Guest Post Contributor Guidelines

Hello! Thank you for expressing an interest in writing a guest blog for my website. I’m very pleased you offered.

I’m always on the lookout for really good writers with great, relevant content to write blogs for my website, to help my clients and other couples who are getting married or who simply want to read what’s on my site.

If you’ve got really good writing skills and have something interesting and different to say, I’d love to hear from you.

The following page explains the type of content I’m after and how the submission process works. Please take the time to read the page in its entirety. If you’ve got any further questions, please flick me an email and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

What I’m After In Every Post I Publish

The best guest contributions are comprehensive and reasonably lengthy, data-driven, authoritative, credible, and interesting. They have things in them that arouse the curiosity of readers. They pique the interest of readers. They teach readers new things or they put a new perspective on old things. Whilst most of my blogs are about the wedding and funeral industries, I’m also interested in publishing any topics about trends, social justice issues and achievements, queer culture and history, diversity and inclusivity.

There are also some things I look for in every blog I publish on my website:

• Original concepts, compelling arguments, and high-quality, professional writing. I don’t publish anything that’s already appeared somewhere else.
• The blog is in Plain English, avoids the use of jargon and reflects the writing tone and style of the other blogs on my website. Above all, in my blogs I aim to be helpful – to answer the questions that readers may have, or questions that readers may not have even thought of!
• Whilst I encourage the use of data, it helps if the data are recent – within the last few years, unless they are trend data or part of a larger data set. Any data, quotations and non-original content should be fully referenced.
• I welcome a small background note about your background. It adds to the credibility of the blog. But please don’t include more than one link to your company’s website in the content.
• It helps if you can link to at least 1 or 2 of my other blogs in your piece.

The Things I Won’t Accept

There are some things I simply won’t accept. I won’t accept anything that:

• has been covered on my blog before.
• may be perceived as part of a back-link-building scheme.
• is heavily promotional for your company or organisation.
• is offensive or inaccurate.
• is overly critical of individuals or companies etc — this is not a website to air your grievances.

Other details

• Submissions must meet my quality standards in order to get published. I’m a former English teacher, and senior public servant. I know how to write for a variety of audiences. If I believe that, for whatever reason, a submission does not meet my standards, then I reserve the right to reject it at my discretion.
• I reserve the right to edit and adapt your guest blog content as I see fit, and update it, whenever I need to, for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
• I reserve the right to include calls-to-action to my own content, including but not limited to e-books, and other downloadable content.
• Most articles should fall in the 1,500 – 2,500 word range. Rather than focusing on hitting a specific word count, focus on clear, in-depth explanations that readers of different levels can understand and learn from. It’s better to over-explain a concept than under-explain and leave some readers in the dark.
• The best blog copy is simple, accessible, and clear. Don’t get stuck trying to make a complex sentence structure work when a simple one works better. Take the most direct route to your points, use your natural voice, and avoid unnecessary filler words.
• Use Hemingway Editor to check for run-on sentences, difficult sentence structure, etc. And please don’t expect me to be your grammar teacher. I expect submissions will be error-free.
• Paragraphs should be no more than three to five sentences long and formatted using H2s, H3s, and H4s, when appropriate.
• Add bulleted lists to help break up dense copy chunks. Numbered lists should be formatted as number + full-stop.
• Always include a conclusion.
• When including images, GIFs, or screenshots, cite the image source as: “Image source” and hyperlink that text with the page you found the image on.
• Include a brief author bio, gravatar link, headshot, and any links to your LinkedIn or Twitter account you’d like linked.
• Each successful blog post that gets approved as per the above guidelines, will incur ​an administration/publishing charge of AU$90 (Ninety Australian Dollars) to cover editorial and publishing expenses.

If your article meets my editorial standards and aligns with my content strategy, I’ll respond to let you know your article will be published.