Have influencer marketing tips to share? Write a Guest Post
So you want to contribut to The Shelf. Here's what our most successful guest writers do.
We’re always ready to share high-quality, previously unpublished, original content written by thought leaders. Because… obviously.
Value - The goal of our blog is to provide value to brands and marketing teams. We're really big on data and examples. These are detailed, mid-level posts. They're not as broad as a definition post would be, and they don't need the depth of a boots-on-the-ground strategy post
RECOMMENDED READING: If you read through a few of our more recent posts like this one on social commerce (which has tons of campaign examples) or this post on running a brand awareness campaign (which has lots of strategy insights), you'll get a good idea of what we’re looking for.
Word count - Guest posts are between 1000 to 1500 words, which is about half the length of our typical post.
Links - Make sure the page you're linking out to is credible. We know most of our guest contributors are building backlinks and authority. So, here’s how to do it:
You can include one backlink to a useful page on your site. Don’t link back to gated content, product pages, sales pages, or homepages. You can link back to a homepage in your bio, though.
Any stat you include should link to a credible source. If you quote a stat, link to the original source of that stat, not the publication that cited the actual source.
Tone - We're BIG on tone. Though penned by more than a dozen writers, all of our blog posts sound like they were written by Toggle the Pug, our official mascot.
We're quirky, irreverent, knowledgeable, and we make our fair share of had-to-be-there references that speak to a certain type of geek. (FYI: The quirk helps keep our super-long posts interesting.)
Pictures and Graphics - Our illustrator takes care of the featured images, the Pinterest Pin, and the social media graphics we used to promote the post.
If you reference a strategy, include examples in the form of screenshots WITH links back to the exact URL where that example lives.
If you reference a stat, you can include pictures of any charts or graphs from which you pulled data IF they will be useful to our readers. (Don’t forget to include your source.)
If you’re submitting a roundup, include screenshots of the blogger’s feed (the one they’re famous for) or screenshots of the actual dashboard/feature of the product if it’s a roundup of helpful tools.
And for any images you drop into your post, please attach high-quality jpgs or pngs of these images for us to reuse.
Timeline - Depending on when your post is submitted, it can take up to 60 days to publish a guest post.
Okay. That's my spiel.