Credit Suite’s Guest Blogger Guidelines
Welcome to our guest blogger guidelines! (updated and expanded on September 28, 2020)
Credit Suite: Who We Are
The Credit Suite Blog is always looking for new contributors to bring fresh opinions, research, tips, strategies, and thought leadership about the ever-changing world of business credit, business loans, and improving fundability to our readers.
The blog caters to a large audience of small business owners and entrepreneurs, most of whom are seeking funding or need guidance in how to run a business. Contributions should directly address one of these segments. And they should offer the reader actionable tips that they can implement right away.
If you have excellent writing skills and would like to share your expertise with a large audience of small business owners and entrepreneurs, we would love to hear from you.
Please take some time to review this entire page. It should answer any questions you might have about the types of content we’re looking for and how the submission process works.
Who Can Write For Credit Suite?
We are looking for authors who have a track record of writing awesome content. If you have never written a guest post, this is not a big deal. But we will still want to see your writing. In particular, we are paying attention to depth and detail.
We will only take blog posts from:
- Those in particular industries or roles
- Recognized experts
The Kinds of Content We Love
We will always love your original concepts, persuasive arguments, and high-quality writing. However, we will not republish anything which has been published elsewhere.
Your post must reflect the writing style and tone of the Credit Suite Blog. Our voice is casual, yet helpful. For the most part, we stay away from buzzwords and jargon.
All submissions must contain the proper attribution of data, quotations, and outside content referenced in the post.
There can be no more than one link to your company’s website in the body of the post. We are looking for:
- 100% original content not published anywhere else.
- Content more than 75% written by you and not AI (yes, we will check).
- Written well, straightforward, interesting, and more than anything else, helpful.
- Added attribution for all data or statistics cited with a hyperlink.
- Not overly self-promotional.
- Add a 1 – 3 sentence author biography and include a headshot.
- Make sure all images as separate attachments or link thereto. We must have clear permission to use the images.
- 1,000 or more words (headlines and sub-headers included).
Please Note
We are serious about quality writing, and we want for yours to be the best that it can possibly be. So yes, we care about:
- Spelling
- Word usage
- Punctuation
- Grammar
- Readability
- Plagiarism
- AI content generation.
We highly recommend the following resources to help you with these requirements:
- For spelling, your spell checker is useful but these tend to be imperfect. Reread your submission, or ask someone to.
- For word usage, check an online dictionary for meaning and nuance. And if you feel your prose is becoming too repetitive, then be sure to check a thesaurus online.
- For punctuation and grammar, we highly recommend Grammarly.
- For readability, we recommend checking with Hemingway. If you are having any trouble finding easier ways to say something, refer to a dictionary or a thesaurus for help.
- When it comes to plagiarism, Grammarly includes it in their offering. For free plagiarism checking, we recommend Quetext but recognize that it may not be finding as much as the paid version of Grammarly does. Copyscape is another favorite.
The Many Different Kinds of Content We Love
We will accept pitches but only if presented clearly and with supporting documentation. An outline will be particularly helpful. We will also accept drafts. Either way, expect editing and critique.
While we do publish posts at times which do not fall into the below categories, your post has the best chance of acceptance if it matches one of these formats. We are not averse to opinion pieces but they need to be well-written and present more than one side in as balanced a manner as possible.
How-To Posts and Actionable Tips Posts
When readers finish this type of post, they should be able to take action on a particular subject and have very few questions left on how to do it.
Examples of How-To Posts:
Informational Posts
Answer readers’ questions about what a term means, or present the results of research into common problems. This also includes what a reader should know.
Examples of Informational Posts:
Examples of Guest Posts We Have Accepted in the Past
We have accepted (so far) the following topics for guest posts:
- How to Use Public Stocks as Business Loan Collateral – and Why You Want to
- Hard money funding (specifically, for house flippers)
- Here’s When to Dip Into Your Line of Credit
What We Will Not Accept
The following are not acceptable to us:
- Anything covered on our blog before. Please search our site before submitting your post.
- Anything which could be construed as a link-building scheme.
- Anything containing pirated images and/or images without clear permission to use. We are serious about copyright.
- Anything too promotional for your company or organization.
- Anything offensive or inaccurate. This is a strict no!
- Anything overly critical of individuals or companies. This is not a site for an axe to grind.
- Anything more than 25% written by AI. We’re looking for your contribution, not a computer’s.
- Anything too far afield of our blog and business.
Note: general business topics or social media or the like will be reviewed on a case by case basis. If you can show a strong connection between your proposed post and our blog and website, then the chances are far better that such a post would be accepted.
Credit Suite Guest Blogger Guidelines for Posts
- Posts must be at least 1,000 words long. Longer is generally going to be preferred, so long as the content is relevant and not padded.
- You can add images or ask us to handle that. Your images must have clear attribution and you must have permission to use them.
- Optimal image size for featured images: 1200 x 638
- Source citations: we use the Chicago Manual of Style.
- Links will generally be no-followed. Anchor text will be fine. As for which sites you can link to, we will review those on a case by case basis.
- Write captions for your own images.
- Write your own meta descriptions. We reserve the right to change your meta description.
- Write an accompanying tweet and short intro copy for Facebook/LinkedIn. We reserve the right to change these.
- All posts may include one of our videos (embedded) and a call to action. You can do this or ask us to handle it.
- We may add one of our short videos (embedded) to your post; if so, expect it in the body of the post.
Credit Suite Guest Blogger Guidelines for Submissions
Please email content [at] creditsuite [dot] com with the following:
- The completed post as a link to a Google Doc or an attached Word Doc.
- Image files (with attribution, separately). For reference, the optimal image size for featured images is 1200 x 638. Attach the images or link to where they can be found.
- A short author bio which includes up to one anchor text link to your own website. Author bios should not be more than about three sentences long. An author headshot is welcome, and strongly encouraged.
- We reserve the right to change all headlines, subheadings, body copy, author bios or bylines, and images.
- Once you submit a piece of writing, it then becomes the property of Credit Suite.
- If your post meets our standards and it dovetails with our content strategy, we will let you know your post will be published. That process may take up to four weeks.
- Due to the volume of requests we receive, we are unable to respond to all submissions.
After Submitting to Credit Suite
Average review time is currently two weeks.
How you will be notified: We will send an email letting you know if your piece was accepted.
What happens if refused: We will make an effort to let you know if the piece was not taken. But if you have not heard by four weeks, chances are good your submission has been refused. We do not give feedback on every submission or let every writer know what needed to be changed or improved to make the cut.
You are not permitted to republish your guest post to your own blog, Medium, LinkedIn, or Inbound.org account afterward. However, sharing the link to your post is always welcome.
The content team at Credit Suite reserves the right to edit and alter your guest blog content as we see fit, and update it in the future for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
Credit Suite also reserves the right to include calls to action to Credit Suite content, including but not limited to email newsletters, eBooks, white papers, and other downloadable content.
Thank You
And finally, a big thank you to all of the people making guest post submissions and putting themselves out there. We look forward to reading your submissions!
