Confluence is the perfect place to create an open and social intranet. Our Confluence intranet is full of blogs that create discussion, spawn ideas, and challenge the status quo. Our blogging culture is what keeps us transparent, together, and gives everyone an equal voice.
So, to help you spice up your company’s social life, here are 5 blog posts that will get people talking:
1. The introductory blog post
The easiest way to get people to use Confluence, is to get them started right away. Every new hire at Atlassian has to post an introductory blog post within their first week of joining the company. The blog is great because it not only gives new hires a taste of using Confluence, but it also provides a non-threatening way for people to make connections and bond with new employees using comments.
Key ingredients for a great introductory blog post:
- A clever title. You want people to check out your introductory blog post, and the best way to draw them in is with a clever title.
- Pictures. The best way to make a big first impression is to wow people with cool pictures of your travels, favorite foods, hobbies, or your family. In Confluence, adding pictures is as easy as drag and drop, so don’t be shy about showing off!
- Random/interesting facts. This is your chance to share your interests with co-workers, and find others in the company that might share them. Share your favorite music bands, movies, video games, or restaurants. Most likely there’s someone with a similar interest, who’d love to talk about it.
2. The founder update
One of Atlassian’s five core values is “Open Company, No Bullshit” and no one takes those values more seriously than our founders. In order to encourage open communication between the founders and the rest of the company, our founders post regular blog updates. The topics of these updates range from discussing company strategy, to announcing new logos and other initiatives. Whatever the topic, these blogs ignite lots of discussion directly with our management team, a great example of providing everyone at Atlassian with an equal voice.
Key ingredients for a great founder update:
- Openness. While there are things your executives cannot discuss, there are lots of topics that can be addressed openly. Encourage people from all levels in the organization to blog, and allow everyone to comment and discuss these blogs.
- Reception to feedback. In order to make your site social, you have to be open to negative as well as positive feedback. Encourage dissenting opinion and don’t be afraid to allow arguments and debates as long as they don’t cross the line into badgery or harassment.
- Regularity. Have your executives post regularly! It might be difficult because they’re the most busy, but a quarterly or bi-annual update is a good place to start.
3. The project status report
The key to any successful project is transparency. You want to be able to show progress, and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. The best way to do that is to blog about the progress of your projects. Whether it’s to show some of the obstacles you’ve run into, issues you’ve resolved, or how close you are to the finish line, keeping everyone up-to-date shows progress and relieves anxiety.
Key ingredients for a great project status report:
- Summary. On the top of most Atlassian blogs you’ll find a “tl;dr” that normally gives a nice bullet point summary of the blog for those with short attention spans. You can also use the table of contents macro to create an automatic table of contents based on your headings, and the info macro to highlight your summary content.
- Visuals. Graphs, charts, pictures – use rich content to show everyone how you’re progressing.
- Recap. Remember to show what you’ve done before, and what your next steps are.
4. The product/campaign launch
With all the products and marketing campaigns we have, sometimes it can be hard to stay in the loop. That’s why every time we launch a new campaign or product update to the public, we also announce it internally. We try just as hard to impress our peers as we do our customers, so these blogs often have quite a bit of dramatic flair.
Key ingredients for a great product/campaign launch blog:
- Video. As you might have noticed, we make a lot of videos for our products and campaigns. These take a lot of planning and effort, so it’s always good to share them internally. In Confluence all you have to do is paste the Youtube link in the editor to embed videos.
- Feedback/reception. Share what your customers are saying by embedding tweets and twitter streams or share articles that you’ve been written up in.
- Thanks. Nothing ever gets shipped by one person or team. Make sure to call out all those who helped make your launch a success.
5. The new baby announcement
If you want a blog post that’s guaranteed to make me people happy and social, blog about new babies! Seriously, every time someone at Atlassian has a new child, they share the news with the company. It’s a great way to share good news, and foster a caring community.
Key ingredients for a great baby announcement blog:
- Pictures!
- Pictures!
- Pictures!
You get the idea. Share all those cute pictures and use the gallery macro to instantly create a slideshow in Confluence.
Start blogging today!
Make your intranet social, and start sharing these blog posts in Confluence.
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