Use A Pro™ would like to thank you very much for your interest in contributing to your editorial material. If you’re a writer who has professional experience in our following categories and likes to share your expertise and experience in engaging ways (i.e. use of stories); then we would be honored for you to review the criteria below and submit your application as a guest blogger on our member network.

Content
Your articles must consist of one of eight areas:

  • Business
  • Financial
  • Home Services
  • Information Technology
  • Legal
  • Marketing & Sales
  • Real Estate
  • Virtual Assistant

Here are the 4 guiding steps to have your article(s) be accepted for publication on our site:

1. Must be original work: Any existing work cannot be repurposed unless it is considerably different from the original work.
We ask you to agree to the terms and conditions of this website and to agree to our guests posts agreement when posting to the Use A Pro™ Community Business Network; Plus, we ask that you summarize your work on your own site and link back to the article here on our site.

2. Article length: We ask that you submit articles with at least 750 words in length and a maximum of 1500 in length.

3. Formatting: Your article(s) readability will be helped in the following ways:

a. Use short sentences: Most readers online are skimmers.

b. Add lots of subheads: Use a lot of Bolded Subheads to break up your sections. Be creative in your subheads, as this will lure readers to read your
article. Do not use second level subheads as this is not easy formatting for a blog.

c. Highlight key text: Emphasize key points by using bold or italicized words. Mix and use as needed.

d. Link sources: When referring to a name or company in your article or even a quote, include a link to the source. This way a reader can discover more.
When it comes to actual words in MS Word, please hotlink them. If you don’t know how to do this, then this simple format will do as follows:
Mike Stelzner

[link to http://twitter.com/mike_stelzner] is a white paper guy and author of “Writing White Papers.”
Note: When it comes to linking, use the “highlighted feature.”
Do not place links in subheads, image captions but in body text only.
Use the original link: promotional links are prohibited to your website, product or service. Also, no affiliate links, shortened links (i.e. bit.ly) are allowed either.
Links from your Google reader or other source are not to be used either.

e. R.I.T.E. sharable content: When it comes to writing the R.I.T.E. content, it must be written in such a way that it produces the attraction for being shared.
Relevant: know your audience’s active needs and meet them by providing details that your readers are looking for.
Interesting: How-tos provide answers to big questions in a step-by-step manner, X,- number of tips/ways, X – number of examples; or give detailed instructions and
showcase new ideas.
Timely: provide your readers with educational information that is applicable for today.
Entertaining: write articles in a conversational style that encourages comments, builds user action to draw attraction.

f. Pitch free articles: avoid trying to talk about what you sell in your content (use this infrequently). If content appears to be a pitch, it won’t be shared.

g. Pictures or ScreenShots: when writing your articles produce an image for every 300-400 words of written material. Also, write a caption in sentence form in your word document
for each image.
IMPORTANT: photos should not exceed 480 pixels wide for large photos and 250 pixels for smaller ones. Make sure your screenshots are legible when reducing your images down to 480 pixels for our website.
Photos should not be placed at the very beginning of your articles.
When emailing your articles, please attach your images outside of your Word doc. Send them in png or jpeg format, so that, we can upload them to our server.

4. Beyond Your Opinions: Don’t write articles about your opinions. Articles fail if you don’t give readers what they want. People don’t care about your thoughts on a concept, rant or selected outlooks. What they care about is themselves and how to solve their problems/needs.

Submissions:

  • Please submit your application below for consideration. Please allow 2-3 weeks for a response.
  • Please include your following address to your blog, website, facebook, twitter, etc., along with what you do in two or three sentences.
  • Please include the size of your readership in all arenas of your social world (i.e. blog, facebook, twitter, etc.)
  • Please confirm that you agree to engage with our readers who post comments to your articles. This expected and non-negotiable as readers want engagement with the author.
  • Please include your article in the body of the e-mail. DO NOT use attachments. Also, please do not include HTML coding.
  • Please limit your by links to two. One can be to your blog or website. One can be to your bio or About page. Another could be to your twitter username (optional).

Disclaimer:

We comprehend the amount of energy that goes into creating an article. However, even though you have written an article and submitted it for approval does not mean it will be published on our network. The ones that are chosen to be published on this network will be ones that we believe will bring value and meet a need. We understand the work that it takes to write a blog post. However, the fact that you have written an article and submitted it to us does not obligate us to publish it. The only guest articles we will publish are those that in our sole judgment add value to our readers.

Furthermore, if we do not approve of your article, we will not explain why we didn’t accept it. This would take to much time to respond and therefore, you have the freedom to use it elsewhere if not hearing from us within three weeks.

By you filling and submitting this form, you have agreed to the terms and conditions of this company site.