Propeller – How To Submit A New Story

by John R. SedivycloseAuthor: John R. Sedivy Name: John R. Sedivy
Email: john@capecodbranding.com
Site: http://www.capecodbranding.com
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As a follow up to my tutorial, “Propeller – How To Create An Account” I am going to provide further instruction in the form of how to submit content to Propeller. I am currently working my way though Steve Pavlina’s past content on his blog “Personal Development For Smart People”, and read a great article called “Read A Book A Week”. In the past I have read quite a bit but it wasn’t until the past year or so that I adopted this habit of reading a book a week. The message in his article was consistent with my experience – although he has been at it for over a decade – much longer than I!

In any case I thought that this was a great time to try out Propeller and submit Steve’s article to that site as I would like to share it with others and it had not been previously submitted.

Submitting An Article
Here is the quick step by step process for submitting an article to Propeller. Note that in Propeller-speak an article is referred to as a “story”. In addition, I have highlighted areas of interest in green on the provided figures. Other than that the process is straightforward and similar to other social bookmarking sites such as “Digg”. See detailed instructions for submitting an article (story) below:

1. Access the Propeller “Front Page” by clicking here.
2. Click “Submit” which is highlighted in green in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Propeller Front Page

3. Copy the link that you would like to “propel” from your Internet browser and paste this link into the URL box as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Propeller Story URL Entry

4. Next select the “Story Title” and enter a “Story Description” as shown in Figure 3. The article I had submitted, “Read a Book a Week” was one of the default options, so I had selected it. If that option is not available for your article enter the article title in the blank space. The same goes for the “Story Description” the default may or may not be correct. Mine was not so I had to delete the default and add a custom description.

Figure 3. Story Title & Story Description Entry

5. Next enter the “User Tags and “Story Category” for your submitted article as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4. User Tags & Story Category Entry

6. “Select a Photo” as shown in Figure 5. In my instance there was not an appropriate photo so I selected “No Photo”. Next select “Preview Story”.

Figure 5. Select A Photo Entry

7. Next preview your article to be submitted. If additional changes are required then select “Edit”, if not select “Approve and Submit” as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Check Out Your Preview & Approve

8. Verify that you receive the “Thanks For Submitting!” message as shown in Figure 7. From here you can “View your story now”, “Submit another story”, or return “Back to the Homepage”.

Figure 7. Story Submission Confirmation

9. Lastly, there is an option to share your submitted story with the “Share With The World” function as shown below in Figure 8. This is an optional step but should you desire to do so, first enter a default message to the recipients. Next enter up to 25 e-mail addresses of individuals you would like to share your story with.

Figure 8. Share With The World

That’s all there is to it; you have now submitted your story to Propeller! A quick note on my user experience with Propeller. In my last article on Propeller I had discussed how Propeller was supposed to be the “cleaner” alternative to Digg. The main difference being that Propeller is moderated by a team, whereas Digg is essentially a free-for-all. Based on my initial assessment I continue to find Propeller to be a “cleaner” experience than its social bookmarking alternatives. Some of the other features such as self-populating fields seem to be a bit more intelligent as well, but there is room for improvement. As I use the site more I will provide additional information in the future.

Submitting new articles to Propeller is quick and easy!

-John R. Sedivy of Cape Cod Branding

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