Editorial Guidelines • Content Harmony Brand Guidelines

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Our editorial guidelines cover how we approach our blog and other content marketing efforts, and special instructions for how to approach those content types.

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Want to become a guest contributor on Content Harmony's Blog? We're looking for talented SEO & content marketing authors to contribute!

Content Harmony Contributor Info & Application

Editorial Best Practices

For our blog (especially outside contributors), some of the guidelines mentioned in our Tone & Voice Guidelines can be a bit more relaxed. All contributors should still adhere to the following guidelines:

Show don’t tell

Sometimes a shorter article with an amazing chart is more compelling than the words to describe what the chart conveys.
Likewise, we’d rather have a list of 5 things with solid examples than a list of 35 things with no examples.
While we maintain strong opinions about our core topics, we back those up with relatable examples that demonstrate why we hold that point of view.

Stay positive

We want to build people up and highlight great work, not tear people down or call people out.

Subject Matter

Content Harmony is focused on covering the following core topics:

Content Strategy
Content Creation
Content Promotion
Content Measurement
Content Operations
Content Approaches & Tactics
Content Pruning
Content Briefs
Content Tools & Apps
Content Agency & Consulting Topics
In-house Content Marketing Team Topics
On-Page SEO
Search Intent

Types of Blog Content We Want To Publish

Our top priority for Content Harmony's editorial content is to share something our peers would love.

While many of our content projects are designed to rank for specific target keywords, we also highly value industry thought leadership even if it never ranks for a single keyword in Google.

Instructional / How-To Posts:

Examples: How to Build Amazing Content Briefs, How To Update & Refresh Old Website Content (And Why)

These posts teach our audience something new. They should have clear walkthroughs and high-quality screenshots or graphics.

Curated Posts:

Examples: 10 Customer Persona Tools & Templates, Type of Content Hubs, 36 Great Brand Guidelines Examples

These posts are built upon curating lists of resources and adding unique commentary to them. In a post like Types of Content Hubs, it may include a combination of demonstrating a framework and showing great examples.

Guides & “Introduction to [Topic]” Posts:

Examples: What Is A Content Brief (And Why Is It Important)?

These give a good high-level overview of topics. Primarily different from Instructional / How-To posts in that they don't focus on the process of doing something, they focus on introducing the reader to the concepts.

Case Studies, Teardowns, & Examples:

Examples: Our Content Marketing Examples, eg YourMechanic’s Most & Least Expensive Cars To Maintain and MakeSpace’s 53 Insanely Clever Bedroom Storage Hacks And Solutions

These are walk-throughs of content marketing & SEO examples, showing both new and advanced users how a company does a great job on a digital marketing effort.

Types of Content We Don’t Publish

In the previous section, we touched upon the topics that we like to publish i.e. those that we think our audience will love.

However, there are a few content formats that we don't publish:

News & Product Updates

While news stories like Google algorithm updates and other announcements that affect content & SEO are undoubtedly important for our core audience, they’re not a good fit for Content Harmony’s blog.

We aim to publish long-form authoritative content that introduces a new framework or way of thinking. We can’t add much in the form of differentiation when it comes to news/feature updates, so it’s not a publishing priority for us.

Digital Marketing Trends

The larger digital marketing community is interested in things like annual roundups, such as Google’s Year in Search, App Annie’s State of Mobile, and Hootsuite’s Global Overview Report.

While we acknowledge that this is tremendously valuable information and that a lot of work went into curating and publishing those insights, we prefer to produce these types of posts internally and don’t typically accept trend pieces from outside contributors.

Editorial Process

Content Harmony is happy to accept pitches from outside contributors. We highly encourage getting the post topic or title approved by us before you write the full piece to make sure it’s a good match.

Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis — with an estimated turnaround time of three business days after first received. All submitted articles are first viewed by the head of content and then sent to our Founder, Kane, for final approval.

We send an email confirmation to contributors when their article is approved for publication. If it is their first approval, we ask for a short bio and a headshot to get them set up on our CMS.

An emailed acceptance does not, however, mean that the article will be published in its original form. Content Harmony reserves the right to edit the article according to things like style, tone, format, structure, graphics, and more. We will also audit all included links to ensure that they are relevant and useful for our audience.

Contributor Expectations

Content Harmony is happy to accept outside contributors from industry writers, thought leaders, and practitioners. Please contact us for pitches or additional questions.

Contributor & Content Requirements

While Content Harmony does not have a specific word range for its published content, we find that our sweet spot lies anywhere between 2,000-4,000 words. Since our topics and editorial expectations require writers to go in-depth, we find that this range is an adequate estimation of how many words they might need to adequately cover the topic at hand.

We prefer that all submitted articles be sent in a Google Doc format. This allows contributors to see where edits have been made as well as answer any comments that the editors might have. We ask contributors to include relevant screenshots, charts, graphics, and other useful images wherever possible. Stock photos are not necessary and won’t typically be included in the final publication unless they add value or humor in some way.

While Content Harmony retains the original copyright to all published content, we’re okay if contributors want to publish the article on their personal websites or Medium pages too. We ask that they include a backlink at the beginning pointing back to the original post on Content Harmony’s blog.

Contributor Background

Since we expect all blog contributions to be at an expert level, it is our understanding that all potential contributors to the blog have professional experience with our core topics or have written about those before.

Please don’t submit posts on topics that you have no experience with, since it is unlikely to be approved. When submitting a post for the first time, we ask that you include some links to previously published work so that we’re able to establish your authority in the field. If no links are available, we prefer that you send us a short bio demonstrating your work experience.

Comments & Promotion

All new blog content on Content Harmony is sent to our email list, posted on Twitter, and shared by team members.

We encourage contributors to share in communities where they are present and reply to comments on the post as and when they notice them.

We’d also encourage and appreciate it if you shared the content on your social channels, and please feel free to add it to your portfolio or link back to your article in the future as you write additional pieces about that topic for other sites.