Thanks for your interest in writing a blog post for my website POWERtoLiveMore.com. Here are some guidelines to help you when putting the article together but please do email me if you have any other questions or need something clarified.
Audience Profile
Most of the readers of my website are home based coaches and consultants. They are interested in being more effective and productive to give them more time to do the things that they want to do. They want an integrated personal and work life that suits them and means that they love what they do all the time.
They are looking for help with their productivity, organisation, wellbeing, energy and resilience.
Blog Post Length
Please aim for a minimum length of 1,000 words. The blog content is there to educate and give our readers ‘meaty’ content in the most part.
Style
Most online readers are skimmers. Please remember this and write accordingly using:
- Short sentences
- Short paragraphs
- Headings – main and sub
- Bold for key text
- Italics for emphasis
- Bullet points
- Images
Search Engine Optimisation
I will edit your post to ensure the SEO is optimised but please bear these points in mind.
- Determine before you begin the keyword phrase that you want to optimise the post for (please put this in the accompanying email so that I am aware)
- Use the keyword phrase in your title & headings if appropriate and within the body of the content and ideally in the first and last sentence of the post. Don’t be a slave to this as Google doesn’t like that anyway!
- Use internal linking – wherever possible please try to cross reference your post with one that already exists on my site and preferably using the keyword phrase as the hyperlink. It’s great for SEO and also gives our readers further relevant content
- Use external linking – please link to outside references and use appropriate linking text to do so (again preferably using your keyword phrase). Please use this format to indicate the hyperlink – Jo Dodds [link to https://twitter.com/powertolivemore] is the founder of POWER to Live More.
Images
Please supply at least one appropriate image, to be used at the beginning of the blog post, attached to the email.
Please try to avoid clipart and ensure that you have permission to use the image. You can use Flickr images that have the Creative Commons License (in which case I need the image to be attached to your email as well as a link to the image on Flickr that we can use for the link).
I mostly use Unsplash in which case I like to reference them using the code they supply when you download the image; so please do send that through.
Quotes
Please try to quote people to enhance your blog post. Ensure that you include the reference for the quote.
Video
You may use video in your post, or as your post, in which case please send the embed code from YouTube/Vimeo etc. Please also send a written précis / intro that we can use on the site before the video.
Call to Action
End your blog post with an engaging call to action, usually in the form of a question to encourage our blog readers to join in the discussion about the topic of the blog, e.g. ‘what are your thoughts about this?’ Or ‘Please add your comments to this article’.
Resource Box
Please supply details for a resource box in the following format:
[your company or name] helps customers to [what is the transformation that they get] by [how you do it] [Weblink – including the anchor text that you want me to use, e.g. ‘How to Use Facebook’ could be the anchor text with a link to your website or a page on your website with that information]
…or something similar. This isn’t set in stone; I just want to make sure that you are getting some credit and a useful link back to your site!
Thank you!