How to write and submit a tip for the community
Community tips are detailed posts by Crunchbase community members that share specific workflows, search queries, and provide the community with problem solutions, unique ways to utilize features, and best or new practices.
Community Tips help to make the community the great resource that it is. If you post a high-quality tip, we may even turn into an article in the knowledge base! Sharing tips is a great way to build and demonstrate your technical expertise and get your knowledge published in a public forum.
To help you out, we've put together some best practices and the following sample sections to consider when writing:
- What is the challenge or problem you faced?
- What is your solution?
- What are the steps in implement your solution?
Reminder: here is a step by step guide how to make a post: How do I post in Community?
Best practices for writing tips
Below are some general best practices for writing your tip:
- Break your tip into different sections. Dividing your tip into sections increases readability and prevents readers from skimming over text. The sample sections in this article provide ideas on how to break up your tip.
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Add headings to your sections. Headings give readers context to the section before they begin reading.
To add headings
- Select the text you want to make a heading.
- Click the paragraph icon () at the top of the Details box.
- Choose the appropriate heading level from the pick-list.
Your text will now be displayed as your selected heading.
- Title your article with a clear description of what your readers will learn. Beginning with progressive verbs like "Creating" or statements like "How to" are good ways to capture readers' attention.
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Link to documentation related to your tip. Including documentation can help guide readers with different levels of background knowledge.
- Include step-by-step instructions. Using numbered steps will make it easier for other users to implement your tip.
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Include screenshots. Screenshots help orient the reader and make it easier to follow along. They should not be larger than 600 pixels or smaller than 300 pixels. This is to accommodate the end-user layout.
What to include in your tip
The following sample sections give you some ideas to consider when writing your tip.
What is the challenge or problem you faced?
One section you can include in your tip is the challenge or problem you faced. This section provides a useful introduction or overview while keeping your tip in real-world context. Your readers can compare their situation to your own.
Content to consider for this section:
- Describe how the problem originally occurred. What were you trying to accomplish before this problem or challenge happened?
- Explain how the problem or challenge affected your workflow.
What is your solution?
After you discuss the challenge or problem, you can briefly describe the solution. This section is a good basis for your title.
Content to consider for this section:
- Provide a short description of the solution. This section should only define the solution. The following section will describe how to implement it.
- List any exceptions to the solutions. For example your solution could only work for users with triggers already created.
- Explain why the solution worked for you.
What are the steps to implement your solution?
After you define your solution, you can then instruct readers on how to implement the solution. These steps are most effective when they are numbered and sequential.
Content to consider for this section:
- Include screenshots to show where readers find items or how results should look.
- Indicate any feature that needs to be enabled. Additionally, note if there are reasons steps might not work for users.
- Divide steps about separate features into different sections.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with the Crunchbase community!
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