Thank you for your interest in writing a guest blog post for Campfire Chic.
Guest blog posts are a great opportunity for sponsors to share more about who they are and what they do while connecting with new readers. To ensure this experience is beneficial to both parties, I have some guidelines that will help streamline the process.
Some guidelines:
General
- I encourage my guest bloggers to submit posts earlier rather than later in the month. The Campfire Chic blog schedule is generally planned two months out with several dates held each month for guest blog posts. In an effort to seamlessly include guest posts, I try to spread the posts out throughout the month. A guest post submitted after the 20th of the month will not be published, unless previously discussed.
- I do ask my guest bloggers to not republish the post on their own blog or send the guest post to any other bloggers. Unique content is important in the internet world, and this is your opportunity to create new content. You are more than welcome to post a photo from your guest blog post in a post on your site, driving traffic to the post.
- Guest posts are to be submitted in html format via email. Simply draft up your blog post in your own editor and copy and paste the html directly into an email to me. If you have specific formatting requests, please let me know in that email.
Images
- I ask that images be landscape/horizontal, and as clear as possible. Natural lighting and placing whatever you are photographing in front of a neutral background are strongly encouraged. For tips on photographing items without fancy equipment, check out my post.Think “money shot” or “pinnable” when taking your photos.
- If you are sharing a photo-heavy post, please consider combining photos in some sort of collage. Photos slow down the load time to websites/blogs, and the longer it takes for something to load, the more likely a reader will bail before reading. An excellent example of combining photos into a single image for a do-it-yourself post can be found here: DIY hexagon pin cushion.
- Host the image(s) for your guest post on your own using a hidden page on your blog, the media area of your WordPress, or a third-party website like Flickr or Photobucket. Please note: Flickr images are generally not pinabble, if you would like readers to pin your images to Pinterest, host the photos elsewhere.
- If you’re familiar with Alt Text for images, please take the time to tag at least your “money shot” photo so it is easy for search engines to recognize the photo for what it is. Taking this step will greatly improve the search engine optimization of your post.
Formatting
- Less is more when writing a blog post, use bullet points when possible, and if you really want readers to pay attention to something, bold the words. Think about how you read blog posts and what would catch your eye.
- I do ask that your post be relatively free from spelling and grammar errors. Capitalization is a must, when applicable. If your post is not ready for me to simply copy-and-paste into my editor, I will send it back and ask for revisions.
- When possible, link to applicable blog posts you published or that are currently published on Campfire Chic. This helps us both with interlinking, and gives readers more opportunities to learn about you (and to show that you’re familiar with Campfire Chic!).
- When using links, please make an effort to use strong anchor text. Instead of “Learn more about the aprons I sell here” a better example would be, “I sell brightly colored aprons and aprons for children in my online shop, Aprons4Kidzz”.
- When drafting your third-person biography for the end of the post, be sure to include some sort of ‘call to action’. You want readers to do something, so be sure they know what it is! Common calls to action include: following some sort of social media account, subscribing to your newsletter, adding your RSS feed to their reader, purchasing an item from you, etc.
Resources for Guest Blog Posts:
