Slogging Overview
Slogging is Slack Blogging. This app was developed by Hacker Noon, a tech publishing company. The live demo is available at Slogging.Slack.com. The first #slogging story ever was about our team.
Have you ever had an interesting and insightful conversation on Slack that becomes buried in your message history and never sees the light of day again? That is what Slogging is for.
It is a simple tool that allows you to turn Slack threads into published articles on Hacker Noon.
Slogging was built to repurpose insightful conversations as quality content. Here are just a few great use cases for the platform:
Interviews - Interview people via 1:1 conversations and publish the interview on Hacker Noon. No complicated formatting required.
Listicles - A great and easy way to make listicles on your own or with input from others. Check out #self-posts and this article for an example of how clean this will look.
AMAs - Slogging is a simple way to host an AMA without needing everyone to be online at the exact same time.
Help From the Community - Hacker Noon is built and read by some of the best developers out there. Stuck on a specific issue? See if someone in the community can help you out. Then, publish the solution as a helpful guide for others who may come across the same problem in the future.
- Have a great Slack conversation. Start a thread by asking a question in the appropriate public channel. For example: in #gaming, you could ask "What does the future of VR look like in the gaming industry?".
- Then, you can give your own opinion and wait for others to reply. You can @ other users you think would be interested in the conversation to get more responses. Once you think the conversation has reached its end, publish it! On the Slack thread, click "..." -> Create Draft - Slogging
- The thread becomes a beautifully formatted Hacker Noon Story draft on your HN dashboard. You add a lead image, edit it for readability, and add relevant hashtags. Write a great meta description and hit submit.
- Editors review your tech conversation for publication in Hacker Noon where your content will be distributed via our social media and distribution networks to over 3 million monthly average readers.
Slogging Opportunity
Yes! We have weekly AMAs on the Hacker Noon Slogging slack community for our top writers and community members. Join and participate in the threads, or even book in for our lead journalists and editors to host an AMA starring you and your team!
There are so many! Let's start with what Hacker Noon offers you directly.
- Official Slogging beta testing communities (including startups) get up to 100 bonus Brand As Author (BAA) publishing credits in the first year of using Slogging on Hacker Noon. Any Slogging article that your community creates, and publishes as BAA on Hacker Noon, will be completely free up that that 100 limit, which is nearly 2 BAA articles per week averaged over the year. Each BAA article on Hacker Noon usually costs $199, or $100 in bulk, so that is more than $10,000 in publishing credits for you and your community.
- We also offer complementary cross-promotion. Because we are launching Slogging, and you are early adopters, your brand name and logo will feature in our press releases, news wires, and even on our Slogging.com website in the partners section. This is great exposure for you and your brand!
- Slogging articles will be getting a lot of love on Hacker Noon. Slogging content will be eligible for the coveted "top story" spot on the Hacker Noon home page, as well as distributed via specific Slogging newsletters and updates to our subscribers.
There are other benefits for you and your community, too:
- Increased activity and participation in your Slack channels
- Increased public awareness about your community or your business via the promotion of your Slack channel content
- Increased signups for your slack!
To take advantage of the opportunity for increased signups we suggest putting a link to your Slack community signup form as a call to action (CTA) at the bottom of your BAA articles. You can do this via the dashboard on your Hacker Noon profile.
Getting Started
Hacker Noon is inviting communities and organisations with large active Slacks to beta test Slogging, the new Slack app for blogging and publishing content straight from Slack onto Hacker Noon.
Becoming a Beta Tester is very easy.
- First, reach out to our Slogging Community Manager akasha@hackernoon.com or fill out the form at Slogging.com
- Our team will send you the Slogging Beta Testing Agreement to sign
- Create a "Brand as Author" account on Hacker Noon
- Add our Slogging Community Manager, and Slogging team members to your Slack
- Add the Slogging app to a channel of your Slack from the link that we send you
- OK so you have signed the Beta Testing Agreement, added our Slogging team members to your Slack, and have added Slogging using the custom link to install it to your Slack!
- Now the fun of making engaging content begins! A good place for Slogging is in your AMA channel, or any channel where active discussions take place.
- We suggest you create a #slogging channel and make invite your community there. In your Slogging channel, we can post links about how Slogging works, examples of past Slogging articles, and answer any support questions from your community about how Slogging works.
NOTE: Slogging only creates drafts from threads in public channels!
- Click the ellipsis icon on a thread and select “Create draft” to create a HackerNoon draft with the content of the thread. If you do not see “Create draft”, click “More message shortcuts…” at the bottom of the pop up and search for ‘Slogging’. After adding it, it will remain on your shortlist of message shortcuts.
You may see a message asking you to link your HackerNoon account the first time you attempt to create a draft. If so, simply click the link and if you aren’t already logged into HackerNoon, do so now. After authentication you will be brought to hackernoon.com/slogging where you should now see your Slack workspace name, along with your Slack user display name. You may see multiple Slack workspaces listed. Each will be associated with your current HackerNoon account, so creating and publishing Slack threads will all be associated with your one HackerNoon account.
Whilst we are in Beta Testing mode, only Slack administrators can generate a Slogging draft.
Anyone in your community can comment on a thread to be included in an article. But only admins will be able to see the three little dots to "create Slogging draft" and publish.
Read the Hacker Noon publishing checklist here.
Slogging 101
You can create a Slogging article all by yourself, or collaborating with your community!
We suggest you start a thread asking an idea, or posting an unusual opinion, and invite input from your fellow Sloggers!
Alternately, you can invite someone (like a guest, your CEO or devs) for a formal AMA.
Once you install Slogging, any thread can be turned into a Slogging draft, including old inactive threads.
We suggest you go through your channels and find old threads with lots of engagement. You might have dozens of abandoned Slack threads ready to turn into a content marketing bonanza!
If you are using Slogging as a community, we recommend a Brand As Author Account. Or if you are using it for interviews, a personal account could work best. You can only connect one Hacker Noon account to each Slack account, but if you have more than one Slack admin, then you can assign different publishing roles to different Hacker Noon accounts.
Learn how to add a CTA to your BAA account here.
- Make sure Slogging is installed in the Channel where you want to turn your thread into a Hackernoon article
- Create a Hackernoon account if you don't already have one. Make a Brand As Author (BAA) account if you are publishing on behalf of a community or company rather than a personal account.
- Make your profile pretty and add social links
- Type /link-hackernoon-account in the Slack thread, press enter and follow the prompts to link your Hacker Noon account to your Slack account
- When a thread is ready to publish, hover your mouse over the thread where you see "..."
- Click on the three little dots
- Click "Create Draft - Slogging"
- A message will generate in the channel saying that a draft has been submitted to Hacker Noon
- Click the link to the draft and edit or fo to your Hacker Noon dashboard and the draft should be there for you to edit and submit
- Clean it up, add tags, a header image, and click on submit to the editors! Read the publishing checklist here.
- It takes 3 to 5 days for our editors to review
- You will get an email when your article is published.
Yes! Feel free to join in on any Slog that you have an opinion or question about. Keep in mind that some Slogs may be intended for a 1:1 interview, so look out for stories that have tagged a specific person and avoid joining those threads.
There are tons of current active channels on Slogging.Slack.com. Use the search bar on Slack to find the one that is best. Remember — in order for your Slog to get published, it needs to relate to tech in some way, shape, or form.
Slogging is in beta. There are public environments currently available at Slogging.Slack.com
After publishing a lot of stories, stress testing and improving the details, we'll submit it to Slack App story so that anyone in tech can turn their great Slack discussions into Hacker Noon published stories.
Leaders of other Slack communities can join the waitlist to add Slogging to their Slack here.
As slogging is in beta, it is currently available by invite only. We have invited some of the most active members of our community to try it out and will be continuously rolling out invites.
Yes.
Questions About Publishing
- Turn your Slack thread into a Hacker Noon Story and submit your story to the Hacker Noon dashboard
- You can edit and submit the draft in the Hacker Noon dashboard
- After you submit your Slog, our team of editors will look at it within 4 business days and will publish the story for you.
At the moment, the Slogging Slack channel should be treated like a public forum. Any writer or editor can create threads and publish them on Hacker Noon. If you comment on a thread, you should assume that your comment will be published on Hacker Noon.
If you want your comment removed from a Hacker Noon post, contact the writer directly or get in touch with our support team.
Edits in Slack won't affect a published Hacker Noon article.
Still have a question and need to contact us?
Simply fill out and submit our contact form over at https://hackernoon.com/contact