Blueprint Contribution Guidelines

Thanks for seeking out guidelines about submitting a guest post for the Tiny blog, Blueprint.

Occasionally we accept professional contributions from outside writers, so if you’d like to submit a request, here are our general guidelines:

Categories: All our Blueprint articles have been restructured into seven areas of pillar content (or categories). These pillars are being rolled out across Q1 2022, therefore all article submissions need to fall within one of these seven pillars – The World of WYSIWYG, How-to Use TinyMCE, Open Source, Content Marketing & Design, Product-Led Growth, The Tiny Way. Please investigate what types of posts and topics fall within each pillar and the tone-of-voice required.

Audience: All guest posts should be tailored towards either one of our three audiences – Software Developers, SaaS Product Managers or Content Designers/Writers. Each article submission should note the audience, which of the five levels of reader awareness that the article satisfies, the problem it’s trying to solve and the keyword being targeted.

Product Focus: Tiny has two key products:

1. TinyMCE Rich Text Editor (and its range of 50+ plugins) - authoring tool

2. Setka - design tool

While guest articles are not required to focus or promote these two products (and their plugins) it is desirable that the article is reflective of the tools and practices used by developers, designers and product managers who actively work with these types of tools.

Length and Content: Articles should be evergreen in nature and fall between 800-1500 words in length, should contain actionable advice or detailed insights and should be written to a professional standard. All technical posts should include code snippets. Please review our posts published over the past few months, to understand the quality required.

Author: The author of the post should be either a working developer, working content designer, working content writer, subject matter expert or connected to the rich text editing or design sectors of their respective industries. Any experience level is welcome.

Purpose: The focus of the article should be to educate, inform or inspire our readers. Any article with self-promotion will not be considered, though links to helpful resources, research or articles are encouraged, as long as they are verifiable sources and not solely your own work.

Formatting: Articles should include H1, H2, H3 and H4 headings as well as featuring lists, headers, bullets and/or other engaging formatting. Articles can be submitted in Google Docs, Microsoft Word, or Markdown file formats.

Ownership and Originality: Articles should be unique to the Tiny Blueprint blog. They should not be published elsewhere online, although you're welcome to tease the article on your own site, newsletter or social media, with a link to the full article on Blueprint. When promoting your article, please attribute the content by noting the Blueprint blog as the canonical source, with an anchor text link to the original Blueprint post URL.

Self-Promo: Please include a brief bio with your article that contains a headshot and link to your website, blog or social media. Only one author bio backlink is available.

Why submit to Tiny's Blueprint?

• Blueprint averages 60K page views a month, while our monthly newsletter reaches over 100K developers. Guest posting on Blueprint exposes your work to our audience, increases your domain/subject authority and improves your own site's SEO via backlinks.
• If published, your articles are included in our social media coverage, are tied into Blueprint's cross-link network and there's an opportunity to be included in our monthly developer newsletter.

Before submitting, please note:

• We maintain the right to edit and adapt your guest article (ie. spelling, grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, formatting, links, tone of voice) as we see fit, and update it in the future for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
• We also reserve the right to choose both an image and post title that we feel best fits our blog and its readers, as well as CTAs to Tiny content and activities.
• We maintain the right to reject submissions or to request that you revise and resubmit to better tailor the article to our readers (you can decide to decline our request and the post then returns to you for publishing elsewhere).
• We do not republish anything that has been published elsewhere.
• Articles are required to include proper attribution of data, quotations and any outside content referenced in the article. Note: All data should have originated in the last two years.
• No more than one link to your company's website/blog can be included within the body of the article and it cannot link to a promotional piece/sales page for your company or a link-building scheme. A total of two backlinks (1 x author bio and 1 x article body) are available to guest authors.
• Please link to at least 3-5 other related Blueprint posts in your pieces - preferably from within the same content pillar/category.
• Depending on the rate of submissions received and our existing editorial calendar, we may not be able to publish your article immediately upon acceptance. However, before accepting your submission, we would share with you a proposed publishing date (this may move if our editorial publishing calendar so requires).
• By contacting us with your submission, you represent and warrant that your article is your original work and does not contain any objectionable or libelous material, or breaches copyright.

How to submit an idea and article to Blueprint:

To submit, please:

• Email us at marketing@tiny.cloud with 2-3 topic ideas and a short synopsis of each suggestion. Supply links to your own website/blog and links to at least 3 related articles you've personally authored. We'll review your ideas and respond within 14 days.
• If we don't feel your article idea is a good fit for Blueprint, then we hold no legal right to publish the material, and you're welcome to submit the article elsewhere or publish it on your own site.
• If your article idea is accepted, a first draft of the article needs to be supplied within 30 days of acceptance and if any edits/reworks are required on the first draft, they must be returned to us within 14 days. Please expect that two rounds of edits may be required to satisfy our readers' needs and standards.
• If published, you agree to not republish your guest post in any digital or printed form, on any websites, blogs, Medium or other platforms and it will permanently reside within our blog archives.
• If your submission is published, you agree to accept all terms as stated in our guidelines.

Once again, thank you for your interest in writing for Blueprint. If you have any questions, please reach out to us and we're excited to hear back from you soon.