Blog

BLOG GUIDELINES

Thanks for your interest in contributing to the CMI blog. More specifics about the types of posts we’re looking for and specific guidelines are below.

General guidelines

• All posts must educate the reader in some aspect of content marketing. For instance:
  • Content strategy
  • Content creation
  • Content distribution/promotion (this includes optimizing content so it can be found)
  • Content management (i.e. how to manage the process, either in-house or when outsourcing)
  • Content measurement/analysis
• There are three types of posts we are looking for:
  • How to: Steps on how to do something related to content marketing
  • Case study: How a company is having success with content marketing
  • Sample: Point people to any type of content that works – explain what it is and why it works
• Other things that are helpful:
  • Posts should be as specific as possible. Think about providing readers with a blueprint or a step-by-step approach on how to do something.
  • Include references to tools and resources that are helpful.
  • When possible, include a sample or example of the topic you are covering.
  • Use headlines to call out key points and bold the most important sentences/phrases to help a reader skim.
• Looking for examples of posts we love? Check out our editors’ recommendations. 
• Posts cannot be promotional in nature.
• Only one link to your blog is allowed per post. 
• Articles should be original content only. Note: You can certainly repurpose ideas and concepts. For instance, it is fine to repackage your best ideas around a certain topic. (See below on how you can reuse the content.)
• All posts need a thematic image, screenshot or video. Please provide them in .jpg, .gif or .png format. Images can come from Shutterstock, Flickr Creative Commons with Attribution or any other source where you can properly source them. 
• Send the post in Word format if possible. 

Promotion

• CMI will be promoting all posts via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
• All authors are asked to promote their posts via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and any other means.

Reuse

• The blog post must be original content.
• You can reuse your post in its entirety two weeks after publication. Cite the Content Marketing Institute as the original source and link to the article.

What I need from you to get started

• Bio up to 60 words (can include links – ideal to include Twitter handle)
• Upload your bio picture to http://en.gravatar.com/ and tell me which email this is linked to (WordPress is set up to automatically grab that image).

If you want to contribute a post or if you have any questions, please contact Jodi Harris at jodi[at]contentinstitute.com. For new contributors, email me with your idea(s) for a post and a pointer to your blog and/or other writing samples.