Leaderboard for week of 12-15-08: Asking users for help

Our users know more than we do.

In aggregate, the knowledge of our users far outstrips our own. This is a valuable asset for beat reporters. An asset, until the advent of the Web, that was hardly tapped into. 

This week’s Leaderboard is all about beat bloggers who are willing to admit that their users know more than they do. They’re willing to ask their readers for help.

Gene Sloan | USA Today

• Sloan was nominated for his post, “Who has a question for Holland America CEO Stein Kruse?“ 
• Sloan is giving his readers the opportunity to chat with industry CEOs in his “Chat with the Chief” feature. This is a great little feature that builds user loyalty, generates traffic and gets your users to ask a lot of interesting questions for you. Plus, this doesn’t take a ton of time to produce.
• The feature is pretty simple. Sloan finds industry people that his users would be interested in interacting with and invites them to come to his blog and answer questions from his users. His user post comments at the end of Sloan’s post, and the person that Sloan selects answers users’ questions in the comments section.
• This feature is open for three days and generates a lot of questions. It is also an interesting feature for people to read if they don’t have a question to ask. Plus, Sloan’s readers are knowledgeable people and ask interesting questions. 

Jon Ortiz | The Sacramento Bee

• This is the kind of short, little post that works perfect on the Web, but would make no sense in print.
• First, the post is linking to a colleagues story and generating more traffic for that content. His colleague wrote a story about how a California state legislator shifted campaign cash to a legal defense fund. Ortiz used that story as a springboard to his post asking for user opinions.
• Ortiz, however, primarily made this post to solicit user opinion and to get people talking. Starting conversations can be a good way to build a community. Also, Ortiz could use the comments he gets as the seeds for a new post.

Eric Berger | The Houston Chronicle 

• Berger is asking, “What would you ask … France’s chief climate negotiator?” Berger has the opportunity to interview France’s Brice Lalonde, and he wants his users to help him out.
• This is an excellent way for Berger to get his readers involved. Plus, Berger’s readers are very knowledgeable and many of them are scientists. They can provide him with some great questions to ask. Win-win.
• This is a great way for Berger to use the collective intelligence of his readers to think of great questions. At Beat Blogging, we use Twitter all the time to harness the wisdom of our users.