Thank you for your interest in contributing to the Tailwind blog. This post provides an overview of our content guidelines and formatting information.
Content Pillars
The focus of the Tailwind blog is to provide useful tutorials and tips that both new and existing Tailwind users can follow to improve their marketing. We write about three different topic areas:
- Visual Marketing & Design
Any Tailwind posts should be highly informative, well-structured, and use lots of great images. As a visual marketing company we want to use engaging graphics and multimedia wherever possible. Our primary users are social media managers, community managers, content marketers, bloggers, online retailers, and small business owners, so any posts should be relevant to these groups.
The main thing we’re looking for is insightful, well-written posts with plenty of useful take-aways and strong images.
Content
We’re looking for substantial posts (1,000+ words) with high-quality graphics, examples and extensive research.
Content should be primarily “how-to” tips, tutorials, and guides that reveal how social media marketers, bloggers, and small business can use Pinterest and Instagram to promote their business or use the Tailwind product better. Our goal is actionable articles that will provide evergreen content to our readers.
First and foremost, Tailwind strives for high-quality content and its integrity is very important to us.
Therefore, posts should be non-promotional in nature. We do not accept paid outbound links, affiliate links, or any promotional links other than those we deem appropriate and useful in the body of the article, and one outbound link in the author bio which appears at the bottom of each post.
Writing Style
Write in a fairly casual and informative style that will be enjoyable for people to read. Most people skim when reading online. Use short sentences, headings, bullet points, visuals, stats, click-to-tweets, and pull-out quotes to keep readers engaged.
Headlines
Headlines should be engaging and stand out on both the blog and social media. Spend some time thinking up a great headline that will attract clicks wherever it is shared or seen. Make sure the body of your post lives up to the promise of your headline.
Using Keywords
We appreciate post pitches that are informed by keyword research and where the writer can prove an audience interested in the topic exists. That said, not every post needs to be written to please search engines, there is room for all types of posts on the Tailwind blog.
However, if you are writing a post to rank for keywords make sure you use those keywords in the title of your post and throughout in a natural fashion.
In-Content Links
Whenever you use a screenshot or graphic from another site, or quote a source make sure you link back so our readers can go to the source if they like. If such a relevant resource exists on the Tailwind blog, we’d love to see you link to it.
We reserve the right not to include links that lead to content that we feel doesn’t provide authoritative value.
Images
Don’t worry about creating social sharing graphics and featured images, our graphic designer will take care of that so that our brand remains consistent across posts.
However, the more images you include in the body of your post, the better. Use images and screenshots to illustrate your points, aid comprehension and retention, and to keep your audience engaged. Any images should be 560 pixels wide so that they fit correctly within the template of our blog. Please also make sure you add descriptive ALT text to any images you upload so that they can be easily understood by search engines and shared on Pinterest.
Community interaction
As a writer for the Tailwind blog, we’ll invite you to become a moderator with Disqus, the platform we use to manage our commenting. It’s good to encourage discussion and debate on posts. Asking a question at the end of your post is a good way to spark discussion.
Please make sure you reply to any comments on your posts. If it’s a customer service enquiry or Tailwind-related question, please let us know and we can jump in and respond.
Social Media
Please share your posts on Twitter, Facebook and with your own communities. It’s a good way for you to raise your profile and get more people reading your posts.
We will also share your posts through our social media channels.
Calls to Action
People who read blog posts are often looking for an action that they can take next. Sometimes the most appropriate action for them to take is to download a lead magnet, watch a video, or sign up for a tool.
If an appropriate next step in your post is a deeper engagement with Tailwind, then encourage them to take that step with a strong call to action. We reserve the right to add calls to action to guest posts where it serves the interests of readers.
Submissions
If you are interested in submitting a guest post proposal, please introduce yourself and send an e-mail. Please include the following:
- Title of your proposed post (feel free to include multiple pitches)
- Short bullet point list of what your post will cover (no more than 100 words)
- A link to your personal blog
- A link to a blog post written by you that demonstrates that you have expertise in your chosen subject area
- Links to your social media profiles
- We ask that you send through a 50 word bio and one URL you’d like included as well as links to your social profiles or you can enter this into WordPress. Please also make sure you have set up your Gravatar. (https://en.gravatar.com/)
We have further guidelines to help guest posters, so please submit the above before completing a piece for consideration. Thank you!
Please email submissions to alisa at tailwindapp dot com