Our Readers Want You to Share Your “Braininess!”
Writing content for BrainSpeak isn’t hard but it’s not a mindless proposition either. So, let’s talk a bit about what we look for in a great BrainSpeak guest post.
First of all BrainSpeak content is quick-reading, focused and “useful”
Is there something about one or more of our topics that’s tough for most people to understand or do but comes relatively easily to you? Or, is there something you’re passionate about and you’ve spent your valuable time mastering? Those are both great topic angles for a BrainSpeak Magazine post.
Simply put, our readers want ideas they can act on. They want posts that help them improve their thoughts, feelings, and personal value immediately.
BrainSpeak articles need to present a real benefit to our audience in terms of the mind-body-spirit-life issues our readers care about.
BrainSpeak content is relevant
Obviously, posts for BrainSpeak need to be relevant to our central focus.
As our homepage subtitle implies, BrainSpeak is focused on providing our readers with new and relevant ways to become “Smarter. Faster. Better.” Our most popular articles are fun, informational, actionable and relevant to that statement.
If you have written for us before, you will find that our guidelines have changed. Our readers spoke up about what they wanted and we listened!
Our top-level categories for article consideration are:
- Smarter – This can include topics like improving memory, creativity, or strategic thinking. Increasing brain fitness or removing chronic stress. Non-geeky and conversational.
- Faster – This includes shortcuts, organization and time management. Life hacks, Bio-hacks, Brain hacks – ways to make life easier, free up time for the important things.
- Better – This category includes meditation and life balance. What needs to be “fixed” to make life more enjoyable. This is where gratitude and spirituality can come in .
There are almost limitless subtopics in this list but if you’re writing about the 2014 Corvette, the latest version of the iPhone, or Miley Cyrus, you may want to find another venue. Unless, that is, you can associate your subject with one of our primary topics mentioned above in a logical and useful way. App reviews could be appropriate for any of the above categories.
What We’re Looking For…
To write a great post for BrainSpeak, it might help to know what’s worked for us in the past. Our most popular articles are well-written, fun, informational, actionable and relevant.
If we were to suggest a formula, it would be that our most popular articles are brief 400 to 650 word teaching pieces that consist of an intro, 3-7 quick, short bullet points and an outro or summary about the usefulness of the items. Some example are:
- Lists – “7 New Brain Training Apps For 2014”
- Tips – “Top 3 Ways to Boost Your Memory”
- Case-studies – “4 Crazy Stories of Great Meditation Applications”
- Humor – “This Year’s Worst Psychiatrist Jokes Are…”
- How-to’s – “How to Shake The Winter Blues In 4 Easy Steps”
Word counts are simply guidelines although we find that many readers drop out at around the 700 word mark. When submitting, please pay attention to tone, style and clarity. We love it if your writing has a little “attitude.” Be opinionated. Be interesting. Tell a story. Spend some time on your headline and please run your piece through spell check.
Authors vs. Article Marketers and SEO
BrainSpeak Magazine is looking for “expert authors” who are knowledgeable in their subject matter and wish to promote themselves and their brand and not SEO link marketers.
So, as you would imagine, we will not publish poorly-written outsourced articles or those containing links to strictly commercial sites, affiliate product sites or to web properties that are unrelated to you as an author or the list of categories above. We want to publicize you, your work and your web properties as long as they are on-topic and provide more value to our readers so if you are looking for the SEO link then this is not your venue.
We will provide links to authors’ sites and social channels. Links not to the author’s website, will be no-follow since Google has openly said they will penalize sites with keyword text links pointing to non-relevant or low quality sites.
For the definitive last word from Google see: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/guest-blogging/
An Easy Way to Start: Submitting Article Derivatives of Previously Published Articles.
For the most part, we are looking for original, unpublished articles.
The exception to this rule is if you are submitting a minor rewrite of an article previously published elsewhere. If you plan to do this, we’d like you to change the title, first two, and last paragraphs before submitting. In this case the submitted derivative article only will belong to BrainSpeak Magazine. Many of our guest authors have started out very successfully with derivative works.
If you meet our criteria, give us a shout via the contact form below and let us know what you’d like to write about and why you think it’s a good fit. It’s always a good idea to point us to a post or two on your own blog or elsewhere that you’re particularly proud of although it’s not a requirement.
Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you!