Contributors: Read this, plz. A to Z Stuff!

I’m posting this late and pinning it to the top of the page because I need to get it out there but I don’t want to interrupt our normal features to do that. I’ve been working over the last couple of weeks to get our schedule nailed down through the spring and streamline my own content production. Here’s where I am with the overall scheme.

• We have a few features that don’t need to be interrupted in April. These fall mostly on Mondays and Fridays. On those days, we’ll have two posts. Otherwise, the A to Z will be our only written post of the day.
• We aren’t starting a new run of anything until we get done with April, but I am open to pitches for features to begin in May.
• I am going to do my best to keep the Tuesday/Wednesday photos going here in the afternoons, but depending on how the next couple of weeks go, that may or may not happen.

Information contributors need to know before loading the posts:

I will upload an A to Z image for every letter of the alphabet in the next day or so. These are the images I want to display when the post is shared on other social media. I will caption these images to give credit to their creator and link to the A to Z list.

A to Z art by Jeremy of Hollywood Nuts! For the A to Z list, click here

Your options for art are:

1. Just use the A to Z art for your post and call it a day.
2. Find your own art, and use the A to Z art as the featured image. This will prevent the A to Z art from displaying in your post, but will still display it in the WordPress reader and on other social media because that is how our theme works.
3. If you do not include the A to Z image in the post itself, I will add a standard blurb crediting Jeremy (not our friend and contributor Jeremy, but Hollwood Nuts! Jeremy) for the featured image and linking to the A to Z list to the bottom of your post.
4. If you use video, please try and find them from official sources to minimize the possibility of the video being yanked down later and killing your post.

I have post guidelines somewhat-buried in the official announcement. If you don’t follow the guidelines, I ain’t gonna hassle you. Gonna run that post. But. The guidelines are set up to minimize your work and maximize your audience.

1. Headlines need to be consistent. I want them to look like this: Blogging A to Z Day x: Topic. The number of the day should match the date, not the position of your letter in the alphabet, so even though Z will be our 26^th post, the headline will read “Blogging A to Z Day 30: Zemanta.” (That’s not the real topic – just an example.)
2. The month is broken down by day, letter, and author here. If you are unsure about topics, let’s discuss. If I’ve crossed something up and given you a wrong day, let me know. If something comes up and you need to do fewer posts, let me know ASAP, and I will either fill in or (privately) shop that day around. Otherwise, I’m trusting you to deliver, so not pinging you incessantly about your posts.
3. If you do not currently have dashboard access, let me know when you are ready to load your posts, and I will send you an invite.
4. I’ll need to schedule the posts for this in order to work around the regular features that are running, and so I can make sure they are hashtagged for maximum benefit on the Twitters.

A to Z art by Jeremy of Hollywood Nuts! For the A to Z list, click here.

I’ve crafted an alliterative theme for us that will encompass the wild-and-crazy range of topics we’re writing about. I am not announcing individual topics on the 23^rd. Only the theme, and all of you who have blogs get a front-page link in the reveal post.

That’s all. Let me know if you have questions, etc. And thank you, once again, for your help putting this together. This is a feat in the works right here. A thing to tell stories about every spring for as long as we all keep blogging.

One more item. I am brainstorming better ways to communicate with contributors so I can move this stuff off the blog and make the front page more seamless. My preferred methods are either a contributors-only Facebook group or an email list. I am open to other suggestions. Let me know your preference, and whether or not you would even pay attention either of those.

Be honest. It has to be something most of you would keep up with so that I can use that one method to communicate with nearly everyone and tag the rest in a page comment here. The group in particular could be of long-term use to us, I think.

And thank you all. I try and thank you often, but I feel as though I don’t do it enough.