So you wanna be a homepage hero

There you are, surfing the internet, and you finally find it. That great story, the one that makes you laugh/cry/cheer. You want to share it with all your friends and post it to Current.com—but how to make your item stand out from the crowd?

Here are some tips to help you make your posts to Current even more eye-catching.

1) Give it a catchy title

The title is the first thing people are going to look at, so make sure yours is a good one. You want to give enough information to lure someone in, but you don’t want to tell the entire story. Something short and witty that sums up the story is always good. (And we won’t turn down a good pop culture reference either.)

2) Find the best link

Let’s face it, the Internet is repetitive, and you’ll often find the same story posted a lot of places. Check around to see if there are different or more complete versions of the story you’re linking to; sure, a short story pulled from a newsfeed is great, but an in-depth piece from a local paper is even better. Some of the places we look for breaking news are CNN http://www.cnn.com/ and NPR http://www.npr.org/. If you have other great sources for breaking news, share them in the comments!

3) Did someone already add this?

Do a quick search on Current.com to see if anyone else has already clipped a version of the story, especially if it's a popular news item. Let's face it, 20 stories in a row about the same thing would be pretty boring. If someone has already added a version of the story, but your link has new or better information, try adding it as a comment on the original item instead.

4) A picture is worth a thousand words

Make sure you’re using the best image to go with your item. If the image that is selected automatically isn’t the one you want, use the “choose other media” link under the preview image to browse for more, or add an image from elsewhere on the web. If you’re adding a video, make sure you have the image that shows the player selected. Can’t find an image? Flickr is a great source for images that are available to use under the Creative Commons License. Find Flickr Creative Commons here: http://flickr.com/creativecommons/

5) What makes this interesting?

That’s what we want to know! Don’t just copy and paste the entire article; sure, that tells us what’s going on, but it doesn’t tell us why you think it should be on Current. Instead, summarize or quote the most interesting parts and then let us know what you think about it.

6) Tag it!

A great way to get your story seen is by adding topic tags—but choose wisely. Add as many relevant topics as you can think of, but resist the temptation to add topics just because they’re popular. Make sure that the topics really are related to the story, and be as specific as you can. Something like news is a pretty big topic, so you might want to consider adding more tags—is it entertainment news? International news? Politics? Just make sure the topics apply; no one wants to find the entertainment topic cluttered up with science news, or to head over to the WTF topic looking for something bizarre only to find endless stories on politics. Add topics wisely!

So, what are you waiting for? Go out and start clipping!

Photo by Randy Son of Robert http://flickr.com/photos/randysonofrobert/1154746963/