[Blog] Submit a Blog Post!

Discussion in 'Writers' Corner' started by MoreMoople, Jul 5, 2021.


  1. Hello everyone! I've seen some fantastic writers on the forums. If you enjoy telling stories or writing guides, this is the thread for you! This is a chance to have YOUR writing published in our blog!

    Submitting your Blog Post

    The submission process is pretty simple. Write your blog post and submit it to this Google Form:
    Submit your Blog Post!
    (or use submitblog.emc.gs)

    Rules of Submission
    • Your submission must be of your own creation.
    • The submission must be appropriate, according to EMC guidelines.
    • The submission must be Minecraft-related
    • By submitting, you agree to any small grammar/format changes necessary to enhance the quality of the post. We will not change major wording/content.
    Blogging Tips

    A few helpful tips for a good blog post:
    • Try to pick a topic and stick to it throughout the whole post. Having a keyword makes this process a lot easier.
    • Add relevant images (If the image is not yours, please credit the author).
    • Divide your text in several paragraphs.
    • Use headings, if applicable.
    • Write a creative title.
    Rewards

    If your blog post is accepted and used, you will earn 5,000 rupees if claimed. This amount is per blog post.

    If you have any questions, please let me know. :)
  2. How much traffic does the blog get?
    ShelLuser and MoreMoople like this.
  3. I don't have that information available to me right now, but hopefully I will be able to get those details in the future to help work toward improving it. :)
    liamwill and 607 like this.
  4. Enough for Netflix to reach out to me on making a smooth stone limited series based off my blog piece.
  5. Thanks, sorry for being such a sceptic. :p It frustrates me a little to see the forum so inactive and then good posts being posted to the blog instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    liamwill and MoreMoople like this.
  6. All seriousness, there is some reach out. If the blog would have some build team members make a blog piece or two to help with building, that would help out a lot to reach a huge audience of minecraft.

    If you google "Smooth stone slab designs," (which is very niche search tbh but I googled it because I happen to like the block) you can see my blog post pictures in the second and third row. I used incognito to be unbias of course.

    If the blog post can identify its audience and target it, they can easily get some traffic. Heck, I even got a single comment on my blog post. That's a win in my book.

    Moople's post about furniture also had some interactions, too!
  7. The nice thing about adding more blog posts is that we try to focus on Search Engine Optimization, which helps us show up more in Google searches. The Blog hasn't been very active the last few years, but ideally with more content being put out, we could attract some new players. :)

    I have another build guide in progress right now! :D A collaboration with the Build Team members is definitely something to consider for the future. :)
    farmerguyson, 607 and liamwill like this.
  8. Now... sorry to be 'that' guy I suppose but why the Google form?

    Why not, for example, let people dump it all right here? From my pov this will have several advantages: others can vote ("like") on the whole thing and this can give you guys a good impression of what might be more popular in comparison. Another advantage, IMO, is that the writers immediately get something "back". At the very least they can be assured that other players have seen their post.

    Reason I mention is because this trips on my main problem with the blog: you can put a lot of time & effort into a post but there won't be any guarantees that things are going to be put to any use. For me that was quite the demotivator because... I never minded not to be featured, but having put in time & effort for nothing at all? That doesn't work for most people, especially since the 'reward' is getting posted on the blog and... well, no offense intended, as a writer you can get more exposure on the forums because there the whole of the EMC community gets to see & interact.

    Now... this isn't just nagging, honest, I just hopped online and saw this and yah.... I respond.

    Why not, for example, tell people to post here? Staff can edit posts (aka: grab the BB code) and before we go there: you don't have to worry at all about double posts if your SEO is in check. Nothing wrong with that, especially when it becomes obvious that the blog post is the 'rewarding' exposure (Google is honestly sensitive to that, it's not all automated as most people seem to think).

    The advantages I see: posters get immediate feedback (and some kind of recognition for their efforts), the community gets a nice preview (surely you don't keep the blog up for the community?) and EMC gets a good impression of which posts are more liked by said community than others.

    Just my 2 cents here of course...
  9. Thanks, Unoski and MoreMoople! This satisfies my uncertainty. :) For now, because ShelLuser's suggestion is also interesting. ;)
    I hope people will write some nice things! I like to write myself, but I don't really fancy writing something about Minecraft in general.
    MoreMoople likes this.
  10. You know... I started working on the EMC Wiki in 2012ish, back when it was unofficial, and was a member of its contribution team between then and whenever the official EMC Wiki came out (early 2014, I think?), and then a few months later I became a member of that one's contribution team. There was never really much for me to do on the official one though, besides some correcting of spelling/grammar mistakes here and there.

    Then the blog came out and I had so many ideas of what could be done with it - you could reroute the EMC homepage to feature the blog front and centre, have general Minecraft content to attract SEO hits and thus new players, and have fun things (LIKE MY COMIC) to have people read if they don't care about the more advertising-oriented content of the blog at all for whatever reason. I would've liked to pursue things on it further, but I quickly learned that nobody was interacting with my stuff and the content guidelines felt restrictive; I was given the all-clear to make the comics, but I had to have writing with keywords and whatever in the main body rather than just images.

    I eventually decided it wasn't really worth that level of trouble, and I found the forums to be a more attractive place to publish stuff anyway because people actually interacted with my stuff which was all the reward I wanted. I gave up on the contribution team in mid-2016 because I felt that there wasn't any reason to be part of it - Minecraft guides and comics or whatever were better suited to be forum posts rather than blog posts, and the team didn't need as many people in it as it did to manage the wiki (between slow Minecraft updates and a complete drought in EMC updates... although there are a few pages I'm aware of that have had blatant, but funny, mistakes on them up ever since their creation way back in 2015/2016). Four years of being part of that team came to an end right there and I haven't really been bothered by that.

    The blog posts being open to submissions by the community is a great thing but I feel there needs to be a lot more incentive than just a 5,000 rupee reward. 5,000 rupees is worthless to a lot of players and when I write I don't want some in-game reward that I can burn through in a single purchase, I want engagement with my content. I don't know what the solution is but the blog doesn't offer that engagement, whereas the forums do.

    (as for anyone wondering why I don't just publish comics on the forum anyway - its been 5 years and now I'm 2 busy w/ family, university, work, blahblahblah + 2 lazy)
    607 and ShelLuser like this.