What are some tips for using Focus?

Here are a handful of tips that will help anyone get started on Focus:

1. Understand what type of decision you are trying to make. Focus offers professionals three primary vehicles for making better decisions: Q&A, Research, and Events. Q&A is best suited for questions that are more tactical in nature. It's also a great tool for receiving advice that's specific to your requirements. Research is more appropriate for strategic decisions that often require an authoritative, long term view. Events are great for education, as well as keeping pace with the latest thought leaders and trends.

2. When you ask a question on Focus, try to be as specific as possible. More specific questions usually yield more relevant answers. How can you ask a more specific question? Adding details such as your industry, the size of your company, and specific business requirements helps Experts provide better answers.

3. Use Focus Research for seminal decisions. Research combines the data collected from end users with analysis and commentary from Focus Experts. It's a great way to understand complex issues such as major purchasing decisions or what best practices to adopt for a particular part of your business.

4. Look for different types of Events on Focus. Roundtables are hour long conference teleconferences that happen almost every day. They involve groups of Experts speaking on specific business and technology topics. Focus Interactive Summits are half day long events with multiple speakers, presentation materials, and social features such as interactive chat.

5. Follow topics to create a relevant experience on Focus. The information on Focus spans thousands of different markets and topics. To ensure that the expertise delivered to you is relevant, make sure that you follow tags that are applicable to your business interests and needs. This allows Focus to publish information into a personalized feed for you based on the tags you are following. A great way to start following topics is to first follow your role (e.g. if you are a marketing professional, follow the "marketing" tag). You should also follow the market that your business is in (e.g. if you are a retailer, follow the "retail" tag). There are, of course, hundreds of thousands of more specific topics to follow on Focus, but the role/market combination is a great way to start.

6. Follow Experts to receive more authoritative expertise. Many business decisions require authoritative knowledge, insights, and data. By following Focus Experts, you can ensure that the information you are receiving is coming from some of the world's leading business and technology experts.

7. Once you have a set of topics and Experts that create a relevant, personalized feed for you, check back in daily. There's a lot of activity in most topics that can help you make better decisions every day.

8. Categorize any question you have with tags that describe the issue you are trying to address. Use broad tags such as "customer service", but also use specific tags that represent specific objects such as "IVR". This makes it easier for other people to find your contributions. It also makes it easier for Focus to route specific questions and issues to Experts.

9. When you use Focus Q&A, promote your question or answer on Twitter. This greatly increases the odds of having more people contribute high quality answers to the question. While many social media outlets are useful for promoting online activity, none is better than Twitter for soliciting high quality input from other professionals.

10. Make sure you vote on answers and comments. Voting helps the community understand high quality versus low quality contributions.