Covering the Corner’s guide to FanShots and FanPosts

FanPosts and FanShots are tools that community members can use to contribute their own ideas to Covering the Corner and receive feedback on them. Using them can be a little daunting at first, so here is a quick-and-dirty guide on how to do it.

What makes a good FanPost?

FanPosts are great if you have thoughts on a particular subject that could run over 400 words. They are an especially good tool if you want to get feedback on an idea you have because the focus of the comment section will be entirely on you, instead of just being one tiny voice in a big comment section. But with that in mind, remember that you should be able to defend whatever you put into a FanPost, and you should be active in the comments to respond to questions or push back on your ideas.

Well thought-out FanPosts will get some formatting polish and bumped to Covering the Corner’s front page, as well as a bump on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

How to make a FanPost

1. Click the 'Write a FanPost' link on the front page (or just click here).
2. Now that you're here, it's mostly like making a comment.
3. Title. Pick a catchy title. Unless it is a FanPost for a contest or something else that requires a specific headline, this is entirely up to you!
4. Body. The main portion of your writing. My word of advice would be to write in word then copy and paste it over. If you are writing directly into the editor make sure to be careful with the backspace button. If your mouse is outside the body and you hit backspace, it will take you back a page and you will lose any work that has not been auto-saved. Just trust me on this one.
5. Images. Stealing images to use in your post isn't cool. If you want to use one, preferably it would be your own image that you own. Don't worry about the images that go at the top of posts, we'll add those when your FanPost gets a front-page/social media bump.
6. And that's it! Hit submit and you are good to go.

What makes a good FanShot?

If you see anything interesting or funny happen on the internet and want to share it with other Covering the Corner readers quickly, this is how to do it. It's a great, simple way to give a platform for discussion on something that happened on Twitter or a video you saw of a Cleveland player. They can be as short as you want, as well. If you only want to embed a tweet and hit publish, that is perfectly fine.

As long as you do not abuse it, I also do not mind if you use FanShots as a way to link to your own site/blog if you have something that would be of particular interest to Covering the Corner readers.

Like FanPosts, good FanShots will be published on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

How to make a FanShot

1. Click the 'Create a FanShot' link on the front page (or just click here).
2. Chose whether your FanShot is a Link, Quote, Image, or Video along the top.
   I. Link. Just a link to something else on the Internet. Tweets also go here; simply copy and paste the link to the tweet and the FanShot will automatically embed it.
   II. Quote. Rarely used, but if you found an interesting quote somewhere, throw it here!
   III. Image. If you found a relevant image somewhere, upload it here. Be sure to include credit and/or a link to where you foud it. If it was something in a tweet, use the tweet instead.
   IV. Video. Copy and paste the video's embed code (if it has one) and you are good to go. Not every video is embeddable though, so you may need to do it as a link instead.
3. Add a title. Just like the FanPosts, make it interesting, but it's entirely up to you.
4. Add a description.
5. Hit publish at the bottom and you're done!