Tag Archives: Q&A

Mark Zuckerberg offers a Q&A in Facebook. You can have your own in Dilmot


We have seen in in previous occasions, Facebook offers Q&A sessions with celebrities. This time, the 6th of november.

You can see it here: https://www.facebook.com/qawithmark

Mark Zuckerberg will offer a live Q&A in a Facebook page

Mark Zuckerberg will offer a live Q&A in a Facebook page

Source: http://mashable.com/2014/10/31/zuckerberg-facebook-questions/

You know Dilmot.com (and if you didn’t, now it’s the time to tell you 🙂 offers you the functionality of integrating a live Q&A within Facebook. Read more about it here: How to make a Q&A session in Facebook?

If you would like to open an account in Dilmot and publish your Q&A’s, just click here https://www.dilmot.com 🙂

How a writer can use Twitter to answer questions to the fans


We have seen it today:

This can be achieved using Dilmot.com, since you can get the questions via Twitter using a hashtag and then manage them easily inside the Dilmot Q&A panel:

Stream panel with questions

Stream panel with questions

Hope this tip was useful, get in touch with us to start your Twitter chats using Dilmot and your preferred hashtag!

Instructions manual for the administrator / moderator of a Dilmot Q&A stream


1. Login into the account
2. Create a stream
3. Access the stream
4. Verify data
5. Provide access data to the guest
6. Public page
7. Moderate
8. Guest instructions
9. Finish

***

1. Login into the account

The account can be accessed through the login page:

https://www.dilmot.com/login

Login into your Dilmot account

Login into your Dilmot account

2. Create the stream

In the list of streams, you will see a button to create a new stream:

Click the new stream button to initiate the wizard

Click the new stream button to initiate the wizard

In a simple to follow wizard you will be able to enter all the relevant information. If you don’t have it at this point, no problem you can fill it in later on.

4-step wizard to create a new stream in Dilmot

4-step wizard to create a new stream in Dilmot

3. Access the stream

When you login into the account, you will see the list of streams, or if it is the first time you login, it will be empty.

List of streams presented in the account admin page

List of streams presented in the account admin page

When you click the stream you are interested in, you will see the admin page with the questions panel

Stream panel with questions

Stream panel with questions

Starting by the upper part of the page, you can see the title. Under the title, there is a link to see the public page, and another one to see the page used for the guest to respond.

On the right hand side there are 3 buttons:

Add question: We can add a question from here. The other way of doing so is from the public page, where the readers can send their questions.

Comment: This action is used to publish a message freely, this means, not related to any particular question. It is used for such things as writing a welcome message, a farewell message and any other messages that we wish to publish at any point.

Close Stream / Open Stream: While the stream is open (the default state when the stream is created) questions can be received and answered. When it is closed they can not either be received or answered.

In the stream panel, there are several tabs:

Incoming: this is where the incoming questions are seen.

Published: the answered questions will be shown here, as well as the comments made

Deleted: the place where the deleted questions remain.

In case you are managing a Pro account, you may moderate the questions that the guest will see. This is an option inside the settings page. When this option is selected, there will be an additional tab placed to the left:

Pending: these are received questions that the guest will not see unless the moderator (admin) approves them

On the right hand side, there is the button “Panel” pressed. There is also the option “Settings” where you can see the stream data.

4. Verify the stream data

Inside the settings page, we have the following items:

Stream information:

Title: This is the title that will display on top and that will be in the listings. Note that changing the title will change the url of the stream, so make sure you are spelling it correctly.

Description: Enter a brief description of what the Q&A will be about. Extension above 1000 characters will be hidden, but can be seen clicking the button “more”.

Date/Time: This option allows you to announce the date and time of the stream. This is an optional field. And if you decide to set a date/time, note that it will not change at all the way the application works. It is only an informative field.

Twitter: If you wish to receive questions from Twitter, you can choose the hashtag that will be used for importing the questions. For example, if you choose #questionsMrSmith all the tweets with that hashtag will be placed as incoming questions.

Numbering: Add a number to the question, that will be shown in the admin panel, in order to facilitate referring to questions.

Notifications: You can receive daily notifications or every time a question is received

Moderate questions: It allows to accept or reject questions that we would like the Guest to see in her panel. If this option is selected, the tab “Pending” will be shown in the panel, and the questions that have to be approved or rejected will be shown there.

Privacy: You can protect the stream with a password

Stream image: This is the image that will be shown on the header of the stream

Embed code: The stream can be embedded in another web, by simply inserting the html code provided.

Guest infomation: In this section, everything related to the guest will be shown. The guest is the person that will answer to the questions

Name: Put the name of the guest, if you leave it blank, her answers will appear as “guest”

Guest avatar: Image associated to each answer or comment done by the guest.

Access data for the guest: The secret link will allow the guest to access the panel to answer the questions. This link should only be shared with the person who will answer the questions. In order to do so, there is a simple way to send this link to the chosen e-mail, directly from the same page.

Stream settings page for a Dilmot Q&A

Stream settings page for a Dilmot Q&A

5. Provide access data to the Guest

In the section Guest information you can find the secret link that should be sent to the guest so she can access the guest panel and start answering.

6. Public page

The website readers will see the public page, from which they can send their questions and also follow the stream live, without the need of refreshing the browser.

In case the streams are not set as private (Pro account feature), they will be listed in the public page of the account:

http://xxxxxxxx.dilmot.com/ where “xxxxxxxxx” is the name of your account.

When they choose the stream they want to follow, the stream page will be similar to this one:

Form to send a question in Dilmot Q&A

Form to send a question in Dilmot Q&A

In case the stream is set as private, they will not be shown in the list. So you will have to notify the readers about the page where they have to login with the password you have predefined earlier in the settings page.

7. Moderate

Moderation panel for the Q&A stream

Moderation panel for the Q&A stream

In the tab “Incoming” you will see all the questions received. In case the stream is set in order to moderate the questions, then you will see an additional tab, “Pending” to the left of the “Incoming”. In the “Pending” you will find all the questions that have to be approved or rejected before they are shown to the guest and also to the public (if you have selected to show to the public questions before they are answered, which is a Pro account feature).

8. Guest instructions

As discussed earlier, the Guest will have to access with the secret url that the admin has to give her. Once the Guest clicks on the link, she will be led directly to the page we see below. It is a simpler version of the questions panel. There are only two tabs, “Incoming” and “Published”.

Guest view of the Q&A panel

Guest view of the Q&A panel

In the “Incoming”, the guest has to select to answer the question that she is going to answer, clicking on “Answer”. When she finishes answering, then click on “Save” so that the answer goes public.

The way the guest can answer a question in a Q&A

The way the guest can answer a question in a Q&A

Besides answering questions, the Guest may also add comments, by clicking on the button “Comment”. Comments can be used to write a welcome message, a farewell message or any other message they want to may public during the chat.

The Guest can also see the “Published” questions with the corresponding answer and if needed, edit the answer to correct typos or add anything forgotten.

The guest may also edit answers after they have been published

The guest may also edit answers after they have been published

9. Finish

If the stream has a set duration, you can, and it is encouraged to close the stream, so that the questions shown to the public get reordered in the oldest first order, so the stream can be read in the time sequence that it took place. If you decide to continue with the stream at any time, you can always open the stream again.

The guest can logout when the Q&A is finished

The guest can logout when the Q&A is finished

Embed a live Q&A session in a blog or website


There are many reasons why you would like to have a live conversation with your readers, and embed it in your existing website or blog. Today we would like to feature a live chat that is complementary to a Google Hangout. As you can see in the image below, Waiomizik is embedding the webchat right below his live streaming session done with Google Hangouts on air:

Embed a Q&A session in a website, to support a Google Hangout on air session

Embed a Q&A session in a website, to support a Google Hangout on air session

What is a Hangout on air?

A Hangout on air is a web application that belongs to Google. It is used to make a live video stream with a webcam. And this live video stream can take place between several persons. Because YouTube belongs to Google, then you can broadcast the Google Hangout on air inside of a YouTube embedded viewer.

What do you need to do something like this?

– A Google/YouTube account that will allow you to set-up the Google Hangout on Air
– A Dilmot account, that will allow you to set-up the live Q&A chat. See a tutorial here: How can I publish a live Q&A session on the Internet?

Both of these applications, Hangouts on air (YouTube) and Dilmot, allow embedding of their webapps inside of other webs, so this is all you have to do: embed the Hangout video and embed the Dilmot stream.

In the image above, you can see that there is a countdown to the start of the Hangout. When the Hangout will start, this box will show the live streaming video.

Below the Google Hangout box, there is the Dilmot stream of webchat, that will be updated automatically every time there is a new question and answer. This webchat will allow the broadcasters to receive questions that they would like to respond during the video streaming. So, Dilmot works as a complementary webapp to Hangout on air.

If you need further help, do not hesitate to get in touch with our team, and we will make our best to help you organise a successful Hangout + Dilmot live event.

How can I publish a live Q&A session on the Internet?


This short guide will try to help you out if you are looking for a solution to publish live chat sessions of questions and answers

In the web you can also open the floor for questions!

In the web you can also open the floor for questions!


Thanks for reaching out our blog. Let’s see if we can give you some good piece of advice…

Who are you? why do you organise a Q&A?

The starting point that we assume is that you are a digital publisher or related to one as a consultant/advisor/contributor, and you are either active in your website, blog or have a Facebook page. You probably use Twitter as well.

What are you looking for?

The need you have to address is to organise, manage, and publish a session of questions and answers (commonly shortened as Q&A). Why do you need to organise a Q&A on-line? well, it may be that you are a journalist that would like to interview someone, or you are a community manager that is planning to invite someone to answer to your reader’s questions. It could also be the case that you work for a marketing department of a publishing house or a music producer and you are in charge of promoting the author, writer or singer who is making a new launch of a book or record.

There are many other situations that we have seen in our clients, where they have raised the need of publishing a digital Q&A:
– Promoting university courses: the directors of the postgraduate courses had to respond to the questions of the potential candidates
– An e-commerce portal, that wants to promote the writer or music band when launching the book or record
– An organiser of conferences that wants to warm-up the events publishing live chats with the guest speakers
– A pharmaceutical lab that invites experts on various matters to chat with the readers and sort out their questions publicly
– You have seen an AMA in Reddit and want to do a similar thing

Questions and Answers are managed through an intuitive panel in Dilmot.com

Questions and Answers are managed through an intuitive panel in Dilmot.com

How were you doing it so far?

You may have tried various methods such as:

Asking the readers to send their questions
– as comments in a post of your web or blog
– in Twitter, either addressing them to a @user or through a #hashtag
– via email
– as comments in a Facebook page

And then, asking the guest to answer:
– through a regular chat platform
– by email
– or dictate the answers to someone who will type them for her

And the live event will be either not possible or cumbersome. I.e. those systems does not connect questions and answers automatically, manual copy and paste is needed. Or if it works as a chat it will not remain published at the end of the Q&A session.

All of these alternatives can do the job somehow, but have one major problem: they are not integrated with the system that you will use to answer the questions. These solutions require you to copy and paste the questions into the platform that you will use to answer them. If you have a platform at all!! in many cases, people will just send the questions to the guest via e-mail or read them loud and type them as the guest gives an answer.

Why not use a Q&A sessions platform that simplifies your publishing workflow?

Yes, that’s right, we mean to use a custom software that has been designed specifically to do the job:
Receive all the questions in one place, no matter where they come from
Allow easy moderation
Allow to manage the guest participation within the same platform, so the guest will see the questions and will be able to respond seamlessly, in an easy interface
Integrate with social networks

Well, the news are that such software exists already and it is a web application called dilmot.com.

Use Dilmot to promote a music group or singer

Use Dilmot to make live chat Q&A’s

Dilmot is a web publishing software. You can open an account for free and give it a try! Create a stream (this is how Dilmot refers to the flow of questions and answers). It is similar to liveblogging or a chat. But it is designed to do one thing well: set up a web page, invite a guest, receive questions, and let the guest answer these questions, while they can be previously moderated. That simple.

Besides, you can leverage on the viral power of Facebook and Twitter.
Twitter: Readers will be able to send their questions by using a hashtag that you decide as the administrator of the Q&A stream.
Facebook: Publish the Q&A session inside your Facebook page, using a simple iframe
Facebook & Twitter: Readers will be able to use their credentials in order to identify themselves when they send their question.

A guide to Dilmot for experienced bloggers

Dilmot works in a similar way to a blogging platform like wordpress.com or blogger.com in the sense that when you create your account there will be a home page created for you, and it will be a subdomain of dilmot.com, just like WordPress or Blogger do it.

Again, like in a blogging platform, you can create posts in your account. But in Dilmot they are not called posts, they are called streams. Stream is the name chosen because it is a sequence of questions and answers. And this sequence of questions and answers are shown like a real-time chat. There is no need to refresh the browser page, because the new questions and the new answers will be shown as they are published by the guest.

In the admin page, the account owner can create or delete streams, and for each stream define the title, the guest and generate a secret token access url to send to the guest. This makes organising the event a breeze, since the guest need not any sign-up or special requirement. Once she has the access url, then the guest can see the stream panel with the questions expected for her to answer. The procedure at this point is very simple: Click “answer” within the question that she is going to answer and save, so it gets published.

A single webpage and the possibility to embed it inside your own web

Why not make a video Q&A?

We have also launched a new web app to publish live video questions and answers using Google Hangouts and other platforms such as Livestream or Ustream. The reality is that organising a live webcam broadcast is more complex than a live chat Q&A, the main reason being that video requires higher bandwidth and skills to make a good recording. Anyway if you have the right support for the guest, the bandwidth and the time required to set all up, we invite you to open an account at Qstion, the web application to make live Q&A’s.

Is that all?

Yes, this is already a long story to convey the message: live Q&A sessions are easy to publish with Dilmot. Go ahead, it is free, and you will only need 2 minutes to see and learn how it works. Good luck!

As always, let us know your feedback via comments or contact us directly. We are more than happy to help you out with your project!