Tuesday, November 27, 2012

MasterDev C3: Prepare to be Blogged


The third installment of MasterDev (known as C3) is all about sharing your knowledge via an unique article,  formulated with the right words that draws the most attention/interest.

This challenge is an individual challenge, you will be responsible for your own destiny… Prepare to be Blogged!

Rules

The rules are simple:
  • The challenge begins upon receiving a go-ahead e-mail.
  • You need to write a blog post regarding ANY topic in the field of technology that you see fit.
  • After you published your post, it’s your responsibility to market it to everyone using whatever method you think will help – social media, e-mail etc.
  • This time, the challenge will be judged by the public:
    • Your score will be the number of unique views you get from your post.
    • As a bonus, any Google +1 clicks & total comments will be added to this score.
  • If you do not post your post on time, we will deduct 10 points… seriously!
  • Please be careful of plagiarism. This is no joke! Own your words.
  • Your article needs to be tagged with a "MasterDev" label (see below for how-to). We will only be taking the articles tagged with "MasterDev" as a label into account for scoring.

Challenge Reward

Your score is measured using the total page views, Google +1's & total comments in which will put you in a certain bracket. You get rewarded using the following brackets:
  1. Score with 201 or more - 30 points.
  2. Score with 151 to 200 - 20 points.
  3. Score with 51 to 150 - 10 points.
  4. Score with 20 to 50 - 5 points.
  5. The rest, each get 1 point for participation.

How to use Blogger

Please also read Blogging Guidelines For Dummies.

The first thing you must be able to do is open the Blogger web-site: blogger.com

If you already have access to the blog using your current GMail address, you can skip the following:
  1. You will be receiving an invite to contribute to our blog via e-mail.
  2. The message will contain a link, you have to click it to accept the invitation.
  3. You are required to sign-in with your GMail account. If you do not have one, you can also create one on the same page.
Upon log-in, you will be presented with something like the following:

To create a new post, click on the orange pencil button 


Finally you will notice the New Post screen:


Creating a Post

Start off by giving your article a title. Then, use the big white space under that as your playground. You can format your text, add images, etc.

It is always a good idea to start off your article with a good introduction (take away line). Always remember to insert a Jump Break right after your intro.

At any time you can click 'Save' to save your article as a draft copy. (Blogger also auto-saves it for you).

Get ready to publish

Once you are totally satisfied with your article and corrected all the delicious grammar :) you can add labels (or keywords) on your article to make it more visible in search engines. (Far right)

(Please remember to include the label "MasterDev" for the MasterDev C3 challenge! We will only be looking at posts tagged with this keyword)

When you're done, proceed to click the big orange Publish button and BOOM! Your article is live and published. The only thing to do now is to market your article by any creative means (social network, e-mail, word of mouth etc.) and wait for views & good feedback. 

You may also choose to schedule your publish for a certain date & time.

Good luck!

We will send out blog author invites to your Belay account (used upon MasterDev registration) for access, if you already have access (using your GMail) you can use your current credentials.

This challenge can be done remotely, so there is no need to attend a session. As a constraint, the onus is on you to make time and arrange Internet access to perform this challenge.

The winner of this challenge will be announced before the silly-season.

For additional help you can check out the Blogger Help Center

Good luck!



2 comments: