**The problem:**
KDE software usually has a lot of features not many people know about, and users avoid reading long and boring technical documentation to learn how to use a program.
There’s also a new influx of new inexperienced users due to the release of the Steam Deck, and those users don’t have many resources to learn how to use Plasma and other KDE software.
KDE tried making videos with tips but those usually take a long time to be made, so not many were produced.
With that in mind, creating written tutorials can be a nice way of increasing the amount of content we can produce, as they don't require video editing skills and can be made by anyone in the community. They can also be more easily translated, allowing us to reach a wider range of readers.
**Goals:**
By creating relevant content, we want to:
- Increase awareness: Make new users aware of KDE offerings
- Bring users to the KDE Ecosystem: Increase the number of downloads and new users of KDE software
- Educate current users about useful features KDE software has
- Create content that can work as easy-to-read documentation for popular KDE software
**Target public:**
With the goals above in mind, there are three kinds of people we want to target:
**Target public 1**: New users of KDE software that are still learning how to use it. This includes Steam Deck users.
**Target public 2**: People that don’t use KDE software yet but want to find a program to do something specific. This includes users on any platform where a KDE program is available. Eg: Linux, Android, Windows, macOS, iOS, etc.
**Idea:**
As discussed in the Promo Room, it would be good to combine documentation with promotion by creating tutorial articles focusing on KDE software. Those articles should:
# Be short and go straight to the point: people’s attention span is short. They won’t read long articles
# In case the article does need to be a bit longer, include subtitles for important points: this way the reader can jump to where they need to go.
# Use friendly and informal language: this will help communicate with people without sounding technical and boring
# Be heavily visual by using screenshots, GIFs, or short videos
# Focus on common tasks users might not know how to do within KDE apps (Target public 1 and 3)
# Showcase new or useful features the competition doesn’t have (MS/Apple) (Target public 1, 2, and 3)
# Have a download link to the software being talked about in the article if available (Target public 2)
# Link to other relevant articles
# Be shared in relevant places, like KDE/Steam Deck’s Reddit pages and other KDE social media
# Have relevant keywords for the title, URLs, headers, image filenames/alt text, and meta description to improve search engine discovery.
**Discussion:**
**Who’s going to write the articles?**
This already has an answer: Me and anyone else that feels like writing a tutorial in the promo group.
**With what frequency should they be posted?**
In the short term, I want to write at least one article per week. We should test this to find the ideal frequency.
**Where are they going to be posted? KDE Blog? Special page?**
In the future, if this idea takes off and the community shows interest, we can move this to a specialized subdomain in kde.org Eg: tips.kde.org
For now, I will post on KDE Wiki: https://userbase.kde.org/Tips
**How are we going to measure success?**
In order to know if this idea deserves a dedicated website and if it's achieving its goals, we need ways of measuring how well it's doing.
I don't think we have ways of measuring things that happen within the wiki, so for now we can forget that. Instead, we can use metrics from the social media posts to know how well a post is doing. This is a good starting point for now but not enough in the long term. In the future, it would be interesting to gather on-site metrics using privacy-respecting services, like Matomo. I'm aware KDE already uses it for its main websites, so it shouldn't be a problem to get it running.
**TODO:**
[x] Have enough content written before we start
[] Make Tips page on KDE Wiki - **Still a draft.** Available here: https://userbase.kde.org/Tips
[] Select a day of the week to post
It could be Friday, the same day as the original video tips idea.
[] Gather ideas of things we can post about
We can take some ideas from the video tips task, but we must pay attention if they make sense for who we are targeting with this task