NightprowlKitty, wrote a great diary tonight
To Those Who Are Not Recommended
encouraging newbees and those receiving only a few comments and recs, to keep plugging away which I recommend. The idea that most folks here only get a few if any comments or recs, is more than I can bear.
I know the feeling. My first diary here about 9 months ago received 3 comments and no recs. It was heartbreaking. I was almost totally ingnored here, until I learned Secret Trick #1, which by itself got me on the Big Board (Rec List) within 2 months.
So, I've decided to share with you Secret Trick #1 From my private briefing docmument, How To Triple Your DailyKos Recommendations and Comments In 30 Days In Seven Easy Steps.
1. Use you diary to bring the DailyKos community the gift of an interesting article, summary and link.
My first biggest misconception holding me back here, was the assumption that I could walk in off the streets and 70,000 Daily Kos users would want to know my opinions of the issues of the day.
Bringing The Readers Something They Will Find Interesting Or Useful
In retrospect, I see how silly this was. This is one of most sophisticated political communities in the world with an average age of 45 to 55. Ardently expressed political opinions are a dime a dozen. Folks here have heard almost everything before. So how can you bring them something new they value?
Principle 1
If you want to get greater attention, bring the community something they will find useful.
Here's the easiest way that worked for me. Just study the top 100 folks on the Q2 Highest Impact list and you will see 99 other models. But, the approach, that worked for me was to become a DailyKos Information Scout. Go out and search around the net and bring back a unique, informative, article or link from the vast blogosphere with brief, informative, and provocative summary with a link.
Remember, what counts is value in the eyes of your readers, not you own ego, or attention seeking behaviors. Don't try to be interesting, silly, and for heavens sake don't be angry, rude, or condescending to your audience. Until you are getting the threshold number of recs you want. Then go totally wild.
Many, here, have such charming styles they can do all sort of these things I just don't have the verve to pull off. I'm not trying to discourage your originality. But, to give folks who are at a loss enough of a platform and feedback you can learn and develop your own style. Silliness, anger (at folks here, anger at Bush is always good and well received), and condescension have worked really well for some of our past Front Pagers. I just can't give you advice on how to make that work. And I advise caution, if you are a newbee trying to build up your readership.
Assume, you are the new PhD student, bringing potential research to a seminar or your professors. Brief, polite, helpful, spell check, but most important workable links and blockquote.
Keep It Simple Stupid: Spelling Out The Steps
1. Learn how to use the link feature and blockquotes and google.
Find a number of news boards such a www.rawstory.com, www.huffington.post., www.drudgereport.com, www.realclearpolitics.com or use a google search by date on some topic, and for the DailyKos crowd.
A good test, it that if really find it interesting exciting, or infuriating and it really frosts your flakes and raises some indignation it will probably do the same at others. Indignation and outrage at GOP stupidly, lack of integrity, and damage to the common good, are highly successful emotion bands at Daily Kos. As are action steps to help us win elections in November.
Any article, bringing to our attention favorable news for progressives in primaries, or negative news about target Republicans, especially the 8 GOP Senate seats, or House reps, will interest many. And new polls.
Other good topics include anything to do with how stupid Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Rove, Rush Limbaugh, or various right wing nutjobs even better.
2. Learn How to Write Attention Getting Titles.
Exercise: Use the search function on Dairies, choose 50 per page, and glance at the most recent 300 titles.
Get yourself in the "WTF was this author thinking mood." And ask yourself, why would I want to open this dairy? Some are like. "A Recent Thought," or "I. Can't Figure it Out" ?
OK? But giving 300 other snappy titles like "Its Buhdydharma Time! Which are you going to open?
Instead, choose a title that states the most outrageous or provocative way you can sum up the entire story.
But in the spirit of the famous "Dog Bites Man" advice to journalism students.
So "Karl Rove Bites Dog, And Ted Kennedy Bites Back And Demands Impeachment Hearings!" would be an attention getting title.
Or instead of:
"Something Interesting Happened Today!!!!!!"
give us the meat of it, like:
"Rick Santorum Humps Dog At David Hasselhoff Party, And Hilary Clinton Took Photos!"
Can you see the difference? Which would you open?
Tell us the core of what happened in one sentence as specifically as possible.
Also, any variety of Stupid Republican Tricks is always popular here, so if you see anything like the following, on RawStory, immediately cut and paste it into you AOL browsers (with the link-it takes two trips) and run, do not walk to double check the Recent Diary list, and if no-one else has it yet, you can get you first big board diary with "Rick Santorum Bites Karl Rove While Bush Pees On Both Of Them", or "George Bush Bites Santorum Dog At Wild WaterGate Hotel NIA Party, And Arrests All Reporters Present" And anything about disgraceful "GOP Neocon Minions, Who If Left Unchecked Will Bring Down Constitutional Goverment in American And All the Free World!" will always play well here.
3) Write your opening Line and first paragraph
Then say
Murray Waas, of the Washington Post, writes that, a href="www.xxx.com"Studies Show GOP Suffers From Lower IQ, Brain Damage, And Mential Illness And Should Be Institutionalized For Their Own Protection"
In a finding that will surprise no one here in our wonderful knowledgeable Daily Kos community, Murray Waas reports a study just released from the Harvard Medical School suggesting:
The single most comprehensive and provocative paragraph of the whole article
There you have your whole first half of your dairy.
Then below the fold, alternate between two paragraph quotes and a short paragraphs of you own thoughts and analysis.
Don't let the word analysis intimidate you this can just be two to three sentences where you say what you thinking.
When in doubt try out the ever popular, "WTF? Is it possible Karl Rove could truly be this stupid and evil?" Or
And a conclusion. When in doubt or if you have a writers block and say. This will always do.
"It's time we stand up to this GOP stupidity and make a list of action steps so we can elect enough Democrats to control the House and Senate in Nov."
Also, if you careful not to appear to be obviously pandering, a quick way to appear to be insightful and a trustable insider is to ask "Didn't our wonderful, and brilliant leader Markos write something on this recently?"
Or "This is just even greater confirmation of the tremendous foresight BIG NAME demonstrated when he already noticed this before anyone else.
Try to avoid anything that seems hostile to the DailyKos Community, Progressives, the Democratic party the I/P, or that sound condescending our angry. (unless you have you steel shorts on)
For example, avoid:
"This is just another example, of how the dkos community is a bunch of arrogant buttheads, because I already wrote this before and nobody commented!"
Conclusion
So this is Secret Trick #1.
Just using this one trick, boosted my comments up from the 0 to 5 bracket to between 5 and 20 per dairy and boosted recs for 0 tol 1 to 3 to 10. For the rest of my first month.
And if you get just get this pattern down, I predict you will discover two things will quickly happen.
1) You will tap into the metaphor of a friendly quest coming to visit for dinner who brings a gift such as a bottle of wine or pie. The host almost has to say thank you, come again. Bingo, comment or rec.
And the idea of an army of loyal, eager, helpful Daily Kos scouts out their combing tens of thousands of articles and topics hoping to bring "gifts" back to the "village" or communtity, is appreciated by so many here. You become seen as a valuable hard working member of the community try to help us build the place up.
So, many who find the article you so thoughtfully brought to their attention, really useful or informative will give you comments or recs just to say thanks for working to build our community.
2) And second, you will eventually accidentally hit on a topic the community is ready to explode on, and a tremendous discussion will break out in a big burst. Once a few big names drop in, it become a virtuous cycle and you may get you first 100 comment diary.
A second serendipitous glorious event, that may happen is that you just happen to be standing by the RawStory Que when a bombshell story falls on your head, like "Fitzgerald Indicts VP Dick Cheney" or "Bush Poll Hit 29%"
And, bingo, you will have arrived at your first diary to hit the big time and get on the big board. I suggest you keep a bottle of your favorite Champaign chilled and handy.
So it took me about 2 to 3 months of really painful trial and error to learn that no one here knew who Hounddog was and no one was really interested in my opinions about anything.
But, on the other hand, folks appreciated it when I could go out sniff down the trail of a hot story, that has community interest and made it easily accessible for them.
Remember, always, put in the link, make sure you cite the author, and put the cited article in blockquote. If you don't and it appears you are presenting the authors words as your own you will get called on it. A tremendous number of folks here use these links to bypass you dairy on go to the original article.
BTW Fair use mean you really should quote more than 3 paragraphs. Which is plenty to write a valued diary?
Win extra appreciation with Action Step
Also, include action steps if you can.
If your article implies possible action, include a link to the key Senator and recommend you readers thank the Senator or urge him to vote.
There is a sub-community here so eager to promote action steps that they may see you as an emerging leader and rec you as thanks and support.
Also, if it is an environmental diary, include links from the WWF, etc, or search for Jillian lasts diary. She has accumulated the best set of Environmental links and resources I have seen. Elise has a tremendous archive of excellent action links.
And always check the Recent Que, so you do not duplicate. You'll have to sit on your diary. I use the Search function before starting to even write on both the author of the article, and the most important key words. Unfortunately a lot of people here do not title their diaries well enough that you can guess the topic. So just because you don't see "Karl Rove Indicted" in the Recent titles does mean it not in their under some bizarre title like "Fitzmas
So good luck front pagers to be! Keep up the good work. More people are reading you stuff than you now.
And one more thing. For a real gas, go to google and search of a key word from your title. The happiest day of my life since my son was born, came last year when my President Bush Does Chimp Impressions diary showed up as the nunber 1 such diary out of 34,000 google hits. LOL
The amazing thing, is because this site often get 800,000 page hits as day, the google counter thinks we are vastly more famous than we really are. What a head trip though. And everynow and then the Tibetan Time, will pick up you dairy and describe you as one of the "worlds experts, on Rick Santorum and David Hasselhoff."
Do we live in intersting times or what? :-)
Have Fun Information Scouts!
Update: Cute Animial Picture Tricks (Estimated Return +3-5 Comments/Diary)
This is a picture of me folks. Anyone who thinks I'm cute and cuddly, please note so in a comment. (Or private email message, wink wink. I'm availble for birthday parties and special occasions. LOL)