The community bulletin is not good enough for promoting community blog posts [closed]

Question

On Cooking.Stackexchange, we started a blog around the time the Community bulletin was introduced. We would like to get more readers (and writers) from inside our community. The only way new posts get promoted right now is the Community bulletin, and it has a dismal record, resulting in extremely low visibility of the blog. I suspect that many semi-regular users haven't even noticed that there is a blog.

Problem 1: Community members don't notice when there is a new post

As a new blogs with not enough volunteering authors, we started with a cautious schedule, one post every two weeks. The point was to select a modest goal, but make sure that we stick to it. It is possible that more people will start checking regularly by themselves when we move to a once-a-week schedule on a fixed weekday, but for now, they rely on us pushing information which never reaches them. True, a blog post is automatically announced on the Community bulletin for a day or two, but most users don't visit the site in such short periods, so they don't see the notice while it is up, even if they are aware that it could be there.

For evidence, see this meta question where a user complains of not seeing notifications when he'd like to. Note that this is a user from our first page (for this month) - if he doesn't see it, what about the users from the other 215 pages? Note that our meta sees very light use, it is very uncommon for a "normal" user (not a moderator, CHAOSer or a chat regular) to post something there. This seemed to have been enough of a problem to have driven the user to Meta.

Problem 2: The link doesn't get noticed in the period it spends on the Community bulletin

I remember hearing this complain in chat from time to time. I am personally underwhelmed with the Community bulletin too, and many of the people to whom I have contact via chat or meta have expressed similar sentiments, see for example ElendilTheTall's comment on the previously linked question. And our latest visitor numbers confirm it.

We created a blog post two and a half days ago, and it has been visible on the Community bulletins ever since. In this time period, Word Press counted 89 link referrals. Out of those 89 link referrals, only 14 are from a cooking.stackexchange address, and one of them is myself clicking the blog link without being logged in to WP. In the same time, we have had 7 visits from a Pinterest pin made by somebody with only 53 followers. A pin made by somebody random without much social network clout generated half as much traffic as the only official link available to our own community. Also, on the first day of the post, we had 7 views coming in from Cooking.stackexchange and 12 from Facebook. While I am happy to see that our content is good enough to get at least a bit dissemination by word of mouth, I feel that it is very invisible to its target readers - our own community.

Another piece of evidence: A user who knows the StackExchange network well (and is even a community moderator on another network site) heard in chat that we have a blog. His reaction:

how do i even get to the blog? the main site doesnt have a link to it at the top

Problem 3: I don't believe that visitors from outside StackExchange ever notice it.

I am afraid that I don't have hard evidence for that, it is just a feeling. But the design is made so that it blends in, and the title alone - "community bulletin" suggests that it is a) boring and b) nothing for outsiders. Seasoned Advice gets many thousands of page views per day (I'm not allowed to tell you how many exactly), and an overwhelming part of them is search engine traffic, so it is highly unlikely that it is created by registered users. And yet our blog receives 30 visits per day on "normal" days, 70-80 visits per day on the first two days after publication. Sure, many of the Google visitors won't stay around on the site after they have found their information, but if some of them decide to stay with us, we want them to be able to find our quality content - which encompasses both the Q&A and our blog. And I have a feeling that they have practically no chance of finding the blog.

A solution?

I won't prescribe the StackExchange team how to do their job. But I feel that some changeis needed. And this change will only save the problems outlined here if it offers a prominent link to the blog (visible to all visitors, not only the frequent users who know where to look for it) which also indicates the name and/or date of the latest post, so that semi-frequent visitors have a chance to judge whether they have read the last post or not. I will support any implementation which will solve the problems above, even if it needs a bit more work (e.g. creating a thumbnail image for each blog post which can be displayed). The Community bulletin is not a good solution.

Answer 1

It'd be nice if we could replace one of the top navigation links (e.g., either "Users" or "Badges") with a link to the blog. It doesn't seem, to me at least, that either of those two links is really worth the prime real estate its taking.

Answer 2

Another suggestion of how the blog could be made more prominent (and obviously stealing wholesale @rumtscho's section layout) is to merge her separate box into the header, something like this:

This works with the non-image layout as well, of course. And the background probably shouldn't be white.

Answer 3

I didn't have a solution when I answered the question, but some discussion in chat let me come up with an idea. I made a mockup, because it is easier to explain that way.

To be used in the sidebar, like this:

Who is this solution supposed to help?

• The new visitors who don't know we have a blog. We have to catch their attention once, tell them that we have a blog. If they are interested, I think they will read the details.
• The regular site users who don't want to miss a post. As far as I know, they don't visit the site every day, they come 1-2 times a week. (The handful users who spends lots of time on the site is a minority which also notices the community bulletin and hears about new blog posts in chat). When they visit, they want to know if there has been a new post since their last visit.
• The less regular site users. They are active somewhere else on the network, but come to us once every few weeks when they have a cooking problem. They probably know that the blog exists, but they won't be aware of its whole content, they will probably visit if they notice a post title which sounds interesting.

I don't have much data for the analysis above, it is based on observation of my own behavior on different sites on and outside of the Stack Exchange network, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, until somebody offers better data, I think we can use it as a working definition of our target groups.

Why do I think that this is a good solution?

1. The high contrast in the design (which repeats the main navigation) makes it more visible. People who don't know we have a blog will notice it. I am aware that this point works better for Cooking than for other sites like UX or TeX due to design differences in the main nav.
2. The fact that the design repeats the main navigation makes it less ad-like. There are several high-contrast options which would look well with the site design, but I think that repeating the main nav prevents ad blindness, which many people confess have for the sidebar.
3. It clearly states the topic of the box. The title "Community bulletin" doesn't tell me what the content will be. I can decipher it if I spend time looking at the box and its contents (although as a new user it might still be hard). "Blog" can be recognized out of the corner of the eye; people who want more info will read the whole box. (Note: the size of the font is supposed to be the same as the size in the main nav, I got it a bit too large in the mockup by mistake).
4. The first line is supposed to tell a mostly regular reader if there is something new to read. The post age in conventional terms (as opposed to a publishing date) helps the person who comes to the site once every few days easily compare "have I been in the blog in the last two days?".
5. The older two posts are in a lighter font, so that the newest post always looks most prominent.
6. The bannerlike picture for the first post serves the same purpose. People who are often on the site are more likely to notice a changed picture than a changed line of text. The problem with this approach is that while we have pictures in most of our posts (because we photograph the food we write about), many other blogs don't use much pictures (and probably have no easy subjects, because their topics are intangible). Also, photographs are a bit unusual on the Stackexchange network, so there are fears that it will clash with the design. This is why I made a mockup without the picture, see it below.
7. The other two items are to give the new visitor a general idea of the conent. Somebody who doesn't know our blog may not be interested in the topic of the latest post; it is easier to get them interested if we show them three titles.
8. The "freshness" statement for all three posts lets less regular users calculate at a glance how often the blog updates. Also, if they are sure they haven't seen the newest post yet, they can see if they have missed one, two or three posts.
9. I'm not sure what is the best option for vertical placement among the other sidebar structures, but please don't make this a house ad. House ads get filtered by AdBlock. Make it a permanent structure the same way the "favorite tags" element is a permanent structure.

If you would prefer a pictureless solution, this is what the other mockup looks like. I find it less chic, but there is the trouble of always finding pictures (maybe there can be a site-wide placeholder for pictureless posts, or each site can choose one of the two variants for their blog).

Other variations are, of course, welcome. Please don't let the sheer volume of arguments I have for this design make you think that I have come up with the best solution. I put some thought in this, but I don't think I am right in all of the points I suggested. I would love to hear some constructive critique.

Answer 4

We have a whole lot of whitespace to the left that we could take advantage of. The right side usually has a sidebar for tags or suggested duplicates depending on what page you're on. We could have the left side set to display the community bulletin unless you're asking/answering/editing questions/answers/unicorns.