How to use FanPosts and FanShots

Have you got something to say but you're sick of waiting for us to write about it? More than just commenting at Bless You Boys, you can help drive the discussion yourself through two great ways: FanPosts and FanShots. They're both pretty easy to use, but I want to take a moment today to encourage you to use the tools and give a quick demonstration.

You can find easy links to them just to the right of our second or third post below the "cover." See this:

Why are there two options?

This is the question a lot of people ask.

* Fanshots are for quick hits. Share a video, photo (preferably your own, we do not have permission to run an AP photo, for instance), quote, link, tweet, etc. These are intended to be quick and easy.

Some good examples:

- Brandon Inge is Public Enemy No. 1: We shared a tweet

- The Tigers have signed a closer: We shared a video here

* FanPosts are for blogging like we do. These are for your longer, well-developed ideas. These can be used in any number of ways, and are generally the best way to get your name known and develop an audience if you'd like to someday be an author at the site. (Several of our writers got their start in FanPosts. It is the No. 1 thing we recommend to people who write us about joining BYB's staff.)

Some good examples:

- Why not to bench V-Mart

- Beer of the Series (any of them really)

Great! So how do you do it?

Fanshots:

First, visit this page. There's a handy menu bar (shown below). Drop a link to what you want to share. (If it's a tweet, make sure you click the time stamp on the tweet to get its individual link, rather than just the author's Twitter page.)

Paste the link

Alternatively, you could just drag the "Fanshot on the go" button to your browser's bookmark bar and click it when you're on something you want to share. Either way, you arrive here:

Click the button that best describes your link, give it a quick headline, write a short description (we advise you to give credit if you're sharing something someone else found), click the button to share your post with your twitter friends, and hit post.

The result:

A link will show up to your content in our right sidebar, and if you've found something great one of the folks who helps edit Bless You Boys will applaud your effort and share it on our front page for all to see.

FanPosts

First I'll show you how to do them, then make a few recommendations.

You can visit this page or click the "write a FanPost" button on the right menu.

This one's pretty simple really. Give your post a catchy headline, write a nice post (please feel free to use your return button from time to time, I know some people out there really enjoy their 1,000-word paragraphs!) scroll down a bit from that image above and hit publish. Done!

There are a few tools to help you there. The menu bar (the stuff under the word "body" between the small text box and big text box) allows you to bold, italicize, change text size (see the word "paragraph"? change that to H4 to make a nice sub-headline) and more. If you want to include a photo, click the icon directly beneath the word "media" on the right sidebar. Confused by any of those tools? Click "show editor help" -- it's highlighted in yellow under the big text box.

But here are some guidelines to make this more successful

- Do not just repost articles from elsewhere. Those copyrights are owned by someone else, so mods will have to delet them.

- Write your posts about topics we or another FanPost editor haven't covered -- at least, haven't covered in the same way you would. We all have our own takes on the bullpen, and that's fine.

- If you want to comment on a post on another site, link to it, and quote a few lines. (On the menu bar, use the chain-link button.) Then share your take. Again, don't just grab huge chunks of someone else's story.

How else you can get involved

Read other people's FanPosts and FanShots. You can always find them on the right sidebar.

If you like something, "rec" it. The posts with more commendations filter to the top and it's a nice way to say "good job."

Comment on other people's posts. Reply to comments on your posts.

We want you to get involved, don't just make us do all the talking. So I hope this helped.

If you have any questions -- maybe I explained something bad -- just ask. I'll try to make this document a little more useful and then keep it where it's easy to find.