Curatti

Guest Blogging Guidelines: How We Compiled Ours

  • Andy Capaloff

    • All blogs that accept guest posts have some form of guest blogging guidelines. And all would-be guest bloggers have to navigate them. Ours have evolved slowly and will no doubt be changed more.

    A Little Background On Our Guest Blogging Guidelines

    A lot of the reason our guidelines are what they are is because I’m a particularly fussy Englishman.

    Us Brits fall largely into two groups when it comes to written English. There are those whose grammar and spelling fall some way below those of many people for whom English is a second language. (Newsflash: This goes for Americans also.) And there are those who throw fits every time someone writes ‘Your’ instead of ‘You’re’, or any of many other common errors.

    I’m not really one of the Grammar Police. But when it comes to posting on Curatti, I have to try to correct all of the mistakes. Actually, I’d far rather these were caught before posts are sent here. But nobody (except for Alice Elliott) is perfect, and typically, even two sets of eyes will miss some things.

    But I’ve seen things. There will be no naming or shaming here, but it can be shocking what some people will submit.

    How our Guest Blogging Guidelines Evolved

    I confess that I took some hints from other blogs before I started compiling our guidelines. But for the most part, they grew out of sheer frustration and disbelief at how people send in posts.

    The last thing I added followed this timeline:

    Hint: I’ve seen the advice given to would-be guest bloggers that they should make grand claims about their content. But we’ve had some amazing writers on here! And we follow some phenomenal writers, republishing some of their work. Don’t contact a blog with high-level contributors, and promise the world. And don’t over-promise on anything, ever! If you promise the world then delivering mind-numbing words that have been written thousands of times, do you think the person reading will see what you promised, or what you sent?

    What’s In a Name?

    We have a lovely, relatively new blogger from Ukraine, Anna Rud. She basically confirmed something that had been obvious to me for a long time. When people have names that sound foreign, many blogs will not respond to their outreach. Daft, of course, because the world has changed, and not everyone in the US or the UK has names as simple as Smith or Jones anymore!

    So what do they do? They take on Anglo names.

    I have wanted to say to people with prernatururally English sounding names, but who overuse the word ‘the’ (among other obvious giveaways), what their real name is. Have never done it though.

    My take is that if your name sounds Italian, Indian or Russian, for example, I’m going to cut you more slack than if your name is Stephen Perkins.

    Most Common Rejection Reasons

    There have been quite a few reasons we couldn’t post articles that have been submitted to us. Here are the most common ones:

    Here They Are, Word-For-Word

    All that said, here is what we send to those who want to contribute to Curatti. Yes, these will finally be put online soon!

    The Curatti Guest Blogging Guidelines

    Curatti’s readership is largely quite experienced. This provides opportunities for recognition for would-be guest authors. It also means that pretty much everything you will want to write has been seen before, and most of it has been posted on Curatti.

    We are primarily a B2B, small-to-medium sized business blog. We post articles that relate to various aspects of Digital Marketing. We love Inbound Marketing/Lead Generation/Social Media Marketing/SEO and are happy to post articles on eCommerce and B2B Customer Service. We will not publish articles that are primarily retail or corporate, or based on special events such as Super Bowl or Holidays.

    Our hopper size is typically 2-4 weeks, but highly variable. We’d rather people send articles in when they are happy with them, as opposed to based upon deadlines. So as much as we can, and as much as makes sense, we schedule articles in inquiry order, not delivery date – naturally giving precedence to regular contributors.

    Clearly, many people who submit articles to us had them written by Fiverr or some other budget offshore content writing service. If you do this, it is very obvious. Grammar and sentence format will not be to English usage, and your article will need a lot of proofreading. We will not do this editing for you. You need to do that for yourself. We WILL reject such articles.

    Here are our simple guidelines for prospective guest bloggers:

    Proofreading

    We will proofread all articles and run them through a plagiarism checker. Similarly, whereas we love publishing good Infographics, these are not purely about looks. We have been known to turn down great looking graphics where statements were questionable and/or not attributed.

    We share your posts to all of our channels and you should do the same, in order to get the biggest possible audience.

    One last note:

    Due to the volume of inquiries we receive, we are very picky about what goes on our site. A clear majority of inquiries we receive are turned down. And from there, most articles we receive do not make it onto Curatti. It is really important that your article is written with experienced marketers in mind. It must contain elements of originality. And as we’re very busy, it should be proofread before we receive it. We simply can’t spend 2 hours editing articles.

     

    You may find this article on guest blogging helpful

    Any Comments?

    So what are your thoughts on the above? Too fussy? Did I miss anything? Please share your comments, below.

    Here was the interview I did for the Summit on Content Marketing

    (and here’s the link to the accompanying article)

    Additional related reading: 6 Common Blogging Blunders (And How To Fix Them)

    Cautions and Advice for Guest Bloggers & New Content Marketers

    Guest Blogging Outreach: How to Pitch an Article No One Will Turn Down

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    Andy Capaloff

    Andy Capaloff is the COO of Curatti. Prior to moving into the world of Content Marketing, Social Media Management and the day-to-day running of a Digital Marketing company, Andy spent over 3 decades in various aspects of IT. It is here that he honed his writing and technical skills, and his ability to ask uncommon questions.