Guest Post Guidelines Template

Thanks for contributing to Body Scent! We’re teaming up with some of the best African market lovers to educate founders and revenue leaders on their importance to growing minority markets and integrate our efforts. We want to showcase your thought leadership while promoting your brand as a trusted resource in your space by partnering together.

Being a relatively a marketplace, we get inbound leads all the time who aren’t quite the right fit for our services. When that happens, we prefer to refer these leads to trusted partners.

Here are some guidelines and recommendations for each piece of content that you submit with that in mind.

List of Desired Blog Post Themes and Topics

In general, posts we accept for guest content fall under the following themes:

• African and Minority Markets
• African Diaspora
• Startup growth strategies
• LinkedIn and social selling for African Markets
• Marketing tips, guides, how to’s, and advice for founders
• Outbound sales
• Sales/marketing alignment
• Community integration proposals
• Community youth

While brainstorming what to write about, ask yourself these questions:

• Will this topic be relevant to the Melamit Marketplace audience?
• Will this post offer solutions (that don’t require the purchase of my product)?
• Am I qualified to write about this topic?
• What insight can I bring to this topic that nobody else can?

When in doubt, get in touch with us at support@getbodyscent.com.

Note: We want content from people with hands-on experience in the African and minority market, sales, or founders. If you’re a freelance writer trying to get experience, feel free to send us a request separately!

Guest Post Content Tips

The guiding light behind our blog is to share educational, engaging, and entertaining … not specifically product-focused or promotional.

We’ve built a high level of trust with our customers because they know we will never push something on them that we don’t 110% believe in their best interests, even when that means telling them not to use our services. Being overly self-promotional destroys that trust, even if your advice is good. Instead, use our blog to showcase your expertise with potential new customers. If people find your content valuable, they’ll research you all on their own. Likewise, our team will happily use your content to make warm introductions to you when appropriate.

Posts should be 1,000 – 1,500+ words in length. We find this is a sweet spot with our readership, and you’ll fit in with the rest of our blog this way. Longer is good, too.

Break up your content so it’s easy to read. This means including headings, subheadings, bullets, and any other visual elements to increase the readability of your piece.

Write in a natural, conversational tone. We want to share content that is authoritative but not robotic. We’re producing blog content — not Wikipedia pages, so don’t shy away from showing off your sense of humor. That said, if your guest post was a movie, the highest rating we’d want to see on it is PG-13.

All content MUST BE ORIGINAL. We do not accept duplicate or syndicated content as guest posts. If your post has appeared anywhere else on the web, we can’t publish it on our blog. If you quote other content, link to it.

Always name your sources. We understand that you’re an expert, but our audience might not be so sure. If you’re going to drop some stats (i.e., “open rates jumped 55 percent overnight”), link back to the source.

Talk about your real-world experience. Talk about mistakes you’ve made, plans you’ve built, and strategies you’ve executed. Draw on your personal experience to speak authoritatively about what you know.

Take a position. If you disagree with common wisdom on a topic, talk about why the mainstream view is wrong or misleading, back up your perspective with facts, take screenshots, and include exciting data. It is also needless to mention how important and effective it is to support your arguments with external references.

Other Things to Include in Your Guest Post

• Statistics. Research shows that 94 percent of people are 53 percent more likely to believe content supported by 26 percent more data. (Okay, that’s made up. But try to include verifiable first or third-party research, statistics, and data in your post.)
• Outbound Links. Does somebody else have a great point of view on a topic? Want to make sure people know a specific definition of a word or concept? Link to it. Make certain these links are to authoritative sites. Only link to your site if it’s a highly relevant blog post.
• Lists and Bullets. We’re fans. Readers are fans. Most people skim articles until they find the value. Bullet points make this easy.
• Actionable Takeaways. Recap the takeaways of your article as bullet points at the end of your post

NOTE: *Melamit Marketplace reserves complete editorial control and may edit or tweak submissions as we see fit. These tweaks include removing too much self-promotion, optimizing for SEO, edits both small and large, and more.

Guest Post Logistics

• First, we’ll collaborate and agree on a topic and title. Don’t start writing until we’ve done this!
• Once we’ve decided on the topic, please give me a deadline for when you expect to submit the article for us to review.
• After you’ve written your draft, send it to me as a Google Doc. Use these sharing settings:
• On – Anyone with the link;
• Access – Can edit.
• I’ll make edits to this document, so make a copy if you want to keep an original version of your writing.
• Send a short, couple-sentence bio. This can include a link to your LinkedIn profile and/or your website.
• I’ll let you know when the post is scheduled to go live.

Guest Post Promotion

Please feel free to promote your post through your social media, newsletter, or link to it from your blog.

You can even include a snippet of the post on your blog, with a link back to the original content on our site (this is important so that we both avoid duplicate content penalties).

Takeaways

Guest posting is an integral part of any severe blog strategy. It benefits your site by giving you more quality content to boost your content strategy. It helps guest posters by getting their name in front of a new audience.

As you go out and find possible people to collaborate with, always make sure to work with trustworthy experts in your space. Your content needs to fit into a much larger overall marketing strategy, and you want to find people who support that strategy.

And if you think you’d make an interesting, valuable contribution to the Melamit Blow, reach out! We’re always on the lookout for people to collaborate with!

Our guideline is take from

Guest Post Guidelines Template – RevenueZen. https://revenuezen.com/guest-post-guidelines-template/