Unfortunately, we can’t accept articles that have already been published elsewhere – either currently, or at any time in the past. We also ask that you don’t publish the article anywhere else for two weeks after we’ve published it. Feel free to re-publish it on your own website after this time has passed. At that point, please include a note at the start or end of the article telling people where the article was originally published and linking to the article on our website. This is to help us comply with Google’s guidelines for guest blogging.
We’re looking for articles that are genuinely valuable and helpful to our core audience of contractors. A guest blog is the perfect place to share your ideas, knowledge and insight. Inspire your readers, teach them something, give them some advice. Help them to develop new strategies or techniques that they can’t wait to put into action. Your blog is a chance to add a little bit of value to the World Wide Web.
A guest blog is a platform for you to share your knowledge, but it isn’t the right place to promote your company, services or events. In other words, we don’t publish advertorials. Please don’t mention your company, or link to it, within your article. However, if you wish, you can include one relevant link in your bio. This is another policy designed to avoid upsetting Google and protect the integrity of our brand.
Our core audience is contractors who work with our Umbrella service, Key Portfolio. Depending on the post, you might be writing for one particular segment of our audience, for example supply teachers. We could go into lots of detail about readership demographics, but the most important thing we can tell you is that they’re people. Therefore, they like to read articles that sound like they were written by another person. As opposed to say, a robot or a corporate jargon generator. Keep it conversational.
Let your personality shine through. We all have our own individual writing style and that’s part of what makes guest blogs so great – it’s a chance to add a fresh voice and perspective in amongst our own. Don’t worry about trying to emulate the style of our in-house articles, just be yourself.
The most successful and compelling blogs posts go into detail about just one very focused subject. It’s easy to stray off-topic, and we’d be the first to admit strolling off on a tangent in the first draft, but go back and edit until you’re staying close to the original point all the way through. Remember, you can use external links to provide additional information. There’s no minimum or maximum word count; it should be as long or as short as it needs to be.
Start engaging your audience straight away. Come up with a title that will entice people in (it does also need to accurately describe the content of the post – we’re not into click bait), then use your personality and knowledge to keep them reading right to the end. Don’t jump from point to point without constructing a clear link between them. Also, sub-headings and bullet points are often good ways to make your post feel more readable.
We encourage you to include links to relevant, high-quality external content that backs-up your points, demonstrates that your post is well-researched or adds an extra layer of depth. If you use anything from third-party sources in your article – such as data, quotations or research – it’s essential they are clearly attributed and linked.
We’re an umbrella company who works with lots of lovely contractors and recruitment agencies. Our blog isn’t the right platform for any sort of criticism of these groups, even if it’s very general.
Get someone to read your article before you submit it. It could be your best friend, the person who sits at the next desk or your Marketing team – the most important thing is that they’ll give you honest feedback. And also that they’re quite good at spotting typos. Ask them if they could follow the points you’re making and whether they heard your personality coming through.
Alert your social media team! Tell your mum! Post it on Facebook! You’ve written such a useful article, it’s only natural you’ll want all the contractors in the world to benefit from it. Don’t be shy – share the link far and wide. At the same time, you can rest assured we’ll be doing our best to get your post in front of as many people as possible. We’ll definitely be tweeting about it and we’d love you – or your company – to retweet us.
We may add internal links (i.e. links to other pages on our website) to your article where relevant and add images (in line with our image guidelines). We reserve the right to edit your guest blog in future to ensure it continues to be accurate and comprehensive, and to use and promote it as we see fit.