Guest Blogging Guidelines

As with most guest blogging opportunities, the goal for our guest blogging initiative is to share content that engages our audience, makes them think in an interesting manner, educates them about new technologies, best practices, theories, experiences and expert opinions that can enhance their own work-life and professional acumen. We don’t guest blog for product-promotions or sales-y topics. You can leave that bit to our team when we announce our own product updates. 🙂

It’s taken us years of efforts to build trust and confidence in our customers’ (and readers’) minds. We would never want to risk hampering this bond by pushing products or services that we don’t believe in or that which we haven’t used ourselves. Besides, it’s common knowledge that being focused on self-promotion only harms your reputation as a blog and builds distrust amongst audiences, irrespective of whether you’re an expert in the business you’re promoting.

We will encourage you to focus on showcasing your expertise/experiences/knowledge/educational information, rather than your products/services. Today, people value authentic and genuinely written content more than ‘sales pitches’. Of course, we would be happy to connect our audience with your services/products through official introductions, whenever it’s appropriate.

Here are some tips to help you be a good guest blogger. You can consider these as our prerequisites when accepting guest blogging opportunities:

• Posts must be 1500+ words in length, at the minimum: Ideally, we prefer posts with 2000+ words on average, we find that it fits perfectly with our readership. This way, your content will also appear in-line with our existing posts. Remember, longer the better.
• Give your content a structure, break it down for the readers: One of the best ways to make your content reader-friendly is to break it up into sections. Be generous with headings, sub-headings, bullets, and any other visual elements like ‘quoted’ sections and indentations.
• Be conversational, use a natural tone: Write like you’d like to speak. We wish to share content that is organic and authentic, not a dump of advice and education. When writing, imagine how you’ll sound if you’re saying the same things out aloud. Pepper your content with humour, light moments and off-topic injections that can refresh the reader mid-way through a lengthy piece. Of course, no expletives, harsh words, or regrettable out lashes. Maintain balance and maturity in your words.
• It’s either original or nothing: We, strictly, do not solicit plagiarized content or posts which are syndicated through multiple sources. If we’re publishing your post, we have to be the first ones to do so – there are no two ways about it. If required, you can quote other content within your post and link to it.
• Validate your claims with sources: Name the sources you have used to build your opinion/views or share information. You are an expert in your domain and we appreciate this about you, but some of our audience may not think likewise. If you’re using some stats (for eg. “attrition in the IT industry rose by 20% during COVID”), please ensure you link back to your source.
• Keep it real, talk about your personal experiences: If you’ve made mistakes, share the lessons you’ve learnt. If you have been successful at something, share the knowledge to help others follow you. Any strategies that have worked for you, may work for others too, so bring them up. Readers are constantly looking for validation through others’ personal experiences. Your authority on a topic can multiple if you can support it with real-life experiences.
• Agree or disagree: Taking a stand takes courage and that’s what entices audiences. Don’t be afraid to voice your opinion. You may agree on something or disagree with something, but as long as you’re carrying your words with grace – it’s not a problem. If your views are busting myths or contrarian in nature, be proud of it and bring out your perspective with supporting facts, figures or fundamentals. Of course, don’t rant away without any supporting references.
• Use statistics: Research shows that working from home increases our productivity by 56% compared to working from office and employee retention with remote-working companies is 47% higher than those that enforce office presence. (Gotcha! Those are just some random fake facts. But you get the point, right?). Include as many facts and figures (with verifiable sources) if you wish to be believed and admired for your content.
• “Link me up, Scotty”: Do you know someone who shares your views? Is there a spot in your post that needs separate information? Well, go add a link to that bit. Needless to say, if you’re adding links to your post, it’s your responsibility to ensure it’s from a reputable website or contains authentic information that you can vouch for. Relevancy is key here.
• Add visual references, help readers’ imagination: Add images or visual references (of any other sort, maybe an emoji or two), it can fuel the readers’ imagination and help direct them to the way you are looking at the topic at hand.
• Everyone loves lists and bullet points: One of the fundamental ways to make your post-reader-friendly (when there’s a lot of items to talk about/showcase), is to convert things into lists or bullets. This not only adds substance to your structure but also makes it easier for readers’ eyes to read and reference back to what they find interesting. Long paragraphs can sometimes scare away readers, and lists/bullets have the exact opposite effect.
• What’s in it for the reader? Always remember, a reader is sharing something very precious to them – time. If they’re paying you in time and attention, you’ve gotta respect that by giving them something to take-away (or actionable) from your post. If nothing specific, even a quick summary that gives a recap to what your post is all about, can be quite helpful to your audiences.

Important Note & Disclaimer: sumHR reserves the right to control, edit and modify your guest blogging submissions as may be deemed necessary for the benefit of our readers. If you follow the above guidelines to the T, we are less likely to make any major edits.