Welcome to Instablogs!

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We at Instablogs think that you, our writers, are the most important part of our family.

Our job is to help you find the most interesting stories, write the most compelling stories, get the most comments, and have fun.
This guide should help you to do just that.

Finding Stories:

No matter where you are in the world stories are everywhere.
As an Instablogs CJ we want you to find the stories that are of interest to you.

The stories that you think are important and everyone should know about.
Not all news is tragic.

But it should be interesting.
If you think something is interesting chances are others will find it interesting too.

So where do you find interesting stories?

There are tons of websites that give you the news.

There are your local newspapers and better yet, what your friends and family are talking about.
There are a few things to keep in mind before you write a story for IB.

Check and make sure no one has written about the same thing with the same views. Sometimes a story may come up that everyone is writing about.

Make sure that you are giving a unique perspective to the topic.

How to write compelling stories:

In order to become a popular writer you have to do more than just give your views.
You have to make your writing compelling.

How do you do that?

Most people think that either you are a good writer or you are not.That may or may not be true.

But what is true is that there are tricks popular writers on teh internet use to make their stories more interesting and compelling

Links: One of the most interesting things about the internet is the fact that you can link to various articles and websites you write about.

Links to those things not only make your articles more interesting to read it also brings you more readers.
By linking to others in your article it makes the recipient check out your writing.

People like those who link to them.

And they will come back just to see if you have quoted them again.
Plus linking will make your articles more popular in search engines such as Google and the like.

Pictures: Everyone loves pictures. Sometimes pictures can say in an instant what may take you 500 to 1000 words.

They add a lot to any articles. It’s important that you have pictures for your articles.

Some of the best writers use only certain types of pictures for all there articles to create an unique visual style to go with there words.

Video: Sometimes it may be desirable to use video to aid you in telling your story. Maybe you are even writing about an event where the video is imperative to the story.

Here at IB you can easily upload the video you need to accompany your story. It can be your own video or video from sites such as YouTube.
If it will help the audience with your story feel free to upload part of the press conference or event you are talking about or have an opinion on.

Personal But the most important way to make a story compelling is to make it personal.

News is only news when it affects an individual’s life.
It is sometimes much more compelling to tell one man’s story than to just give facts. Facts affect people. But people are the real news.

Give your views.

Give your perspective.

And invite your audience to do the same.

The care and feeding of comments:
One of the most satisfying things you can get from writing from IB is feedback from others from all parts of the world.

How can you maximize the amount of comments you get on your article?

The most effective way is to take the time and answer each commenter.

It doesn’t matter if they agree with you are not.
By acknowledging those who took the time to comment on your article you are creating more fans of you writing.

Even if they disagree with you, the fact that they can discuss there opinions with you will make them search out and read your articles.

Problems:

As you are writing you may run into problems.

You may be confused as to how to put up video.
Or if it’s o.k. to use a certain picture.
Or some other issue not discussed here
Don’t worry.

Like I said before, you are the most important people in the Instablogs family.And because of that we have a team dedicated to you.

Always ready to answer your questions via email or chat.
Feel free to ask us anything.

That’s what we are here for.

Everyday we are adding new features to make your job of getting your stories out to as many people as possible easier.

Check out the IB official blog to keep up with those developments.
But most importantly,
Tell compelling stories,

Interact with your readers:

And have fun.

-love,
The Instablogs Content Development Team