Goal:
Setting up a clear set of editorial guidelines guest bloggers can follow when they want to submit articles to your site.
Ideal Outcome:
Anyone who wants to publish guest articles on your site will know how to adapt them to your site’s style, your business goals, and your target audience.
Prerequisites or requirements:
You need a blog section on your website, or even a stand-alone blog. Furthermore, you will also need an email address – If you don’t have an email address based on your domain name, check out SOP 048 (web version) to learn how to do it.
Why this is important:
You want all content published on your website to be homogenous and fully aligned with your business goals. Setting up clear editorial guidelines for guest bloggers will help you achieve this.
Where this is done:
We have also created a template you can use when creating the editorial guidelines. If you feel more comfortable, you can always use a word processor (such as Google Docs) to create the guidelines. Once you have drafted them, you can upload the editorial guidelines to the desired page on your website.
When is this done:
Preferably, before you start accepting guest article submissions.
Who does this:
You, your VA, your Content Manager/ Strategist
Creating the guest blogging guidelines
Open the Editorial Guidelines Template by clicking here, and add your own details, according to the steps below:
Your website objective: Set your objectives. Allowing your potential guest article writers to know what your objectives are will help them submit the exact type of articles you and your website need. For example, your objectives may be related to the sales funnel stage you want to emphasize:
If you want to target users when they are at the top of the funnel, your blog posts’ objective will be attracting more visitors.
If users have already landed on your website, but they are not engaged with it, you might want to focus on the middle of the funnel and set up lead generation as an objective for your blog articles.
If you already have plenty of leads, but they are not converting into buyers, you will want to emphasize the bottom of the funnel - ergo, your blog posts will be used to convert the leads.
If you already have clients you simply want to monetize or retain, you will want your blog articles to focus on educating the users.
Example: Our website’s main purpose is attracting new users interested in purchasing custom emojis. Therefore, most of our articles emphasize the advantages of new emojis, new emoji technologies, and custom emojis.
Topics: Talk about the topics you cover and/or the topics your guest articles should approach. Sometimes, even if your website is about a larger topic (e.g. digital marketing), you may only want to accept guest articles on niche subjects (e.g. SEO, because that is not your specialty and you would want to publish articles written by someone whose expertise is in this particular field).
Example: We mostly discuss emojis here, but you will sometimes see us approaching other topics as well - such as digital marketing-related topics that connect to the entire emoji industry.
Target Audience: Talk about your target audience. Who are your readers? What do they do? Why are they reading your articles? What value does your website provide to them? Allowing your guest authors to know all of this will help them craft articles that truly suit your target audience and attract visitors who fit your buyer’s persona.
Example: Our audience is extremely enthusiastic about emojis and their design process, they love to know more about the most-up-to-date emoji-design techniques and tools - so we try to make our website a hub of knowledge in the vast, fascinating, and endearing field of emoji creation.
Submission Process: Explain the submission process. Tell your potential guest bloggers about your selection process, how much it usually takes for articles to get published (from the moment they are submitted), and so on. This helps guest authors establish a timeline (and thus, they will know when to expect meeting every step of the submission process). In general, simply asking for the articles tends to work best with most websites that are not very large publications. You can do this by:
Asking for articles to be submitted to a custom email address (e.g: submissions@asiteaboutemojis.com).
Asking for articles to be submitted through a form on your website
Example: Submit your articles at hello@asiteaboutemojis.com. We will review them within two weeks and send you our feedback. We always reply, regardless of whether or not we decide to publish your article - but if you haven’t heard back from us in two weeks’ time, drop us a follow-up and we’ll send you an update. Sometimes, things can get quite busy here in emoji-land :).
Link Policy: Talk about your link policy. Do you allow external links in the content or just in the Author bio. And if you allow them, are they dofollow or nofollow? This is a very important element to add to your editorial guidelines for guest bloggers, since it will help them use the right approach to adding links in their articles. Moreover, if you don’t allow links of any kind, guest authors will automatically know they cannot reap SEO link-building advantages from publishing on your site.
Example: We do not allow external links to other businesses in the actual article. However, you should absolutely hyperlink any source of information that supports your article, offers more information, or simply provides readers with data drawn from surveys, studies, and so on. Also, please keep in mind all links will be no-follow.
On-page SEO: Talk about SEO. You may not want to ask your guest authors to optimize the texts they send to you (as some of them may not know how to do this). However, do let them know you might edit their texts yourself to be better optimized for the search engines.
Example: We try to attract as many visitors to our site as we can - and for this reason, our articles are always optimized for the search engines. You don’t have to worry about that, though - send us your article as it is and focus more on the quality and relevance of the content, rather than making it Search Engine Optimized. We’ll take care of that during our editorial process - so yes, you might notice slight changes in the published form of the article you send to us.
Pictures: Talk about the pictures associated with the guest articles you will publish. Do you want guest authors to send them together with their articles or will you select them yourself? Moreover, if guest bloggers submit the pictures themselves, what type of license should they have (Creative Commons, Creative Commons with Commercial Use, etc.).
Example: You don’t have to worry about pictures - we have our own database of pictures to use.
Style and formatting rules: Offer style and formatting rules. If you are very particular about the style and formatting rules your guest articles should, be sure to add this in your editorial guidelines. Some of the things you could include here are:
-
- Capitalization rules (e.g. do you want headline words to be capitalized?)
- Tone (Friendly and casual? Very formal? Friendly, but with a focus on a B2B audience?)
- Profanity (are you OK with articles using profanity language, or would you much rather keep it clean?)
- Citations (if articles will be citing academic sources, do you want them to use a particular style - such as APA, MLA, etc.?)
Example: No particular formatting rules here - we’ll edit your article to suit our blog article formats. However, we are very particular about the academic sources you may cite - if you need to use such citations, make sure to reference them using the APA style. We like to keep our emoji knowledge-sharing fair for the scientific community :). Also, try to avoid profanity language - as Millennial as our target audience may be, some of them might feel offended if you use curse words or language that triggers their personal, religious, or ethnic sensitivities.
Article length: Specify the desired length of the article. Some websites only accept long-form articles, while others accept only short blog articles - decide where you stand on this and share the information on your editorial guidelines.
Example: We like offering real value to our readers - and for this reason, we insist on receiving articles that are no shorter than 700 words. At the same time, it is probably best to keep your submission under 2000 words as well - but if you really feel the extra words would add even more value, go ahead and make your articles as long as you think it’s appropriate.
Re-posting policy: Talk about your re-posting policy. Do you accept articles that have been posted elsewhere, or do they have to be 100% original? On the one hand, accepting re-posts is not great for your SEO, as it will probably be considered duplicate content. On the other hand, if it offers value to your readers, it might work out well for you. Decide which option is best in your case and talk about it in your editorial guidelines.
Example: We do not accept articles that have been published anywhere else, not even on your personal website.
Payment options: Talk about payment options. Will this be a paid article? If so, how will it be paid - via a fixed rate, or based on performance (shares, likes, views, how many people click on the ads associated with the article, and so on)? If you don’t pay guest bloggers for their submissions, be sure to specify this in the editorial guidelines (along with other, non-financial benefits of submitting articles to your website).
Example: At this point, we cannot compensate our guest authors with money. However, you should know our website is read by an average of 2,300 users every day - so if you are looking to expand your horizon, attract more users to your own website, or simply make a name for yourself, you are more than welcomed to submit your article with us.
Bio / Headshot: Ask for a Bio and headshot. This is an optional step, according to the format and layout you want these guest articles to have. However, guest authors tend to appreciate having a Bio section, since it will help them gain more notoriety. Also, allowing them to add a link to the Bio section can offer them some link-building benefits as well.
Example: When you submit the article, please submit a short (100 words max) Bio and a headshot. Yes, you can use one link to your website in your Bio - but, same as all the other links, this too will be a no-follow :).
Copyright issues: Talk about copyright-related issues. Will you allow guest bloggers to publish the articles on other sites as well (entirely or just fragments, linking back to your site as the source)? Who will own the copyright to the articles? Also, what happens if you discover all or parts of their articles are copied from other sites - will you just notify the authors, or will you go to the full extent and notify those websites as well? It’s always good to have good ethics when it comes to online content - especially since it can be so easily stolen.If we discover you have copied anything from another website, we will automatically reject your submission - but the good news is that you will probably hear about this in much less than two weeks, as plagiarism is the first thing we check for when we receive guest author submissions.
Example: Not only will we not accept re-posts on our website, but we are very specific about the rights you will own once the article is published here as well. In particular, you will be allowed to use your article for your portfolio, and the article will definitely be associated with your name. However, do not re-post the article once it’s been published on “A Site about Emojis”. You risk your site’s SEO and ours too.
Resources: Provide resources to help your guest authors make their content even more amazing:
Give examples of the type of headlines you want. Do you want your headlines to be more like those of BuzzSumo? Or maybe more like those of UpWorthy? Or, perhaps, you would like your headlines to be simpler? Guide your guest bloggers through the headline style you want from them. Also, offer them any tools that might help them craft the perfect headlines you are looking for.
Example: Focus on creating engaging, click-worthy headlines- but, at the same time, make sure they are not click-bait. For inspiration, look at sites like BuzzSumo and check out their headlines. Also, if you are looking for an automated tool to guide you in the headline-creation process,try this one. It’s an automated tool, so tread lightly and keep your common sense in your back pocket - no matter how cool an automated tool may be, we’re still very far from functional Artificial Intelligence capable of reading texts exactly as a human would.
Give examples of the type of articles you want. Do you have a favorite website you always follow and love their style and the information provided on it? Share it with your potential guest bloggers - they’ll be happy to check it out and make sure they align their writing with the style you aim for.
Example: We love reading articles on BuzzSumo, Search Engine Land, and other similar websites - so we’d be more than happy to see you are inspired by them and write your articles in a style that would suit the websites we follow.
Give examples of successful articles on your site. Do you have articles that have performed very well in the past? Don’t be afraid to share them with your guest authors - again, it will help them submit articles that are more in line with what you are searching for.
Example: If you are looking for inspiration on our website, our Boring Page is Boring article performed (and continues to perform) very well. Check it out!
