your articles appear in the Wiki portals and cross-linked lists for your technology/solution, you get additional traffic
  • Tags: Your articles are connected to other Wiki articles by tags

Why should I use TechNet Wiki if I already blog about Microsoft technologies?

1. Audience. Not all blogs get thousands of views. Sometimes it takes awhile to build an audience. You can write articles on TechNet Wiki and then link back to your source blogs and link to your blog from your Profile. Since the Wiki articles are linked to from portals, lists, your Profile's Activity tab, and other Wiki articles, you are putting your content into a connected community where more people can find it.

2. Collaboration. After you author on the Wiki for awhile, you'll think of blogging as selfish authoring in comparison! I am amazed at how people are fixing typos, fixing links, adding to resource lists, adding scenarios and sections, commenting on edits, and building out content in a collaborative team environment!

3. Profile Recognition and Achievements. You get Recognition Points for view milestones when you author and edit Wiki articles! Those points show the community your success and experience with community contributions (including TechNet Wiki). Similarly, each time you leave a comment, make an edit, comment about your edit, and author an article, you're earning a mark toward an Achievement Medal. Also, Microsoft employees can increase their Recognition and Achievements this way, even if they are posting on a TechNet/MSDN blog.

4. Maintenance. Do you plan to go back and fix your typos, update and add tags, fix your links, refine the formatting, and add more resources and information to your blog posts? Probably not. But on TechNet Wiki, that just happens naturally as the community bands together and helps out. That's one of the values of adding the SQL Server Release Notes to TechNet Wiki. Many Microsoft and community members helped update the Release Notes, making them more current and refined than the release notes have ever been.

How to Synergize a Blog with TechNet Wiki

Here are several different ways:

1. Blog first. You can blog about a Microsoft Technology. And then use that as the source to build the Wiki article. Then the community can refine it and build on it.

2. Blog's bigger. Maybe you have a large blog that's like a mini-whitepaper. You can add just a section of it as a Wiki article.

3. Wiki's bigger. Example. In that example, Ed wrote the Wiki article, and then he posted the Wiki article's content as a blog post, pointing back to the Wiki article. Blogging about it (along with linking to the blog in a forum), led to more interactions and refinements to the Wiki article, and thus the Wiki article grew to be larger and more in-depth than the blog. You wouldn't need to update the blog, since the blog sends people to the Wiki article. The blogs can just act as announcements, samples, and basic information sharing. The organic/growing/current content would live over on the Wiki.

4. Advertise a Wiki article. Example. The title "Elevation of Privilege" doesn't sound like a very interesting Wiki article. But Ed used the blog post (in the title and body) to advertise it as a card game for developers. That obviously appealed to developers, because it quickly became the blog's most-viewed blog post. And those views will funnel more people in to check out the Wiki article and learn even more about the game.

5. Combine Blog Posts into a Wiki. For example, Tord wrote a series of 5 posts about the health checking of BizTalk. From Tord's blog: BizTalk Health check part 1, BizTalk health check part 2, BizTalk health check part 3, BizTalk health check part 4, and BizTalk health check part 5. These blog posts were combined to make the BizTalk Health Check article on TechNet Wiki.

See Also

Reference

Most of the original content came from this blog post: Wiki Life: Why should I use TechNet Wiki if I already blog about Microsoft technologies?

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