By Now that you’ve been a member at Flixist for a little while, you may have started to think about blogging. You may have even tried your hand at it like a few of our community members have. Either way, great! Blogging is one of the most awesome parts of a site like Flixist.
“But what exactly is the deal with blogging?” you might ask. “How should I blog? Why is it so awesome?” I’m here to answer all of your questions for you. So let’s take a look at everything you ever wanted to know about blogging on Flixist.
On Flixist, your blog is just that: your blog. Do as you please. When you post a blog you can mark it as a “personal blog” which only you and your followers will see, a Bloggers Wanted Response which I review for consideration on the home page, and a Community Blog which puts your blog in our public directory of bloggers.
So, there’s no easy answer to the question, “What is blogging?” It’s whatever you want it to be. However, that does lead us into the next question.
Well, movies, obviously. But beyond that, you might be wondering what sort of content works best in blogs. You can put pretty much anything you want in your blogs, but here are some things that will succeed most often.
- Editorials: Have an opinion on something? Think something is awesome? Think something sucks? An editorial-style blog post is probably the most common type of post, and as such, it’s what a lot of readers visit community blogs for.
- Features: Sometimes, you feel like writing 2000 words on the symbolism in Star Wars. Maybe you interviewed a director and want to write up an article about him. Whatever the case is, if you’ve written something that’s more of an article, exploration, etc. than an opinion, it might fit into this category. These can be some of the most interesting posts, so don’t be shy about putting them up.
- Reviews: We write a lot of reviews here, so why shouldn’t you? Review a new release, an old movie, whatever.
- News: We post a lot of news here, so if there’s some big story, chances are good that we’re going to post about it on the front page. However, blogging about news can be valuable if done right. For instance, if there’s some local story that is interesting but not widely available, it would make a great blog post.
- Videos: You can put just about any video you can think of into a blog post, but that doesn’t mean you should show us every cute kitten video you come across. Instead, if you’ve made an original video that you want to show off, make a blog about it. This could be everything from a video rant to a short film you made.
- Art: There are a lot of great artists on the Internet, and I have no doubt that we have some here. So if you draw, do 3D modeling, or make art in any other conceivable way, a blog post is a great way to show it off to the rest of the community.
- Events, contests, etc.: Want to host a movie night at your house? Have something cool to give away? Start a podcast? Tell the world in your blog.
Maybe you just watched a movie and it reminded you of why you hate Tom Hanks. Bam, topic. Maybe you were reading a news story about a new superhero movie and you think it’s going to suck. Bam, topic. The best way to come up with topics is to always be looking for one.
What shouldn’t I do with my blog?
- Don’t be a jackass. It’s just that easy. Posting hateful things will never be tolerated, and it’ll lead to your blog post being deleted or worse. Just don’t do it.
- Don’t steal. Post your work, not work that belongs to others.
- Don’t post a billion blogs all at once. Remember that your posts will show up in lists all over the site, not just on your own blog page. So don’t make it all about you.
- Don’t do illegal things. It is hard to be a Flixist community member in jail. No one will come to your community event.
- Don’t post five words. Remember, blogs are displayed all around the site, so if someone clicks on your blog and sees only five words, they might not be so happy, especially if you’re bumping down their writing. Substance is king.
There’s no perfect formula for writing something that will get promoted to the front page. We take a look at every blog post individually and decide whether it’s a candidate for the front page. Still, there are a few things that you can do to help us in our decisions.
- Write a complete, interesting editorial essay with a header photo. Basically, that’s all we’re looking for. Totally subjective, of course. Still, approach a blog post with your audience in mind. Make sure your topic will appeal to our audience, and make it as original as possible.
- Care about Grammar. We try to maintain a high editorial standard despite posting penis jokes, so please be kind to your editor. Your post will be edited for the home page, so typos and grammar errors are pretty unavoidable, but writing for an audience means using correct English conventions. Capitalize, spell check, paragraph, look it over for grammar, etc.
- Use images to break up your wall of text. Walls of texts are hard to read no matter how good the text is. Throwing some images in is a quick way to make your work more readable. A header image is a must (620×350 is the ideal size), and a couple of images in the body don’t hurt. If you want to put text on images, we use the Frutiger Ultra Black font, all caps.
- Keep length in mind. Not too long, not too short. If you have 5000 words, consider splitting it up into a series. If you have 300 words, consider a deeper exploration of the topic.
- Familiarize yourself with our style/formatting. It makes it a lot easier to promote something if it looks like something that’d be on our front page. That doesn’t mean you should change your voice; just make it look right.
Hopefully, this is all of the information you need to get blogging on Flixist. Of course, we’re here to help you any time you need it. Feel free to send a message to any of the editors through the site or email me at andrew [at] flixist [dot] com and I’ll do what I can for you. If you have any specific questions, please ask them here in the comments. We’ll keep a continually updated FAQ that should answer any questions that arise.
Post’s over, friends. This is the part where you blog.