New Goal: Get Freshly Pressed

On the WordPress homepage one day, I happened to click on a freshly pressed article for the first time.  I usually don’t even notice them, but the photo had Liz (the girl who wrote the article) used a whiteboard to plea for a spot on Freshly Pressed.

Previous to looking at this I hadn’t thought about it much about the Freshly Pressed page.  I honestly thought that it was randomly generated.  I suppose that it might be too difficult to actually do that though (I’m sure there are a lot of inappropriate things in blogs).  Anyway, I did some research about how to get freshly pressed, and found these five tips:

1. Write unique content that’s free of bad stuff.
2. Include images or other visuals.
3. Add tags.
4. Aim for typo-free content.
5. Cap off your posts with a compelling headline.

I found these tips to be helpful, but also a little bit of common sense.  It probably takes a little more to get noticed.  There are over half a million posts each day (or, at least today according to the WordPress website).  So, I scoured the internet some more.  I found a suggestion to email the editor at wordpress.com to ask them to look over my blog and to offer me some suggestions.  Well, I did just that the other day.  Currently, I have not heard a response.

Now, let’s revisit the five suggestions to see where my weakness in blogging lies:

1. I’d say my blog is very unique.  I talk about life as a graduate student, living in Austria, being engaged, and whatever happens to be on my mind.  And, of course, no bad stuff.
2. I try to include images when I can.  If I can’t, I try to at least make the text interesting enough (or short enough) on its own merit.
3. I’ve actually recently started using tags (ever since my postaweek2011 goal … which hasn’t been exactly a post a week).
4. I at least read through my posts once before clicking Publish.  Perhaps there are some typos, but I don’t think there are too many.
5. Maybe this is my weakness.  The hardest part about posting is coming up with a title.  It is easy to write about my experiences, but to sum it up in 5 words or less?

So, now, I have an idea.  Maybe I have been doing this the wrong way.  I write about something, then I make a title.  So, I will try it the other way.  And, perhaps you will want to contribute to my effort by suggesting some awesome, compelling titles.  The challenge then would be for me to think of some content that will match the title.

 

And, to comply with item #2 about how to get freshly pressed, I will end this with a photo of Novi.  Now that I have a fancy new camera, I have put it to good use.  He asked me to take photos of him in order to get a passport.  It was actually difficult to get him not to smile (passport photos are supposed to be serious, not full of joy for some reason).  Even in this picture, his lips are in the “frowning” position, but it still looks like he is smiling: