Bitmob Posting Tips

Hopefully you know by now that we're all about supporting the community here at Bitmob. Register with us (using your real name!), and besides being able to leave comments on stories, you can post your own articles (via your Profile link), which will go to our all-purpose Mobfeed. And if we find a story that particularly stands out -- cause it's funny, insightful, smart, original, informative, shocking...whatever -- we'll editorially vet it and promote it to the front page of Bitmob for more of the world to see.

We can't thank you all enough for the hundreds of great posts you've put up so far. The Mobfeed and the front page have become daily reading for a lot of people -- gaming community and industry alike -- and if we can keep this up, Bitmob will be around for a very long time.

For you more serious contributors out there, below are a few quick posting tips that will help get everything a bit more consistent around Bitmob. This is optional of course, but you'd be making our lives much easier...and helping to show other new users how we do things around here:

1. Break it up

Put in plenty of paragraph breaks and images to help make longer stories easier on the eyes. With Internet writing, it's OK to have paragraphs that are two or three (or even one) sentences long. Pictures at the top are nice to help draw readers in.

2. Suck them in

Also helpful for drawing readers in: Give us a good, interesting intro! Everyone should know right away what your story is about and why they should keep reading right from the very start.

3. Tag

Please fill out the following sections, located in the right column of the MyBlog window where you're posting your article: Keywords and Descriptions (under "Meta Info") and Tags.

Keywords and a short description will help search engines find your story.

Tags are really important in allowing other users to find your post! Don't overdo it, though -- just legitimate tags only. And please make sure you write out game names as fully and as accurately as possible.

GreenSquid_onGreen4. Links

For links to other Bitmob pages, please have them "open in this window" while links to outside content should "open in new window" (target = blank).

Note: We don't want community members to turn Bitmob into a place where they can advertise their games, websites, or podcasts. We will delete clearly promotional pieces. If your post has legitimate content but requires a credit link to elsewhere (say, to where your article originally appeared or your personal blog), then put that at the bottom of your story in a non-intrusive, non-annoying way. As long as we see you're not using Bitmob just to get people to go to your site, you should be OK.

You can find these and future tips in the submissions guidelines section of our About Us page (both are linked to in the footer of every Bitmob page).

Thanks!

-The Bitmob Staff

Comments (19)

Oh, and if you can link game names to the appropriate tag (for example, the first time you write 'Halo', link it to http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/tags/Halo/) then we'll love you forever!

And videogame is one word! For our purposes at least.

(UPDATE! Video game is now two words. Doh.)
Demian Linn , July 21, 2009
Heh, yeah, I was going to add in how to link to game names, but I didn't want to overwhelm any newbies! But what Demian says would be really helpful for us. Upon first mention of a game, please do a link to its tag. For multi-word titles, put in hyphens instead of blanks and take out the colon. For example:

Halo: http://bitmob.com/index.php/mobfeed/tags/Halo

Left 4 Dead: ..../Left-4-Dead

Call of Duty: World at War: ..../Call-of-Duty-World-at-War
Dan Hsu , July 21, 2009
You know I have done some many of these things wrong with my writing on here the past few months. Guess this is my slap with the knowledge stick
Toby Davis , July 21, 2009
It's not wrong if we never told you how to do it in the first place! And these are just guidelines to help us out. Nothing mandatory.
Dan Hsu , July 21, 2009
I'm a slave to the OpenOffice spell check, but if it bothers you that much I'll leave 'Videogame' as one word. smilies/cheesy.gif
Jon Porter , July 21, 2009
O man now im really regretting not using my real name.... my bad shoe
Keith O'reilly , July 21, 2009
I read a debate once over whether it should be written video games or videogames. That article concluded video games as two words. Time to retrain myself.
Alejandro Quan-Madrid , July 21, 2009
Keith, you should be able to change your name in your account settings.
Demian Linn , July 21, 2009
Thank god I get some confirmation that it is OK to make videogame one word. There is something about all those red marks on my writing that drives me up the wall!
BTW- You guys really need to highlight more stories than you are... and maybe put a limit on how many you can highlight by one user each week. Of course I am just saying this because you people seem to have no appreciation for how awesome I am and have never posted me on the front page.
Seriously, thanks so much! This site has been a great help with me so far. I wish I had found it earlier.
Frank Anderson , July 21, 2009
Question: where should we grab pictures from so as to dodge copyright issues? I doubt many of us could make high quality screenshots of PS3 games, so where should we hunt for copyright free pictures?
Tyler Samson , July 21, 2009
O thanks Demian
Keith O'reilly , July 21, 2009
There we go now I can write under my real name smilies/smiley.gif
Keita Ohara , July 21, 2009
"And videogame is one word! For our purposes at least."

Respect +1.
Craig Ostrin , July 21, 2009
Thank god I get some confirmation that it is OK to make videogame one word. There is something about all those red marks on my writing that drives me up the wall!


@Frank I prefer videogame as one word, but on the Internet, you're going to find it as two words a lot thanks to SEO best practices. Videogame is so much more elegant than video game!
Jason Wilson , July 21, 2009
It's like being part of a bitmob staff meeting minus donuts.
Danh Hoang , July 21, 2009
I wouldn't mind if people started to use more spoiler warnings. I've been having quite a hard time avoiding Mass Effect spoilers at just about every website and in every podcast, since I'm not too far into my first play through of the game.
Alex Mekos , July 21, 2009
@Danh Hoang: We don't get doughnuts or coffee in our staff meetings yet.
Rich McGrath , July 22, 2009
Thanks so much for this post! I am still working on two articles, and this will really help me out!
Lance Darnell , July 22, 2009
Sorry, we change our minds -- "video games" is now two words! (Jason made a good point about search engines....)
Dan Hsu , July 26, 2009

Write comment

You must be logged in to post a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.