We have a lot of great writers at Royals Review, but we only represent a fraction of the viewpoints and experiences of Royals fans. That's why its important we also hear from you, the reader. The great benefit of this platform is that in addition to the wonderful interactions we get in the comments section (a far cry from what you might find say, in the comments section at the Kansas City Star), this site also gives any reader the ability to create their own articles called "Fanposts."
Yes, it is true that Fanposts used to have a much more prominent position visually at Royals Review before a SB Nation-wide site redesign. However, well-written Fanposts will certainly get promoted to the front page and even on our social media platforms. We get hundreds of thousands of views per month, plus our articles get picked up by Yahoo! News, so this platform is a great way to get exposure for any aspiring writer. One Fanpost on the failure rate of prospects by Scott McKinney still gets cited by Gammons Daily and ESPN. Most of our current writers, myself included, originally wrote Fanposts as readers before getting asked to join the writing staff.
Some of our more recent popular Fanposts include a satire on the Blue Jays being suspected of stealing sandwiches, a first-hand account of Royals Fantasy Camp, a prescient evaluation of Chris Young's chances in Toronto for the ALCS, and a breakdown of Dayton Moore's transactions.
So how do you write a Fanpost? Scroll down, and on the right-hand side you should see a link that says "Write a Fanpost." Or you can just click right here.
You should then see something like this.
Under "Title" give us your headline. Make it catchy, but concise. Try not to write an eye-rolling "Buzzfeed"-esque headline - (i.e. "Ten Royals prospects NOBODY is talking about, and you won't believe #4!") Try to make it clear what your article is about. Be funny, but not too cute.
Then, write your article! What should you write about? Anything! If you are into stats, then write about stats. If you want to scout some local players for the upcoming draft, that's great! If you just want to write about your own personal experience at a game, that would be wonderful. We prefer Royals-related articles, but it can be about baseball in general. We ask that you don't write about topics completely unrelated to baseball unless there is a good reason. A few tips:
- Don't use profanity in the headline. Profanity in the text is fine, but let's keep the front page PG-rated. Definitely don't use any pornographic images or anything NSFW.
- You can embed tweets, videos, and images in the HTML view. Just be conscious that lots of that stuff can cause loading issues for readers.
- Don't reprint entire copyrighted articles from other sites. A paragraph or two is fine if you add your own opinion or analysis to it, but Lee Judge worked hard on his column, so don't steal it. Only he can reprint it!
- Break your text up into paragraphs. You probably shouldn't have more than 3-4 sentences per paragraph. Capitalize and punctuate correctly. Spel corektly. Re-read your article at least once to ensure it makes sense. You can also hit the "Preview" button to make sure your article formats correctly if you have any graphs or images embedded.
- Be prepared for responses to your article. Not everyone will agree with you. That's okay. Be open to other viewpoints. Part of writing and putting yourself out there is having skin thick enough to withstand a sharp comment now and then. As the great bard of our time, Taylor Swift, once said, to "shake it off, shake it off."
Once you're done writing your article, you can select an image to use from our library of images, or you can use your own (make sure it is YOUR own, and not a copyrighted image you stole from Minda Haas like MLB did).
Voila! You have a Fanpost. Success and fame should be right around the corner.
What if you're not much of a writer, but you still like to share images, tweets, or videos about the Royals? You can use Fanshots. Remember where you saw the link to create a Fanpost? Fanshots is right under that. Or you can click here.
You will then see something like this:
If you want to share a tweet, use "Link". If you want to share a quote you saw in an article, use "Quote". If you want to share an image, get the image URL (it has to be hosted somewhere else), and copy and paste it. If you want to share a video, get the video embed code and use "Video." Fanshots won't work with some embedded video such as ESPN or Instagram, but it will work for Youtube or Vimeo.
Have any questions? Don't hesitate to ask. The Royals have inspired their fans to create amazing things over the last two years, and we want to enjoy as much of as we can. I hope you're able to use this amazing community and platform to enhance your Royals fandom and enjoy this weird little community we call home.