Overview:
Thank you for your interest in guest-blogging for Crozdesk. Each piece of content we produce needs to be high-quality and have a purpose.
We’re only interested in working alongside writers who have something interesting to say about their chosen topic, as opposed to writers looking for a backlink.
All content that we publish needs to be relevant and valuable to our users, unique, well researched and with a clear intention. We don’t want to create purely promotional content. If a tool genuinely helps with your chosen topic, include it! Great job! But don’t try to force something on the reader.
For that reason, we have created this set of guidelines that should help you put together your blog post.
Who do we create content for?
There are four types of people that we generally want to attract to Crozdesk:
- Ignorers – People don’t think/know how software could help their business
- Indecisives – People that don’t know which software to choose
- Ill-informed – People that don’t know what the software they use can do for them
- Improvers – People looking for the last drop of efficiency
What type of blog posts do we accept?
- How-to blog posts that are actionable and lets users achieve immediate results, making people return to Crozdesk for more valuable knowledge
- Blog posts that help our users choose a type of software
- Software focused blog posts that educate the reader on how to make the most out of a specific type of software
- Thought leadership blog posts on specific categories.
Coming up with a blog post topic:
- Address pain points of our target market.
- Is this a burning question of our target customer?
- Is this giving VERY actionable (step-by-step) advice on how to do something?
- Can we target any keywords in this post?
General points:
- Please proofread your blog post before you send it. Our editors will do a thorough edit before it goes live, but it’s helpful if you proofread first.
- Content must be over 1500 words. Ideally, it should fall between 2000-3000.
- Keep your paragraphs short. People on the internet have short attention spans and we need to be able to capture their attention.
- Submit your final draft as a Google Doc and make sure you have checked the “anyone with the link can edit” option.
- At the top of the blog post write:
- The target audience
- The keywords you want to target
- A one-sentence description of what your argument is
Writing:
- Please use American English
- Use the word “you” when writing – keep the article personal.
- Keep it to the point and limit extra wording (try not to sound too markety)
- Include images where possible and relevant. High quality only. All images should be sourced to the original publisher, unless you created the image yourself.
- Try to avoid stock imagery.
- Anytime you make a claim, you need to back it up. Use source references where necessary.
- Use sources that are credible. If a source is not “as credible” (i.e. small blog, independent programmer/writer), the citation should be very relevant and/or compelling. The entire blog post should be data-driven.
- Don’t use any references older than 3 years – try to stay current
- When considering your title ask yourself: Is this title interesting enough to get the attention of the target market?
- Does it offer a “how to”?
- Does it use an interesting adjective?
- Does it use an odd number or compelling statistic?
- Does it tell readers how to do [something cool] without doing [something that sucks]?
- Does the article give examples or information of software products / influencing brands that we can leverage?
- Does the article give examples of tools relevant to our target customer?
- Do the keywords I’ve used sound natural?
- Are the keywords located in a place where it makes sense?
Example posts:
If you need help understanding the level of quality we require at Crozdesk, have a look at some of these examples: