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Hi there,

In our community (B2B, support & ideation, mostly customers) Topics are called “Topic”, just like here in inSpired and many other communities that use inSided. But I wonder if anybody else changed the phrase or thought about changing it, and the reason behind that.

I have the suspicion that the word “topic” may be confusing or not really intuitive for new users (as it has been for me, once I started out with inSided / inSpired). Intuitively, I would think of “topic” as something like a subcategory and not a new post.

So I’m thinking to adjust the wording.
 

For example, I’ve also seen some communities here that call it

  • post
  • conversation
  • … any more examples?

 

So I would love to hear your thoughts!

Do you still call it “topic” or have you changed the name?

Why / why not?

 

Best,
Daniele

Lots of folks have changed this to post:

  • Zapier
  • Gainsight
  • Mixpanel
  • Typeform

But I also see about as many leaving it as topic.

I’d ask some of your community members what would resonate best for them. Get their input and build with them.

We still call it topic, and had considered post, but after speaking with some of our super users about it, determined that topic was fine.

Others I’ve seen:

  • Ask a question (GoodData) - which seems a bit specific given the mutliple content types
  • Ask question / create topic (Looker)
  • Ask question / start topic (Pipefy)

With two Insided communities, I’ve changed it to “post” at some level for each. 

My current community is like yours (B2B, mostly support Q&A + Ideation) and we have a somewhat unique spin.

  1. We made the +Create Topic in the mega menu “Ask a Question” as it’s the primary use case for the community and the action most users may be looking to take. 
    1. For now, we’re also hiding (via CSS) the option to choose between Question, Conversation, and Idea on the Create Topic option. This way, the Ask a Question button only opens up the option to ask a question
  2. On the Ideation landing page, we have a second button specific to “Post an Idea” via the “Ideation Statistics widget”
  3. For the Create New Topic dialog, we adjusted the phrases to “Create a Post.” This is because it’s the same UX / module for both asking a question and submitting an idea. We felt “post” fit as the best catch all for both Questions and Ideas. 

 

Happy New Year! 

Thank you so much for the “market research” and the advice, @Scott Baldwin.
I will definitely consider asking some of my most engaged members.

 

@DannyPancratz, Thank you for sharing your experience.

That looks like an interesting combo.
I wonder how you are calling a “Topic” in a user’s Profile pop-up?

 

for example, this is your profile pop-up on inSpired

 

Best,
Daniele


I wonder how you are calling a “Topic” in a user’s Profile pop-up?

 

for example, this is your profile pop-up on inSpired

 

 

That’s another area we use Posts instead of Topics. Same idea as #3 described above. 

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