Best Practices
Breaking in your widget
Once you have your Q&A widget installed, it's time to get it broken in! You'll probably want to ask a few questions to get the conversation started and to show people that they can get answers by asking questions right there in the widget.
When you're asking these "seed" questions, you should try to ask them on pages of your site where they are relevant, so they are shown first in the module on that page. The questions can either be real questions that you want answers to, questions you can answer, or they can be soliciting answers from your visitors (e.g. "What do you guys think of the new Q&A widget?")
New or Small Sites
For small sites, go ahead and ask a few questions and supply the answers. Those first few questions and answers will help visitors see that they can get answers just by asking a question in the widget, and it will encourage new visitors to ask questions of their own.
Also see: How Q&A helps Small Businesses Connect with Customers
Sites with an Established Community
People are naturally helpful, so go ahead and ask something, and see if your community provides answers! If a couple of days go by and no one's helping out, you may want to seed an answer or two to help people understand how the widget works.
Tips for Specific Industries
Feedback builds Retention
Not only do answers bring people back to your site, but so do thanks! Click the "thank" link after good answers to show your contributors that you appreciate their effort - they'll be notified by email. Once your visitors get in the habit of giving each other feedback, the community will bond and grow stronger, bringing those visitors back to your site to contribute answers and to subscribe to the new questions on your site.
Introductions, please!
It's always a good idea to let your visitors know about new features on your site, and this is no exception! If you have a blog, Site News area, or forum, mention your site's new Q&A feature there, so your visitors know what the new module is and how they can get answers, help each other, and support your site.
Encourage Question Subscriptions
At the bottom of the module widget, you'll see a link to Follow site questions. You may want to point this out to your visitors in your blog or Site News - the experienced, helpful ones are likely to subscribe, and when they do, it'll help your new visitors get answers faster.
