Aug 9, 2012 / Posts We Loved

What Makes a Post Freshly Press-able? Literature and Libation

Every day, 19 WordPressers are featured on the Freshly Pressed section of WordPress.com. And every day, many more wonder, “What do I have to do to get Freshly Pressed?”

Well, it’s time to reveal what the folks who push the launch button are thinking. Each week, a member of our editorial team will do a close-up on one post and why we thought it was Press-worthy. We hope we can provide insight into the process and give you tips and tools to make your blog the best it can be.
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Before we delve into today’s post, there are a few preliminaries to get out of the way:

  1. We don’t actually get to push a launch button, although that would be awesome.
  2. There are half a million of you and a handful of us, and we’re scouring the blogosphere day in and day out. If we don’t find you, it’s nothing personal – promise. Keep writing, and we’ll keep looking.
  3. We’re real people with different perspectives and tastes, so we’re drawn to different content. And we love feedback, so if a Freshly Pressed post feels really off-base to you, let us know!
  4. We do not accept bribes, although that may just be because no one has offered us enough gold bullion… yet.

Last week, Oliver at Literature and Libation made it to Freshly Pressed with Craft and Draft: Character Counts. If you haven’t wandered over there to read it, you should remedy that immediately (especially if you’re a fiction writer).

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

There are lots of reasons to love this post, but the big three are:

  • The content was informative and entertaining.

Two-Headed Humanioid PirateLots of Freshly Pressed readers are themselves writers, and we thought this post – a tutorial on the mechanics of character development, with homemade Lego illustrations – would speak to you. The figures morphed as the easy-to-follow post took us though each step of the character creation, refinement and revision process.

The accompanying commentary was clear, well written, and made us laugh hard enough to shoot coffee out of our collective nose. On his newly-born character, left, he writes:

I mean, it is kind of identifiable as some sort of humanoid, but there are some major problems here. One: his period-inappropriate tri-corn hat is on fire. Two: He has two heads, one of which is completely black and has no face…

This is an extreme example, but my point remains. It is very difficult to properly build your character the first time around. He’s going to come out with conflicting motivations, bad dialogue, missing limbs, and possibly even a flaming hat.

See what we mean?

  • The photos were genius and filled out the content.

Many posts can benefit from an image; they add another layer of texture to your words. Photos also help break up a longer post, and are useful for clarifying complex or intangible points. Oliver’s Lego shots took the potentially ephemeral process of developing a fictional character and grounded it in something nearly all of us can identify. Plus, they were cute as heck.

  • The organization and layout made reading easy.

Reading dense blocks of text is difficult enough on the printed page, and even more so on a screen. Smaller paragraphs help readers scan more easily, while headings make a longer post digestible and keep readers from getting lost in your content.

Oliver took full advantage of both guidelines. Paragraphs were short and focused on a single point. Headings broke the process down into four discrete components.

What did you think of this pick? Will you be reading along with Craft and Draft?

For another glimpse into what makes for great Freshly Pressed content, check out the roundup of July’s top 10 posts over at the News Blog or read So You Want to Be Freshly Pressed?

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  1. I’ve always thought FP blogs was very randomly picked…and this post doesn’t convince me fully…yet! So I do look around for blogs to follow on my own though…through specific tags etc. In a way making my own FP list I guess 🙂

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  4. Out of over 600 FB friends, only 1 friend blogs regularly (my brother, on WP, too) and a few more sporadically. So, I go to Freshly Pressed to read some good articles. Thank you for the time and effort. I don’t have to search for good blogs myself. You already pick the best ones.

    I still wish I could be FP’ed someday.

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  7. Thank you for your post.
    Whereas what you mention is true for the English version of WordPress (I’ve found loooads of good blogs through FP) it is certainly not the case for the Spanish one. The FP tend to be the same bunch of bloggers every week. What is more, I only found once a good post through the Spanish FP. Since then, this blog gets FP every single week even if their posts are not as good as that one (in my humble opinion). I know this is a matter of taste but when I compare the English-language FP posts and the Spanish ones I can’t help thinking that somebody is not following the rules. Unless non-English posts have different ones, of course! 🙂
    I just would like that the FP in Spanish shows posts as good as the English version does. Is that asking for too much? Quality is there. I’ve seen it!

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    1. Unfortunately, we aren’t able to give Spanish-language posts the same kind of individual attention – yet. So the process there *is* a bit different, and much more dependent on statistics. Creating an engaging non-English FP experience is definitely on the to-do list.

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      1. I can understand that but it would be nice to see different blogs being FP since it’s always the same ones. Glad to read this will change at some point though… hopefully, if the item is not too low on WordPress to-do list haha.
        Thanks for the reply.
        Happy Friday!

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  8. FP or not, I don’t think it’s physically possible for a ‘handful of real people’ to go through what half a million bloggers write every single day, so yea..I’d say a fantastic job indeed by your team 🙂 On an average, I do enjoy reading at least 16 of the FP articles. Thanks peeps!

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  13. All I think of when I read “Freshly Pressed” is the line “and the napkins freshly pressed..”
    I then proceed to sing the entire song list of Beauty and the Best as theatrically as possible.
    Inside my head, anyway.

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  14. I don’t think people should worry to much about being FP’d, I was a year ago and it was thrilling for that night but that dies down fairly quickly and of the new followers I received as a result most of their blogs are defunct now, and probably only a few stuck around and contribute from being up there.

    You’ll garner more success from following blogs you like and engaging in conversation with them and building up rapports and friendships and it’ll grow from there as you follow the trail of their followers and reach other great writers through them and so on. It’s far nicer to have the regular contributors to exchange great banter with than have passing strangers saying “great post, thanks for sharing” never to be seen again. Then you know people really are interested in what you are blogging about.

    Or maybe that is just my experience, no one chose to stick around 😉

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  15. There are some posts on FP which make me think how did that happen? But maybe it’s to do with personal taste? Several of the same/similar subjects seem to come up though quite often.

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  16. Helpful to have your thoughts about what makes a post Freshly-Pressable. Of course, we’d all love to be FP’d and it’s a great way to find new blogs to follow. But I also agree with those who say you should focus on blogging about what you like (and hopefully what your readers like) and finding other blogs with which you have a rapport. Then being FP’d is the icing on the cake. Speaking of cakes, would double chocolate mousse cake do it for you? Gold bullion is in short supply here.

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  19. I am glad to learn some of the criteria used to determine how a post gets Freshly Pressed. I’ve been at this a little more than a year and having a great time. I’ve done a couple of posts about WordPress “buttons” I’d like to see and “This Was Freshly Pressed?” always gets the most comments. I have to admit I often cannot see merit in some of the choices.

    I am infinitely delighted to see more posts about writing/blogging recently, or maybe I am imagining a shift?

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  21. My blog is very dense, so the reminder to use pictures and headings is timely for me. Can you use “anchors” in blogs? For example, at the top you have topic titles (Directors Process, Directing in NYC, First Gig, etc) and then people click on that to get directly to that section? And thank you, thank you – I love Freshly Pressed. Though I will admit to being stymied by it’s power to suck me in and remove hours from my day!

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    1. Cat,

      If you check out my page, you’ll see that my theme has two of those types of navigation bars. One links to my post categories (literature, libation, writing, etc.) the other links to my pages (beer fridge, home, me?). If you click on “Libation” for example, it will go to all of my beer reviews, as I have tagged them as such.

      I think it is highly dependent on the theme you are using. I upgraded my WordPress to be able to edit my CSS and was able to tweak some things which helped tremendously. This is pretty technical, but if you’re confident you can get a crash course at: http://www.w3schools.com/css/

      It looks like your pages display on the left navigation bar of your site. You might want to look for a theme that includes category navigation. Then you can just put each post in the correct category, and your readers can click a link to get all of the posts from that section.

      Just a thought. Wrestling with themes and navigation is both fun and vexing. Feel free to send me a message if you’ve got specific questions.

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      1. Thank you very much for taking the time to reply, Oliver. I do have categories set up, but not an “in post” navigation. I’ll check out your blog and then message you with questions. Thanks again for taking the time to help a “newbie!”

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  23. I’ve been blogging for a few years now but then went into a drought…just started up again and am still trying to garner a substantial audience. I’d love to be FP’d but I relaize that it will take time. To those of you who are in the same boat as me…relax, your turn will come!!! This post was an extremely helpful article and hopefully we can all absorb their “criteria” within our blogs!!!

    Happy Blogging!!!

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  24. Interesting post and I’ve enjoyed reading the comments! No idea if I will eventually be freshly pressed but in a way it might be quite alarming to go from being a little-known blogger to someone who is being bombarded by likes and comments. I would definitely like to be considered worth of FP status, though 🙂

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  25. Great suggestions! Would getting freshly pressed get me any CALORIES burned? :). I’m brand new here and limping along…but finding wonderful blogs for support in my long journey of getting healthier and stronger. My goal for coming to this blog world was just to try and possibly help others through my long journey. Who knew I would end benefiting, too? Thanks.

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    1. If you try to keep up with all the comments on your blog, you’ll probably burn a few hundred calories just from typing alone! Just keep at it. Persistence pays off.

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      2. Interesting…typing is a critical form or cardio for me as well. (It probably still doesn’t justify the all cookies, but that’s a personal problem. Damn you, delicious cookies!)

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  26. These really are great tips. Thank you for sharing some insight! Being Freshly Pressed is quite the achievement – one a lot of us hope to get. Being picked out of a very large crowd is not an easy feat. 🙂

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  27. I’d just add that being freshly-pressed is great, but it’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t happen! You can build a solid following simply by interacting with people who share your interests. I wrote a single post in March but then started writing more consistently since April and I’m just under 40,000 hits even though I’ve never been freshly pressed. I’m not sure how that figure compares to other people, but to me it seems enormous as the population of the town I live in is only 15,000 😀

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    1. A big “yes” to this – being an active part of the community (linking to others, commenting, etc) is key to building an engaged readership that stays with you.

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