Best Practices For The Forums

Whether or not you are new to the Forums, or have been here and even posted in one of them before, this post is for you. You might have an idea, best practice, tip, question, etc, but you don’t know where to start. It can be daunting to put yourself out there. You wonder if you asked your question the right way, did you explain a best practice in a way that makes sense, or maybe you got stuck halfway in your writing so you quit altogether. 

You’re not alone! As I have been researching the most common roadblocks to engagement in a Community, it has to do with ourselves. Yes, it’s you and me. What is the most common reason that users don’t post or engage in Community Forums? They don’t feel they have anything to contribute. Just an average Joe, not doing anything special. Not true!

Listen, maybe you have a rather ‘basic’ and ‘simple’ workflow in the way that you use PandaDoc. But, you may have developed certain habits over time that could be beneficial for someone else. And, that someone else may have some best practices and tips that would help you save time and be more efficient with your workflow. That is the big value piece for why you should engage in Community. 

It’s our goal at PandaDoc that you maximize adoption of the product. We want you to save as much time as possible when sending out and organizing documents. Our aim for PandaDoc’s Community Forums is to be a place for you to learn and collaborate on best practices and tips when using PandaDoc. 

We know a lot of use cases and workflow ideas here at PandaDoc, but we don’t know all of them. The more you share about your experiences, the more we all learn how to improve our use of PandaDoc. I recognize that not every workflow idea will work for you. However, you just might find what you are looking for (or didn’t know you were looking for) when someone shares that golden nugget you never thought you’d get. 

Best Practices

Let’s discuss some best practices to help keep the Forums clean and easy to use:

• Is it there already? 

• You may have a question, idea, or best practice to share, and that’s great. First, check our Forums to make sure that what you are going to submit hasn’t been shared already. You can search a few keywords in the search bar and see if anything appears. If something similar has been shared already, you can add any details you’d like in the comments.

• Does the Topic choice make sense for your post?

• Think about the topics and if you were looking for this solution, which one would you look under? I recognize there are quite a few topics to choose from. It’s my goal to lessen that amount and make it easier to select a topic. Don’t get caught up about the choice. We can always move your post submission to a more appropriate topic if needed. Did you choose a clear and concise title?

• Titles are important. They help the reader determine whether or not we want to read something. It’s not necessarily that the title has to be interesting, but does it relate to a topic we are interested in? Here’s my advice. Don’t make the title too long and give it a few good keywords that highlight what you write about. 

• Did you ask for feedback?

• Remember, this is your Community! We are here to help each other. So, don’t be afraid to ask a few questions in your post so that PandaDoc users can engage with you. 

Note: If you are having technical issues with PandaDoc, our Support Team is the best to help. We want to make sure you get help right away to clear roadblocks in your workflow. 

Do you have any best practices to share for engaging in Community, specifically in the Forums? I’d love for you to share your feedback here. We’re all in this together!