content guidelines

Our Audience

Our Journal is aimed at individuals and companies who are interested in form and function, and have the desire to purchase responsibly

Topics that perform best with our audience revolve around:

  •  Interesting articles around design

  •   Sustainability

  •   Entrepreneurship

  •   Doing good

  • We pride ourselves in making content that is:

  •  practical

  •  backed up with details and visuals (infographics, screencaps, examples)

  •   and actionable (do this)

    Checklist for valuable content:

  1. Is it useful? Does it have purpose?
    Tip:     ​Write to solve a single issue or pain point for a single, specific person.

  2. Is it a new idea? Is it a new take on an old idea or something completely fresh altogether?

  3. Valuable? Will a reader get value from it? How will their life be better after reading?

  4. Shareable? Is there a reason for readers to share it amongst friends and other communities?

  5. Eye catching? Does the headline make you want to read it?

     6. Flow? Does the content logically flow from one point to the next?

     7. Long(er) content with dot points and checklists usually performs the best.

     8. Is it entertaining? People don’t keep reading things that don’t spike their enjoyment levels at all. So chuck in a joke or two, a pun here or there, and you’ll be sweet.

        Style guide

  •   Minimum of 800 words.

  •   Use ​American English​​ (mom, colour, organise) rather than​ British English

    (mum, colour, organise) ​unless​ it’s for SEO purposes (Stay at home mums,

    colours for branding)

  •   Don’t be too formal – conversations are friendly and not formal

  •   Focus on the reader. Use ​you​​ and ​your​​ and refrain from ​me, my, our, us ​​and we​​.

  •   Use bolded sub-headers

  •   Numerals (1, 32, 170)​ instead of​​ numbers (one, thirty-two, one hundred and

    seventy).

  •   Cite any statistics or factual statements with a link to the resource

  •   Title

            Intro

  •  Should have around 60 characters.

  •   Always include your seed phrase in it matching (as much as possible)

    the opening of your article

  •   Intriguing - raise interest

    • BAD: eBay SEO for beginners

    • GOOD: eBay SEO: A step-by-step guide to getting on top of

      searches.

  •   Use this: ​https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer

  •   200 or so words. Engaging, raising questions that the reader has and encouraging them to read the rest of the article.

  •   At the end of your introduction, tell the reader what they will know by the end of the article

    Conclusion

● Create a conclusion that summarises what the reader learned

SEO Guide

● Don’t stuff keywords. Readability is more important than pleasing Google. This means avoiding cramming keywords into every sentence.

  •   Use ​Google Keyword Planner​ or ​Ahrefs​ (or similar) to find a main seed keyword.

  •   Use LSI and long tail keywords.

  •   Use keywords in H2 headings and dot points where possible.

  •   Link to a maximum of 5 external domains per article

  •   Link to a maximum of 2 URLs from the one domain per article (2 links to

    your domain maximum - 1 to the high quality blogpost (no commercial links accepted) + 1 link to your website in your bio).

    Originality / Uniqueness

    The article you submit cannot be posted anywhere else.

    By publishing a guest post with andthen.design, you are giving up rights to publish the same content elsewhere - meaning you are agreeing not to publish the same article on other websites. This includes Medium, Inbound.org, etc.

    By publishing with andthen.design, you give us permission to fine-tune your submission for SEO purposes.

    You also give us permission to share the article on social media and tag:

  •   you

  •   the company you represent

  •   other companies, brands or individuals you mention in the article.

    Images

    If you have images you think would fit, that always works better than us going and finding them on our own, but we obviously will if need be!
    Images should be square or landscape. Infographics or mobile screenshots are an exception.

    Proper image file types - ​​Use this to determine which file type is appropriate for the images in your post.
    JPEG -​​ Good for photos of people or places or things, bad for screenshots.
    PNG - ​​Good for screenshots of apps and websites with gradients.

    GIF - ​​Good for memes and explanations. Watch out for small images inside a screenshot like a chat avatar or a gradient like the top bar of a browser. Images should not exceed 2MB. Resize with ​https://tinypng.com​.

    Editing

    When reviewing keep an eye out for:

  •   Filler words like - I think, etc, things, stuff, so on.

  •   Being negative or self deprecating - it’s good to be critical for comedy, but

    be gentle.

  •   Long sentences without punctuation. Long, over-complicated sentences.

    Put your article through ​Hemingway App​. Try to avoid red sentences.

  •   Babbling, ranting and going off-topic.

 

Once you have created your story in adherence to the above guidelines please submit this to : hello@andthen.design