How to Guest Post
If you’ve decided to write a guest post, let me first say thank you for contributing to the Art of Great Things community.
To help you out, I’ve put together this list of 10 simple guest post guidelines. Please stick to them as much as possible; it makes things easier for everyone. In fact, many of these guidelines will be helpful to you when guest posting on other blogs as well.
Other questions on guest posting? Ask them here.
The Guidelines
1. Keep it relevant. If you’ve been reading along, you know what kind of content AOGT readers expect. Be creative, but keep it relevant and interesting.
2. Be yourself. As a guest writer, you bring a unique voice and point of view to the community. Please don’t ruin it by copying me or anyone else.
3. Be respectful. It’s okay to be controversial or express a strong opinion. But if you’re rude to me, other readers, or to the world in general, you won’t be published.
4. Use a clean layout. No one likes a wall of text. Except dusty old English professors. Use short paragraphs, bullet points, and informative section headers to make your post easy to read. Use bold and italics sparingly. One of the big themes of this blog, after all, is simplicity.
5. Follow accepted rules of grammar and punctuation. I’m not going to be a grammar nazi, but I don’t want to be a copyeditor either. And for the love of God, don’t type in ALL CAPS or overuse exclamation marks!!!
6. Proofread before you submit. We both know you’re a fantastic writer – but even fantastic writers make mistakes. Please double-check your writing before you submit it.
7. Submit in plain text. Please, please, please don’t send me a Microsoft Word document. Word adds in a lot of hidden, unnecessary markup that confuses my blogging software. If you prefer to write in Microsoft Word, just copy and paste it into Notepad (or another plain text editor) before sending.
8. Avoid excessive self-promotion. That means no affiliate links, and no excessive linking to your own posts (but one or two relevant self-links are fine). I promise to give you plenty of credit and link love when I publish your post.
9. Customize your credits. Unless you tell me otherwise, I’ll end the post with a little blurb that includes a link to your website and a link to your RSS feed (if applicable). If you’d rather have me link to your Twitter account, e-book, or a specific post, make sure to let me know in advance.
10. Leave the images to me. Don’t worry about choosing an image for your post. I’ll take care of it. Promise.
***
Don’t stress out over these guidelines. They’re just to make things run more smoothly, and I won’t bite your head off if you break them – but I may ask you (nicely) to rewrite, and it may delay your post being published.
I reserve the right to make minor changes to your post, but I’ll keep your voice and message intact.
Once again, thank you for contributing to The Art of Great Things. I appreciate it. If you have any questions, ask them here.