I had to perform my first community manager duties today, which is both a good and a bad thing. I'm glad there are users, but here are some friendly reminders, tips and tricks.

* Post in one place and one place only.

I can and will lock and/or remove postings that are duplicates. It does not matter if one is a blog, a story, or a forum post. If it duplicates content, it'll get locked and potentially removed.

(edit: Locking a thread means that no one will be able to post replies to the thread)

* A blog is not a forum topic and a forum topic is not a blog.

Yes, they are both opinions/observations/questions and are for generating response. However, there are differences.

A forum topic is for community discussion. It's about where to have a picnic this weekend or if you saw that cool shooting star last night. It's a place for you to post when you'd like input or want to start a conversation

A blog is owned by you. It is your place to talk about whatever you want (within our guidelines of course). People can comment on what you write, but you are the conversation. It is a place for your commentary on life in SLO County.

* Format your posts for better visibility

We allow limited html on this site and I don't see many people taking advantage of it. Go here for a quick guide as to what code does what.

As a blogger in my own time, I'll tell you that formatting gets you more attention. People tend to look at bulleted lists, bold and italics if you use them correctly (as in not all the time).

* Put commas between tags

Pretty simple. Basically, if you don't, the system reads the long list of words as one tag. So, commas, please. (But use lots of tags, they're very helpful to searchers!)