Why write in Habr? Case studies



    How to motivate employees to write posts on Habr? This question is asked by the heads and PR managers of many companies. Creating articles, even purely technical ones, is a creative process that needs motivation. And it can be very different for corporate authors and independent professionals. What is the difference that can encourage a person to write a cool and useful post on Habrahabr, says Danil Dekhkanov, CEO of digital agency FU2RE .

    FU2RE and Habr


    Over the past 4 years, FU2RE employees have prepared about 400 posts on Habré for their customers. And I would like to share my personal experience on how to motivate company employees to become authors.

    Why would a person want to become an author?

    And yet, why?


    The main thing is motivation. It is characterized by two interesting things. The first is that it has some value for a person, which determines its movement. The second is the positive emotions received from the movement towards the goal, from its anticipation.

    The Habr phenomenon can be explained by the Maslow pyramid. American psychologist Abraham Maslowdivided all human needs into several main components. At the first level, he located physiological needs: breathing, food, drink, sex drive, sleep, etc. A little higher is security - physical, moral, family safety, etc. A little higher is involvement, that is friendship, family, love, involvement in a group of people. And just at this level Habr begins to meet the needs of man. Users with read only accounts can already read posts and realize their motivation: to be involved in the community of professional IT professionals.



    The next level of the pyramid is respect. That is, professional achievements, trust and recognition of success, gaining credibility. The opportunity to comment on posts on Habr can help to realize this need. A person comments, someone answers his comment, a discussion ensues, and engagement is formed.

    Finally, the very top of the pyramid is creativity, that is, the publication of posts. By placing his post, a person realizes his highest need, the need for self-expression, receiving, in most cases, the respect of other people.



    Habrahabr provides a large enough scope for the implementation of all these motives. Unlike many other similar projects, Habré has a rating system and karma. This is a kind of self-regulatory mechanism. The user understands that he will not be evaluated by the editors or moderators, as is the case in other communities, but by the same community members as himself. And this self-regulation mechanism works well to improve the quality of the resource. Its presence in conjunction with the tools for implementing the needs described above largely explains why Habr is still very popular.



    Debriefing


    Let's look at the needs and motives of users.

    The first level is involvement. A person read the post, and if he saw something in the text that allows him to fulfill his need for involvement in this community, then the goal is achieved. A person enjoys reading this article.

    The second level is respect. If a person left a comment and they put a plus in karma, then this user realized the motivation to be respected. There are three ways to increase your rating / karma. For example, due to our own, deeper knowledge than the author of any publication. In this case, the person in the comments indicates inaccuracies or omissions, or supplements the material. If the comment is really valuable, then it is a plus.

    The second way to get the pros is to successfully joke or speak rhetorically.

    The third way is self-realization. If a person publishes his post, then he turns to the whole habrasociety, which becomes an audience for his creative image. This also needs to be taken into account when evaluating authors' motivation.

    Motivation is internal and external. External - this is one that actually does not depend on the user, but stimulates him to move in one direction or another. Intrinsic motivation is his own desire to develop, write about something and comment on something.

    Let's consider a situation when the end result for the author should be the publication of a post on Habré. First of all, we need to make sure that our own motivation overpowers all the other "demotivators" that exist in and around you. That is, it is necessary to overcome internal resistance - laziness and the search for excuses - as well as the resistance of the external environment.



    If you want to publish a post, then your task is to remove all obstacles, ensuring that the post is written and published.

    How to achieve this? There are several strategies.

    The first is to become stronger, to force yourself to move with more power, with more motivation, to put some “carrots” in front of you.

    The second way is to convince the swan and the pike to move in the same direction with you (forward, of course). What does it mean? If you have people in your company who obstruct your movement (publications on Habré), then you can convince them, motivate them and show their advantages, as in that cartoon: “Hey, bird, we’re flying with me, there is so much to eat .

    The third way - generally to straighten the pike and the swan, refusing to participate such people in the project, and pull everything yourself. This is a difficult and sometimes unattainable option. It’s especially difficult to do this when you need to write a post based on expert comments. Although there are often topics where you can do without attracting experts by preparing a post yourself.

    The fourth way is to "throw a few bags off the wagon." In other words, lighten up your first step a little. After all, it is not necessary to immediately tackle complex topics. You can take a simpler topic, make the first publication and look at the reaction of the habrasociety. And then, depending on the mood and feedback of the audience, adjust the next steps.

    A bit about the problems


    Briefly tell about the types of people who interfere with your work within the company. This classification is based on the experience of communication with more than 20 companies that wanted to maintain (or maintain) their blogs on Habré. The problem is that they cannot do this for internal reasons.

    One of the reasons is corporate “zombies,” which, figuratively speaking, feed on your energy. Their main task is to shift their work to you, and do nothing themselves. A distinctive feature is a meaningless look.

    Next come the switchmen. They take the task that you give them and transfer to another person. The “switchmen” are not entirely useless. They can be used to search the company for the specialist you need who can answer a particular question. They know very well where to turn the arrows.

    There are still “trolls,” in large companies there are a lot of them. They are skeptical of almost all of your calls and attempts to motivate them. But they can also be used. For example, to get the unique knowledge that they (most often) have. There are especially many trolls in the IT environment. They reproduce perfectly on the “potential difference”. This means that if you do not have knowledge, but they have, then they immediately enter into an active struggle with you. In the framework of this struggle, some interesting materials can be drawn from them.

    The fourth category is “careerists”. They use any occasion to build their own careers. If they see that their and your goals are the same, they may even help you. But you need to be prepared for the fact that if everything works out for you, then they will assign merit to themselves. And if the results are negative, then careerists will easily merge you and say that it is you who are to blame.

    These are the 4 main types of employees that prevent the creation of publications for Habr. And it so happens that because of their opposition, publications never appear.

    Psychological moments in motivation


    How to understand the motives? Where does your motivation end and someone else's start? This is often quite difficult to determine.

    Let's look at a slightly abstract example from biology. Imagine that a guy got a kitten, and after 5 months he got into an accident. What could be the connection between these two events? In 2002, a Czech doctor conducted an interesting study and found that a man is likely to get into road accidents 2.5 times higher if he is infected with toxoplasmosis . Its causative agent is a parasite that makes its master ... bolder. For example, an infected mouse begins to ignore innate fears and ceases to be afraid of cats. Toxoplasma affects humans in a similar way. Czech parasitologist provedthat men who are infected with toxoplasmosis die in road accidents 2.5 times more often than those men whose blood is free from this parasite.



    Imagine, this means that at some point you can make a decision, not yourself, but under the influence of a parasite that lives in your body. And this applies not only to the causative agents of toxoplasmosis. There can be many parasites that affect our decisions and emotions. Including the "parasites" of the figurative. They can be employees, relatives, friends and acquaintances. They convince you of something that is right, but that is not. And a person, as a deeply social being, may not even be aware that at the moment he does not make a decision himself, but for him the boss, his parents or his wife do it.

    Until you yourself determine that this is exactly your motive, your desire, it will be very difficult for you to move towards the goal. You will put your own wheels in wheels (procrastination is an excellent example), because you will subconsciously understand that this is not your motive, and you do not want to achieve the goal set by someone else.

    How to solve this problem of self-motivation? Simple enough. Each time you accept a task, or, for example, go to a meeting that will last longer than a couple of hours, you should be aware of how this task or this meeting brings you closer to the goal. If you understand that it does not make you any closer, then it is better to refuse. This is a fairly simple way, but many forget about it, or go on about some other motivation, for example, social. Guys go, why don't I go? As a result, people cease to track their own motives and become involved in someone else's game.

    Again Habrahabr


    Let's return to Habr. What can be the motives for writing posts? For example, your boss wants this - very rarely, but it happens. Or employees want this - they come up and say: "Why do not we have a blog on Habré yet?" Sometimes the cause may be haters, competitors. It’s not that they want, they just make you go there, literally dragging you by the hair. After all, Habr is “a space in which there are many IT specialists who speak on different topics,” or even throw stones at your garden. And you need to build communication with them.

    Competitors can become a powerful external motivator for your company to enter Habrahabr. For example, when they have a blog on Habré, and you do not. They criticize you, and you cannot even defend yourself. With the help of a corporate blog on Habré, one can solve many problems: promote their services and products, supply visitors and potential customers with the necessary information, look for new professional employees, throw stones at the competitors ’garden (just kidding, it’s better not to do this, do not forget about karma).

    What internal reasons can authors write in Habr?

    Firstly, it raises their rating in the eyes of specialists. The resource is very well quoted among IT professionals, and people understand that if a person writes on Habrahabr and his posts are accepted positively, it means that he has already passed the test by this audience. So, the author really understands what he writes about.

    Secondly, a person can improve his writing skills. This is also very important, because IT-specialists are mainly “focused” on development, programming, administration and many other tasks that are very rarely associated with social connections and communication with other people. And if they are connected, then specifically. If you write on Habr, then you have to pull up your writing abilities in order to win the recognition of readers. In addition, Habr helps many in his work to find moments when it could be done differently, better, differently, and just right. The person who writes the post begins to look at himself and his work “from the side”, which is difficult to achieve in other ways.

    By the way, many experts use their publications on Habré in a resume as proof of their professional level. After all, today a diploma or certificate says little about the level of the owner. And Habr is an independent audience that carefully verifies the information presented by the author.



    The latter motivator is also quite important. You can send your girlfriend a link to the post, and although she probably will not understand anything, but after reading and looking at the comments, she will appreciate the full extent of your greatness and steepness. According to the Maslow Pyramid, making an impression on a woman is not such an insignificant moment in our life!

    And marketing too


    A few words about internal motivation to write on Habrahabr for PR specialists. For example, this is a way to improve your KPI in terms of reach. You can run in a new site or structure your knowledge on a specific topic. But note that most PR materials are superficial, as they are designed for a very wide audience. But when you are preparing a publication on Habr, you will have to dive deeply into what you are writing about, to understand what's what.

    Writing posts on Habr helps PR departments to build work with a negative in the IT sphere. When you do your work on social networks, you are forced to communicate with a diverse audience. Odnoklassniki has its own specifics, on VKontakte - another, on Facebook - the third. On Habré, the audience is more or less homogeneous. If someone “goes beyond” and begins to ask stupid questions, then the public immediately returns him to his place.

    In addition, you can use Habr as a tool to get feedback on a particular product. This can help save millions of rubles on a media advertising campaign by first receiving feedback from a picky and competent Habr audience. It may turn out that you should first modify the product before advertising it widely.

    An important point: a published post is already some kind of result. For example, you will never meet the requirement in KPI that you need to talk with 20 authors, write 20 letters. If you, for example, tell a person about your company, then instead of writing long texts, you simply give a link to a post that describes what a wonderful kitchen you have, what kind of sports ground you have in your office, and how many kinds of cookies in the kitchen. And this applies in general to all areas that are somehow related to IT. The more posts you have on Habré, the easier it will be for you to communicate with the IT audience.

    A published post is also a certain point, a plateau on which you can gain a foothold and see where to move on. It may be that the audience is not very interested in reading your material. In this case, you can adjust your plans and approach.



    What should be the perfect post?


    In my experience, an ideal post is one that takes into account the motives of all participants in the habrasociety. For example, with the help of a post, the author realized himself creatively, the PR department was able to increase its rating in the IT sphere, receive visits to the site and positive feedback. And most importantly - the reader got what he came to Habrahabr for. At a minimum, he felt involved in the people who wrote the text. As a maximum, the reader commented on the post and also self-fulfilled. For example, he asked some question, and someone correctly answered him.



    And even better if you inspired another reader with your post to write your post, citing yours.

    Soon a new workshop - do not miss!


    We can tell a lot about Habré and the principles of the site. We invite everyone to a free November seminar! Here you can learn how to solve company tasks using the corporate blog on Habré.

    Sign up for a future seminar here . And you can find out how the previous seminar took place here .


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