Session 02: Research and Plan
Hello. Welcome to this session of the Review Forum project where I’m establishing a system where Cryptiquest presents content for public review. In the previous session, the project scope items (goal, objectives, execution plan etc.) were established. This session is dedicated to researching the various solutions to the project and perhaps planning a path forward based on the results.
To begin, here are the objectives that must be met for the project to be successful:
- Posts will only be generated in one forum.
- All review posts should be sent to reviewers but not to all followers.
- The platform for posts must either accept html formatting or provide the same formatting that would otherwise be available via html.
Based on my previous research, I was looking at Tumblr but it is blocked at the coffee shop I’m working at, which is both funny and sad. I’ve never had any trouble accessing any other website from this connection. I’m at this establishment a lot and so if I can’t access the forum from this location, it will not be useful. Fail.
Next is Facebook. I created a group within the Cryptiquest Facebook page purely for reviewing content which was great but unfortunately, documents created in Facebook do not permit HTML formatting or similar substitute. Fail.
I could try something like a Google Doc thing, which, while not permitting HTML formatting, does offer similar formatting substitute. It also permits users to directly edit/comment on the documents, which is an added bonus. The bad thing is that doing this would require exposing a gmail account to reviewers that could lead to hacking or spam though that’s not exclusive to this platform. Maybe.
Creating a new website or using projects.cryptiquest.com – while meeting the requirements – seems incredibly excessive. In addition, using this website as a solution for the project is out of scope of the purpose of this site. Fail.
Reddit might be an option as I have been active on there just enough to be able to start a community. Posts on there do accept HTML formatting and there is a built-in community so people on the site could also respond. There is potential there. Maybe.
Neither Wattpad, Scribophile, nor Twitter meet the objectives. Fail.
The Solution
I’ve come to a quick solution here: Create groups in social media platforms – including Reddit – for reviewing content but create the content in Google Docs. This allows for one centralized location for the content (with maximum formatting potential) and keeps all the social media platforms equal to it (i.e. users are going from Facebook to Reddit).
How will the social media groups be used?
Facebook: Create a group within the company page for reviews and invite users to it, post liberally to the review group and advertise the group every so often through the company page.
Reddit: Create a community for the content reviews and advertise it via Twitter and Facebook.
Twitter: Post review opportunities directly to the feed.
Deliverables
- Production
- Create Reddit community.
- Configure Google Doc sharing center.
- Launch
- Assess and plan launch
Next Steps
That wraps up this session. The next session will be dedicated to the launch phase as production should be wrapped up. See you there.
Action Items
- Add deliverables to the deliverables table.