Brush up on the ins and outs of posting to Moz Q&A

[MattRoney]

I'm definitely happy to say that lack of respect isn't generally a huge problem here.

However, I wouldn't mind seeing more folks show courtesy by making sure to respond to other members' attempts to help, and by marking good answers whenever possible.

[MattRoney]

Thanks Don!

[MattRoney]

Thank you so much, Miriam!

[Christy-Correll]

Great video, Matt! I hope there will be more to come.

[IsaCleanse]

I agree & also I'm all for searching for previous responses but sometimes you can spend over an hour looking for similar questions and responses and then need to post your own question having waste an hour of time reading through info that didnt help your particular problem.

[DavidLee]

Great video Matt.

Can you reply to me for testing purposes?

[MattRoney]

Ha! Sure. You getting your notification emails?

[MattRoney]

There's certainly a point at which it's fair to just go ahead and ask, and I can absolutely understand spending less time searching if your question is extremely specific to your own situation. I definitely don't want anyone to be afraid to post on the off chance their question was already asked!

It's just a matter of doing your due diligence. If you don't find your answer reasonably quickly, you should feel fine posting! Just remember that community members and staffers who answer questions have often already spent quite a lot of time answering the same, more general questions over and over.

But, again, if you're not finding an answer within a few minutes, by all means post a new thread. We and the community are more than happy to help.

[EGOL]

I agree with Matt on the quick search and then post with confidence.  If we have answered the same question before we will link to that previous question.

Sometimes, when a topic comes up a second time, additional people will contribute even more valuable information from their own experience or recent announcements by Google or articles on trusted websites.

[MattRoney]

Yes! Exactly!

[Mustansar]

Just watched it. Great guide and help. Thanks for sharing

[David-Kley]

I agree, as sometimes the topics get buried and are hard to find, or are not exactly relevant to the question that needs to be asked. Also, if you add a new question it's more likely to get seen, especially if people unsubscribe from the older post due to not wanting to receive responses.

[BlueCorona]

Thank you, Matt! Definitely helpful for the entire community.

[ThomasHarvey]

Just a thought, is it possible to get this video in a text format too? I've worked in offices that don't allow speakers/headphones, so there is no way of watching this video. So you'll miss out on the information you've provided.

[BlueCorona]

Thank you for sharing this video! Very insightful for all the Moz Q&A users.

[David-Kley]

Nice vid, thank you for creating!

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Thomas, not at the current moment -- but we are looking into it. Thanks for the great feedback, and sorry for the delayed reply!

[seanginnaw]

Great video, thanks for posting!

[bulletproofsearch]

I definitely agree with Dirk about this being (darn near) "obligatory" before the first post/question.  I would even go a little further and say that it should be part of the onboarding process or first 30-days of a new account opening, like a series of welcoming orientation videos (perhaps even via email).

I've been on Moz on and off for maybe 5 or 6 years but I never knew the Q&A section was so valuable/useful/helpful.   All I ever really saw (or remember seeing) outside of the paid tools and MozBar was the Moz blog, WBF, and a little YouMoz.  I just posted my first question ever this weekend.  Had I seen this video years ago I would've been more engaged from day one.

All that said, I think the Q&A forum needs more visibility.  More people should see this video.  For 5 or 6 years I took my questions to Google instead because that was my conditioned response when I didn't know something about SEO.  I feel it's so much better than just another blog post because here we have multiple people vetting the right answer or different approaches.

At this point, my first instinct is to query the Q&A section.  I just think the link was burried a little too long for me to notice.  Maybe putting a subtle, non-buried link in MozBar would be a good way to keep the community top of mind. Or a very small pop up speech bubble with a guided tour for people who visit the site often but never visit the Q&A section.  Just thinking out loud here.

Good work!  I'll definitely recommend this video to others.  Really great point about following up quickly, btw!  Thank you!

[VeroBrain]

Hi Matt,

Great video!
I truly think that it should be at the Homepage of the Community.

I was courious why there are many queries from newbies, ie less than 20 points, very interesting questions without answer.
Well, if it will take me from 5 to 30 minutes to answer a query and no feedback received. Next time, I will think twice.

Your video might help by educating the new community members and encouraging all to take time to answer, at least from time to time.

Thank you for the effort!