Writing a Quality Post

First off, let's go over several different post types as to clear up any miscommunication.  These are the post types we will be going over in this post.

• Blogs
• Vlogs
• Podcasts
• Meme Post
• Photography
• Humor
• Link Posts

Are there other types of post?  Of course, however these 7 areas are readily adaptable to other post types as they easily fall into one of them as a sub category from one of the post types above.  We will start with blogs and work our way down the list of post types to go over what I consider to be a quality post.

Blogs

Blogs are generally seen as a personal scribbling, usually about someones daily life, but this isn't really the case.  It can be, but doesn't have to be.  Blogging can encompass even the news provided the news isn't an opinion piece.  If you lay out the facts and keep your opinion entirely out of it, it's news.  If you have opinion involved, with or without facts laid out, it's an opinion piece AKA a typical blog.  Even this post itself is just a blog as what I consider to be quality, someone else may not.  Something to bare in mind.

Create your own Content

I know right?  There's someone without a unique thought rattling about in that empty skull of theirs that's hissing in some dark corner like a vampire to a holy relic.  It's one thing to have images that support your content, even if it's just aesthetics, however it's best to source the images where you can.  I don't consider using a meme in post as a thing that has to be sourced, but like stock images from Pixabay or something from DeviantArt or other community, it's best to source the images used back to where you found them.

If you're not sure what to write, but you seriously want to post something, it's OK to wait and read and find the motivation on a subject to write about with your own unique take and style to it.  However, if you're going to just go to a different blog, news site, website, etc and just completely rip off their content word for word and past it to your blog and publish it, you're doing what everyone calls Plagiarism and if I find it, I will comment on the post myself with an archive.is of the stolen content on your blog as well as a link to the source you stole it from to shame you for it.  I also encourage others to do similar when they run into outright stolen content like that.  Find, name and shame.

If you're just going to copy someone else's work, word for word like that, there is no shame in creating a new post and putting in a title and putting a LINK to the article you were about to steal and then write a little something about the link.  More on link posts below.

You don't have to have this super long epic read, hell you don't even have to have absolute perfect grammar.  Hell even I mess things up, I'm not perfect, I'm still human just like you (beep boop err ehem).

What to Write About

The best topic to start your blog on is a subject you know very well.  Take me for example, I know deafness exceptionally well because I'm deaf.  I also know vision issues since I'm considered a Deaf/Blind.  However I can also write, create short stories, rants, cooking/food, talk about technology, Linux, software development, AI and yes even the finer details in creating a blockchain, including that pesky genesis block that seems to befuddle so many newbie blockchain developers.  So these are subjects I can easily write about and do.

You don't have to be perfect, you just have to know something.  You like cars?  You can blog at length about different cars, what makes them tick and the pros and cons of owning each make and model of car down to casual driving and then modding it?  There's your topic.

Are you good at cooking or working out?  Have a strong interest in body building and how to get maximum gains?  Write about it!  I know it seems super hard for some folks, but remember, you don't have to be a wordsmith.  I will read something in broken English from a 12 year old foreign kid that just happens to have a super strong interest Minecraft that he can mod it to hell and back and tell you how to do everything, even with it broken and simplistic in vocabulary.  As long as you have a passion and know what you're talking about, write it, even if you think you suck at writing.

There are hundreds of millions of blogs on the web right this very moment, both on the surface web and deep web and do you really think every single blog is super high quality?  Hell no they're not.  In fact I would argue the vast majority of blogs and blog posts are complete shit, but you know what's not complete shit?  When the "shit blog" is updated with content the author wrote themselves.

Vlogs

Vlogs are an iffy subject for some people on account that they're very similar to Blogs.  You've seen them before and might not have realized it.  For example below.

In that video I was asked why deaf people are so loud and if there are any of us that aren't always so noisy.  That's a style of vlog called a Q&A Vlog.  There are also daily vlogs where people will literally just sit in front of their webcam and just talk about how their day went.  Lots of people do that.  You'd think "Oh, pfft, it's just my daily life, I'm boring, nobody would listen to me ramble on about mist bullshit going on in my life.  Nobody cares." You realize people literally pay money to watch reality TV shows of people living exceptionally mundane lives right?  People fucking LOVE gossip even if it's about you from you about your day.  Hey I don't personally understand it, but there's a whole genre on YouTube and other video sites dedicated to this kind of vlog called a "Personal Vlog".

You might think nobody wants to pay attention to it, and that nobody cares, but the reality is, people do.  You think you're boring, by people elsewhere in the same country or even across the world with a completely different culture will think it's fascinating because they're learning about your culture through you, even if it seems boring.

Look at Hawaii, people that live there, I bet you they're bored with a lot of the luaus and the grass skirts and things, but some of them work in the tourism industry so have to do the grass skirt wearing hulu girl dancing, firestick twirling thing on a daily basis for a living.  People that don't reside in Hawaii would find it interesting to hear about the juicy details of someone that works in that industry as for what they think about the job, what they do, the kind of drama that goes on in the workplace, etc.

Hell I'm a disabled American, I literally sit on my fat ass most of the time reading and writing and fiddling with misc junk on my computer.  I think what I do is boring.  But one person hears that I'm working on a project that makes it so livestreamers can have live closed captioning on their streams and suddenly I become the most interesting person to them.

You go to work, we'll say it's something like you're an American and you work at Taco Bell as someone that preps food in the kitchen to send out to the customer, you drive a beat up car.  We'll say you're from Boston, MA and your girlfriend or boyfriend is from San Francisco, CA.  You don't have to have your partner on the vlog with you, but you can literally talk about your job, the kinds of customers you had to deal with, the kind of crap your manager puts you through, and how awesome or how much of a bitch your partner is.  And oddly enough, it seems boring and pointless to you, but assume for a moment not everyone lives in America and have cultures vastly different from our own here.  What does someone in China, Russia, Japan, France, India, etc think about your life?  You look at them and go "Wow, that's so amazing, wish my life was amazing like that, my life is boring" and then you put yourself in their shoes, culture, experiences, etc and they're watching your vlog and thinking "Wow, that's so amazing.  Wish my life was amazing like that.  My life is so boring."  See?  It's perspective. :)

Generally you can just paste the YouTube video URL into your blog post, if it doesn't, just use the embed code accordingly and you're all set.

Podcasts

Shortest ... category ... spoken about ... ever.  Reread the "blogs" section and change it from "Typing" to "Audio and/or video".  A podcast is, in essence, a blog.  If you think about it, all a radio talk show is is a blog that's just spoken out loud.

Yeah well what about call in shows on the radio?  That can't be a blog!

And that my friend is where you're wrong, bloggers regularly do that where they will seek out information on social media and get people to either write quotes for them that they can use in regards to public opinion and this is no different than a radio talk show broadcast having live callers on air.  The only difference really is the format and the ways the general public would interact with the show.  So yes, a radio show, a podcast, they're both blogs, just a different format.  Blogs are textual.  Podcasts are blogs that are spoken with or without outside contributions (and/or callers) and radio talk shows are just podcasts that are literally livestreamed over the air (or internet) as they're happening.

So to start your podcasting, pick up a free copy of OBS for video and live podcasts or Audacity for audio only podcasts and get yourself started.  Make yourself comfortable with the subject matter.  As with blogging, it's best to talk about something in your podcasts and livestreams that you know well and are rather comfortable with talking about at length.

Meme Post

Meme posts are fairly straight forward.  You have a funny meme you made and want to share.  So you go to Submit a Story here on Weku, and write a humorous title, upload the meme, a little snarky bit about it beneath it (option there) and then post your tags with something like "meme funny humor".  I'll even post an example, though I didn't make this one, full disclosure.

Title: Found a YouTube Commenters Keyboard at a Thrift Store

I'm assuming this person talked a lot about the African country Niger.

Photography

Photography posts are easy to describe, but photography itself is an art form.  However, since we can't tell easily if the photo you post is actually something you have personally taken with your own camera vs just having taken it off the web somewhere because you just really, really, really, reeeeeeeally liked it that much and wanting to claim it as your own, the general rule of thumb is to accompany your photo with text.

This is generally stuff like the time of day, the location the photo was taken, what is in the photo, the camera the photo was taken with as well as a little history (if possible) about the location or subject in the photo.

Humor

You're probably thinking "Wait, didn't you already cover this in memes?" well not exactly.  Memes can be humorous indeed, but humor isn't just about memes.  Humor can be funny videos, images, sound bytes, or even a textual joke.  Generally speaking for humor I still try to make the post itself funny, even when I'm adding to it as I did with the keyboard image I posted earlier in the Meme example.

Title: Teen Pageant Mom Arrested for Child Abuse after Injecting kid with Botox
Body:  The kid didn't look surprised

Title: Went on a first date, here's how it went
Body:  She asked if I liked animals and I said "Yeah, I work with animals every day" she went aww and thought it was very sweet.  She didn't have to throw her drink and storm out after I said I worked at the local butcher shop.

Title:  I made a website for orphans
Body:  It doesn't have a home page

Title: Deaf people sure beat some ass and don't stop
Body:  It's like they're bad at lip reading so when the guy says "Ah stop" the deaf guy is screaming "Stop telling me to fuck off!"

I'll see myself out before my first class ticket to hell is upgraded yet again.

Link Posts

Link posts, ah glorious link posts.  Some people hate them, some people love them, others are quite ambivalent.  There's a popular social media site that is basically just a bunch of links elsewhere.  A couple I can think of off the top of my head and they're both very popular.  Reddit and Pinterest.  This is the preferable route instead of just stealing the content from their page trying to pass it off as your own as I mentioned in the blogging section earlier.

Title: What you need to know about the deaf
Video of a deaf guy talking about what hearies need to know about the deaf on a blog post by ATR that discusses a little about what the video does and does not do right.

This post was originally posted on my Weku blog and reshared here to my Steemit blog.

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