FAQ (Frequently Asked
Questions) pages are standard for most websites these days. We have one for
Groupsites as well (see it here).
The trouble is, our FAQs are designed to answer questions for over 25,000
different groups!
We borrowed the idea
for this month’s Working Manager tip after seeing what two of our clients -- The
American Bankers Association and Examiner.com -- did to create their own custom
FAQs, tailored to the questions that matter most to their group members.
They created their FAQ pages using our Content Customization feature. (Premium Content Customization is a paid feature, $9/month a la carte, or is included in both our Premium Bundle and all Groupsite Pro accounts).
Premium Content Customization allows you to create additional pages for your Groupsite that are accessed from the MORE tab on the navigation bar. It also allows you to rename the "MORE" tab. In our Champions group, we have renamed the MORE tab "FAQ," for example.
Here's how you can do it yourself:
Select the MANAGER tab. This takes you to the "Group Settings" page.
From the "Group Settings" page, click on the title "Content Customization."
This takes you to the "Content Customization" page. The top section contains Basic features (available to all Groupsites) and the bottom section contains the Premium features which allow you to create additional pages.
From the bottom section, "Add Additional Pages," select the first option labeled "Modules."
In the pop-up window, name your new page and select "CREATE PAGE."
This will take you to your new page and will have the standard Groupsite header, navigation bar and sidebar. The body of the page will just have the page name and a link to "Add Module."
Click the "Add Module" link and choose from either a narrow or wide module. You can fit 2 narrow modules side-by-side in the body or the wide version goes all the way across. We used this combination for our FAQ page.
From the "Select a Module" window, choose the "Freeform Text" option.
You can then give this module a title (if you want different sections for your FAQ) or you can leave it blank if you are creating one single list of FAQs.
Then select the "Edit Content" link and you will see our standard WYSIWYG editor.
This is where you can enter the content for your page; however, instead of listing all of the answers here, what the ABA and Examiner.com did was list all of the questions (or topics). You can then hyperlink (here's more on how to use hyperlinks in a Groupsite) these questions to the answers which can live either in your Groupsite Blog or as a Discussion Topic.
If you use the Discussion area for your answers, you can leave the topic "open" so users can comment or ask questions as replies or you can "lock" the topic so it is a read-only resource.
A manager can "lock" a topic by select the "edit" link just below the initial post and then selecting the "Lock Topic" button which is the middle of the 3 buttons toward to top right.
The trick is to make it easy for your members to get the answers to the specific questions that matter most to them.
If your group does a lot of file sharing, you may want to highlight tips on using the file cabinet in your FAQ section. If your group is focused on networking, you may want to feature tips on completing their profiles as well as adding Key Connections.
Feel free to borrow (copy and paste) any of the content we have in our Champions FAQs to use in your own Groupsite-specific page. You have our permission. 