Hey everyone,
This is Chris and Adrian from
The Hockey Zen. Over the past year, we've been working hard to grow our community through social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. We've been able to have some great discussions about what we love: hockey. We knew the online hockey community was a smart bunch, and that fact gets reinforced everytime we see you participating in the conversation via Twitter, blogs, and other forms of social media. Now we want you to join our team and share your hockey know how and show everyone what you got.
Thanks to the awesome folks over at Posterous, this will be the destination for our community-powered blog. Here you'll be able to submit original work, such as traditional text posts, and multimedia such as videos, photos, and more. It can be hot news, rumours, educational, and it can be anything that you think will benefit our hockey community.
Questions that may be popping in your head:
Q: How can I submit content?
Here's more details on posting different types of content via email:
Submitting a text post: Just type away. If you use Gmail or any email program with a WYSIWYG editor, you can include links and pictures just as if you were writing a blog post.
Including pictures (like pics from a game you attended): Just attach or embed the images to your email. The Hip Check automatically creates a slideshow gallery.
Including video: The Hip Check supports several popular video sites such as Youtube, Google Video, Vimeo, Omnisio, Hulu, Brightcove, Viddler, Fliggo, Ted, Dailymotion, Mixwit and JustinTV. Submitting a video(s) via email to the blog is as simple as including the direct video link. No pesky embedding.
Tagging your posts: You can add tags to your submission entering them in the subject line of your email. You need to use the following syntax: ((tag: example, Montreal Canadiens)).
For any content you contribute, please include a very brief, one sentence bio at the end. You can mention what you do, and include a link to your blog, Twitter feed, or something else.
Q: Is email the only way to contribute?
A: As the blog evolves, we'll identify community members to be "regular contributors," who will be featured. But the primary method for submissions will be via email.
Q: Can we comment on user submissions?
A: Absolutely. We encourage vibrant conversation around the content that will be submitted here. You'll also have the option of syndicating your comments to your Twitter or Facebook profiles for even more exposure.
Q: Will my submission be posted immediately?
A: All submissions go into a moderation queue first. We'll maintain some editorial oversight and responsibilities for submissions. We want to maintain a steady but manageable stream of content for the community, so depending on the number of submissions in queue, we'll decide when it's best for a post to go live. But generally, acceptable submissions should be posted within a day.
IMPORTANT: Please leave a contact email in the body of your submission (at the end is fine) in case we need to contact you (it will not appear in the published post).If you're on Twitter, please include your handle in the subject so we can include if we tweet your post on
@thehockeyzen.
Q: What kind of stuff shouldn't I submit?
A: The goal of this blog is to feature content that provides utility to the community. So anything that's overly self-promotional or has a distinct marketing tone should not be submitted. As noted before however, you are encouraged to include a one sentence bio at the end of your submissions that can include links to a blog or social media profile, business, etc. Make sure you include links in your bio so others can easily discover you.
PS:
Q. What if you have an iPhone?
A. Yes, you can send post via your iPhone. Since you can post to The Hip Check via email, you don't even really have to install an app to get going. Just send an email to
post@thehipcheck.posterous.com from your iPhone. You can attach photos, audio, even video. We'll put it all online instantly.
Posting multiple photos : The iPhone lets you email a photo from within the Camera or Photos apps. If you are running iPhone 3.0 software, you can email multiple photos to the site at once, and get an image gallery. From within the Photo Library, click the "Share" icon in the lower left corner of the iPhone screen. Then select up to 5 photos. A checkmark will appear on photos you have selected. Then click "Share" in the lower left corner to email them to The Hip Check.
Posting video: If you have an iPhone 3GS, you can post video directly from the phone to The Hip Check. When viewing a video, just click "Share", then email it to
thehipcheck@thehockeyzen.com. The video will get converted for the web and published to your site instantly.
Posting voice notes: iPhone 3.0 includes the Voice Memos application, which lets you record audio using the iPhone microphone. To publish those clips to the site, just click "Share", then address the email to
post@thehipcheck.posterous.com We'll turn the file into an mp3 and put a player on your site.
We'll add more FAQs as this blog evolves.
We also want your suggestions for how this project can flourish. Leave your feedback in the comments, or send us a tweet.
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