Guest Blogging Guidelines

Thanks for your interest in writing for the Shareaholic blog! We have high standards for content, which is probably why you’d like to post with us. This could be the beginning of your internet fame—the Shareaholic community includes more than 300,000 publishers who reach more than 400 million people each month.

And that’s not counting our social networks: you can count on over 250,000 social media followers from Facebook and Twitter knowing about your post. So get pumped!

Before you start writing your post for the Shareaholic, be sure you’re familiar with our audience and guest blogging process—we will prompt you to revisit these guidelines if it’s clear you haven’t read them.

ABOUT OUR BLOG

It’s kind of meta. We blog about blogging (oh, and content marketing, social media and native advertising). We try to make our blog be a resource for brands, businesses and publishers. We like to feature fresh insights with detailed and actionable takeaways around anything related to content marketing. We often talk about brainstorming, writing, promoting, optimizing, and monetizing your posts, but we’d love to hear your new ideas.

To give you a better idea of the content we’re looking for, here are some of the posts that have done well on our blog:

**This is one of the best guest posts we’ve ever received. Definitely check it out to see what you should be doing!

We only accept original content that has not been published anywhere else before.

VOICE

We like to keep it casual on the blog. We always have intelligent content, but it is conversational and friendly. We want your voice and personality to shine in the writing while you teach our readers something new and interesting—isn’t that what blogging is all about?

POST FORMAT

Word count

Blog posts should be between 800 and 2,000 words. Strike a balance between being detailed and concise. Our readers love examples, screenshots and templates—be sure to include some tangible takeaways in your post. We’d rather have to reel you back in during our round of editing than have to have you go back to the drawing board.

Headlines

Always have shareable headlines. “How tos” and numbers work especially well to hook readers immediately. Pretend the headline is a tweet—how would you get your followers’ attention?

Layout

Break up your paragraphs with headings—we won’t publish a wall of text. Feel free to number the headings or bold them, as long as readers can easily skim your posts for key takeaways. Also use bold text to highlight important thoughts.

Linking

You will be given a 50 word bio at the bottom of your guest post in which you may include one (1) link back to your website.

You may link back to two (2) of your company’s blog posts or website in the post if it fits the context of your topic and enhances the lessons and message of your content. Blatant keyword stuffing won’t be published.

Photos

Include visually-compelling content with large photos placed in the center of the post between paragraphs (560px * 5600 px) or with medium sized photos placed in the top right hand corner in the beginning of a blog post (200px * 200 px). Always use Creative Commons and other copyright-safe sources. Be sure to match image file name to the keyword being targeted in headline.

Keywords

Follow the guide below from SEOmoz.

EDITORIAL PROCESS

  1. Let us know you’re interested. Shoot us a quick email with two (2) topics with outlines as well as three (3) links to other articles you have written. Please be detailed but concise so we can judge whether the topics will align with our blog.
  2. We will approve the idea. If the blog post ideas are not in line with our objectives but you have the right writing style, we will help brainstorm additional ideas.
  3. You write the post. Follow our editorial guidelines outlined above. Submit your post as a Word document in top-notch, ready-to-publish fashion. There should be absolutely no spelling errors, grammar errors or typos. Read it out loud to yourself and have a friend check it over as well. We will go over it once (1 time) and may send it back to you for one (1) round of corrections.
  4. We edit…if needed. We prefer not to edit your post—please make sure to be aware of the guidelines. If needed, we will make one round of edits and send back to you with commentary. If there are too many edits to be made, we will kindly suggest posting the post elsewhere.
  5. You make the edits. This is your final round of edits. Again, if we still do not feel the post is up to par with our other posts, you are free to post it elsewhere.
  6. You are an official Shareaholic Guest Blogger! Because you have properly written, edited and formatted your post, we will put your post on our blog. Sign up for a Gravatar account, send us the email you have associated with Gravatar, and you will be given a contributor profile for the Shareaholic blog. We can’t guarantee that you’ll be internet famous right away, but we are sure our readers will love it!

AFTER THE POST IS PUBLISHED

Comments

On the day your post is published, check back frequently and respond to comments you receive. Also be sure to monitor social media for conversations. Engage with our readers, and they will love you forever.

Reposting

Two (2) weeks after you submit your post to us you are free to republish the post you published on the Shareaholic blog as long as the canonical link points back to the original post on our site.

Excited? So are we. Let’s get started!