Clickfire.com rebranded as a news and reviews site for bloggers. This represents a draft of the guidelines communicated to writers. Some of the ideas here are a bit unorthodox but I think ahead of the pack as they really speak to the character of Clickfire right at the moment social media was on the verge of exploding into the mainstream.

1. Clickfire.com News Guidelines
Clickfire rebranded as a daily news and reviews source for bloggers featuring:
•Original investigative stories
•Sourced stories that are taken to another level with additional sources,
information or twisting of the title
•Reviews of online products
Who is the Audience?
•Primary audience - blog and website owners, social media powerusers
•Secondary audience - large general masses of web news consumers who
wouldn’t normally visit Clickfire.com but saw an interesting title and clicked-
through.

2. What are the Basic Requirements for News?
•Stories and especially the titles should be offbeat or outside the norm in
some way
•Contain a shock element that incites readers to take an action (leave a
comment, share, subscribe, sit there and shake their head, throw something,
etc).
•On topic - usually a story merges topics of interest to Clickfire.com audience

3. What’s the Format of the News Stories?
•Titles are extremely important. Reword or create a title to make it provoke the
reader that will increase clickhthroughs. Examples:
•Bad title: Wikimedia Corporate Donors Page Draws Interest from SEO
Community
•Good title: Wikipedia Caught Selling Google Juice
•Bad title: Yahoo CEO, Carol Bartz Fired
•Good title: World’s Most Overpaid CEO Fired Over the Phone
•Bad title: Google Phases out Several Projects
•Good title: 5 Google Products you thought would never Die
•Body – Report on something that is just breaking and find a new twist or
aspect that readers hadn’t heard that makes them think about it in a different
way. Write concise copy for users, clever or witty or sarcastic.
•No set length. Each news story is typically 200 – 400 words. Shorter ones can
consist of as little as one very informative, funny, absurd or interesting pic with
one paragraph as a description. Longer stories typically include multiple
sources, links to authoritative source sites.
•Include an image or video (extremely relevant, funny, hand drawn, marked-up
screen cap, etc) 525px width.

4. What kind of Images or Video should be Included?
No boring images - Need to have a humorous, absurd,
offbeat, subliminal or twisted message. Examples:
Free image sources you can use are Insights plugin in Clickfire WordPress,
sxc.hu and morguefile.com. Photoshop them or draw a simple image.

5. Examples of Good Story Topics
•'Hacktivist for good' claims WikiLeaks takedown
•Interpol puts Assange on most-wanted list
•Blogger released from Egyptian jail after four years
•Libya Not Taking the Internet Light.LY
•Brits use SEO strategies to fight terrorism
•Anti Chick-fil-A Foursquare Users Spam Local Restaurants
What kind of titles would you assign to these stories?
How would you elaborate or combine them with other news?

6. What Topics Should I use for my Clickfire News Story?
Conservative,
Family-friendly,
Offbeat
SEO Hosting
Terrorism Obama Etc
Wikileaks Etc
All-encompassing themes
Large General Interest Topics
Small Clickfire Topics
(News about Websites)
Blend topics to get results.

7. Example of “blending” Topics to form a Great Story
Conservative, Family-friendly, Offbeat
SEO Hosting
Defense Obama Etc
Wikileaks Etc
All-encompassing themes
Large General Interest Topics
(Often political)
Small Clickfire Topics
(News about Websites)
Whitehouse.org Hacked by SEO Terrorists
This ideal example intersects multiple topics

8. Ideas for Investigative Stories
The “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World” link is
broken on the Solyndra.com page. Could there be story here?
http://www.solyndra.com/about-us/awards/
AttackWatch.com has to be doing something wrong or scary.
http://www.huliq.com/10280/most-dangerous-website-
officially-ushers-orwell%E2%80%99s-nightmare
Is there a new Pita site that’s trying to grab our attention and
failing?
Are there paper tigers or pontificators on the web teetering on
their high-horses?

9. Social Media
What happens after the news story is published?
Set up the shot for others to
promote the story to go viral on:
•Twitter
•StumbleUpon
•Facebook
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