Some ideas for gaming DailyKos to make your stories more visible. Here are just a few thoughts on how to make your stories reach a wider audience (readership) within DailyKos. A few titbits and such help you plan for your story to reach more people. If you have wondered why your fantastic story is not seeing much comments or recommendations, or tips, then I invite you to this discussion. Some good and solidly written stories languish in the wilderness while some utter tripe appear to be flooding the screens everywhere.
I apologise for the presentation. I could not work out how to present the conclusions and reasonings, so I went for presenting the conclusions first and then laying out the reasoning behind it afterwards.
1. Subject Matter:
Write freely on any subject that you know about. While this is primarily a sociopolitical website, it still has a wide veriety of content. Subject matter / topic is important. Some topics and content are well received within kos community. I have listed some categories that do well here but it is not intended as an exhaustive list.
a. Personal Stories and Experiences: These go down really well. If you have been on a campaign trail (does not matter what the office was for), participated in an event (town hall, voter registration drives, leafletting, canvassing, party meetings) then these stories make a good topic. Kossacks have a very strong affinity for peoples personal political experiences and activities. Stories of active engagement allows other kossacks to share in your experience, get comforted, encouraged by it. In some cases where the experience is bad, kossacks sympathsize with your plight, find a common shared experience, and shared grief.
b. BBC (Birds, Bears, and Cats) Animals: Animals always go down well. Pets (mostly cats and birds), wildlife (again mostly birds, bears, and cats), although not animal but stuffed toys (mostly teddy bears). There are some serious birds, bears and cats lovers among the kossacks. Oh and the pooties, woozles and birdies PWB Peeps , who have 700+ followers and nearly 200 editors will give your story a serious boost. Do not mess with the pootie people.
c. Military Hardware: planes, boats (not guns) have a niche steady following, specially nostalgic veterans, who are always there to jump in and appreciate your efforts. If the hardware is ancient it is better recieved.
d. Environment / Green / Climate Change: Climate change is unsurprisingly has a steady following. On top of that Meteor Blades does a weekly roundup of environment related stories which is widely viewed. So, your story will get a bit more visibility as he tends to include a brief summary and link to each story in the week.
e. United Kingdom and Canada: Stories from UK and Canada tend to get a bit more traction. In terms of international stories (not counting US military movements), there is hardly any apetite among the kossacks for other places. There is a decent following of stories from Canada and UK which is made up of US citizens there as well as a small group of native Kossacks who originate from there. Intertwined, legal, political and language between the three nations probably accounts for the affinity. As for Australia and New Zeeland, my guess is that the population in those two places is not large enough to accomodate stories.
f. State specific: Stories based on California, Texas, Kentucky, New York, Florida. Topics about these states tend to get visibility. Most likely because apart from Kentucky, they have large population so I guess there are more kossacks there. No idea why Kentucky though. I hazard to guess that its probably because of the outsized reaction to the two senators from Kentucky (Mitch McConnel and Rand Paul).
This is not meant to discourage anyone from writing. On the contrary, I would encourage everyone to write or cross post their articles/stories from other places.
2. Story Size:
Aim for minimum four paraghraphs ( or 200 words). Avoid one paragraph stories. While there are plenty of one paragraph stories that seem to do well anecdotally, a good minimum size for story is roughly around three/four paragraphs or two hundred words. That is just enough to fit on one screen neatly without looking half empty. Of course if you can write longer and more detailed stories go for it. If it is going to be really long (more than 2000 words or five screens) then consider splitting it into series of stories instead of one if that is an option. Some analytical stories will be long and not possible to split them, presumably there are a small group of dedicated enthusiasts who read these. (For example I read all election analysis stories no matter how long)
3. Image / Picture / Photo:
Include a photo or image. While not necessary, an image of some sorts even just a small one is always good for grabbing attention. If in a jam aim for a small picture that takes up one quarter of the screen. (Does not apply to photo diaries). Dailykos has an abundant library of photos, images and graphics. Include an image that is suitable for the content of the story.
4. Photo Diaries:
Photo diaries go down really well. Lots of photos with a paragraph accompanying each photo has a good reception. Listing it separately here becasue of the good tractions. Contents around views from window, pictures of backyards, cats, birds, planes, boats, fish do well. As do collections of political signs, posters, placards, buttons, marches, and graffitti.
5. Tagging:
Include tag for every named person you reference in the story. Usually with first letter of name/surname capitalized. Most kossacks follow stories about certain politician through their tags. Hence inclusion in tags means your story gets a wider audience. Following Tags is how most people get their personalized stream of stories. So do not miss out on the tags. Tags are the lifeline of a story.
Include tag for geography. If a story is about or references particular state, or country, or region, include it in the tag. There are many geography specific active kossacks groups. They tend to republish story in their groups. Which in turn makes your story appear in the stream of people who subscribe to those groups or are members of them.
Include tags for theme or content category. For example, Environment, Green.
For a list of tags and their followings, check in here https://www.dailykos.com/news You can see which tags are currenly used more or which tags more abundantly followed. That will help getting a fitting tags for your story.
6. republishing by groups:
More kossack groups republish your story, more people see it. While many editors of different groups monitor tags that are applicable to their group, they do not necessarily spot that it is suitable for republishing in their group. For this, make a direct request to applicable group for your story to be republished. Regional or state groups as well as theme and content based groups shouble be approached for republishing. You can do this by sending a simple message asking for story to be republished in their group.
Many groups have their criteria and requirements for republishing. Here is a list of groups which you can scroll through and decide if your story is suitable for them. https://www.dailykos.com/groups. Please note that some of the groups are DailyKos staff groups and only publish stories by staff. If that is the case, group description says it clearly.
Ideally before you publish your story, you should make a list of potential groups you will approach. Once published, then send a message. In the message you send be sure to be very clear what you are asking. Clear subjects like “Request for Republishing in Group whatever the name is” are better. In the message include a few lines about what the story is about and the link to it. Be clear “This is a story about blah blah blah. Could you see if it is suitable for republishing in your group. Here is the link”.
7. Timing Publishing:
Timing for publishing is important. Aim the timing of the publication so that it hits the time window when most people who might be interested in the story are online. Timing also influences recommended list. More on that later. Certain time windows give more options. Roughly aiming to coincide with the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup yields better results. Many people are online at that time. Not many other stories would have been published yet. So you will appear in the “recent” list as well as bored people waiting for the APR might casually bump into your story. Usually this is around 04:30 Pacific Time / 07:30 Eastern Time. Other good window for around evening time 21:00.
However, the most important consideration for publishing should be when you are likely to be free to respond to comments. Responses and conversations based on the story you publish will go towards increasing your chances of acquiring followers as well as engaging in meaningful conversation.
8. Followers:
Followers arethe people who at some point have likes your story or comment or profile enough to mark you as someone they follow. Follow in this context means, they would like to be notified if an when you write stories. These stories appear in their personal stream/list. These will never miss your story. Just the same way stories by other people you follow turn up for you, yours turns up for people who follow you.
Now we look at how to make the story appear on more screens. Four lists, Recommended, Recent, Most Shared, and Community, Provide an additional visibility. Lets look at them briefly.
9. Getting On The Recommended, most shared, and Recent Lists:
Recommended list (along with most shared), since it appears on top of the right hand panel of every DailyKos page thus being most prominient place, makes a link to your story available to more. There is a formulae that is used by DailyKos to populate this list. It is a combination of how many recommendations and multiple rates of recommendations. (Rate is time based as in how many recommendations per measured time slot. There are multiple measured time slots in play. I suspect DailyKos would not be happy if their formulae is made public).
The spots are highly contested. So if you see a post with only 5 recommendations in there for a while, it probably means most kossacks are sleeping and you are one of the few ones awake and logged into DailyKos.
Your inclusion is dependent on other kossacks who saw your story hitting that recommend story star button. If you have ensured the tagging (as descrived earlier) effectively, then more people are likely to have seen your story. Thereby increasing your chances or getting a recommendation.
Most Shared list similarly, is a counter for stories that have been shared on facebook most. It is a combination of how many shared and multiple rates of sharing. These are second most important spots on the page. But they bring in a measure of outsiders as people share the link outside of DailyKos. Your inclusion is dependent on other kossacks who saw your story hitting that share story button.
Recent list includes all recent stories written. It does not appear on every page like the Recommended or Most Shared list. It appears only on the default first page. As stories get written, older stories get pushed out.
10. Getting On The Community Spotlight List:
The community list is maintained by diligent team of volunteers who keep an eye out for every story that is published. If a story is deemed by whoever is on duty to be of sufficiently good story that deserves to be promoted, preserved and brought to attention of more people then they do some magic. As the teams stated pretty clear description says
11. Conclusion:
So in conclusion, there are many ways to bring your story to wider audience. And there is even an active promoter who focuses on great writings who might not have gotten the communicity curated visibility. So the thing that is left to do is for you to write.
Have Fun and Enjoy Writing.
PS. If you drop me a note when you write a story, I shall guarentee I will follow you so that I do not miss your stories.
My personal advice If you have written a long comment in response to someone elses story, then reconsider turning it into a story.