Write for us: Guest post on our digital marketing blog

Are you a passionate writer or expert and want to share your knowledge? Become a member of the Dragon Digital Marketing community and inspire small business owners to grow with the power of great digital marketing. We believe in sharing and giving and educating others. If you share our interest in small business marketing - write for us!

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What we’re looking for (and what we're not looking for)

Yes, you. We’re always looking for new authors for our digital marketing blog. If you want to share your knowledge about all things digital marketing, got an idea that will challenge our readers and move the marketing industry forward, or want to share a fresh perspective on a topic, we want to hear about it.

We’ll be honest, though: writing for us takes work. We want your article to be of the highest quality.

Please note that we only publish long form content that is very detailed, thorough and comprehensive. Our goal is that a reader does not need to read any other blog articles about a topic and can find all they possibly need to know on our site. This is why we love the skyscraper technique by Brian Dean. (Learn more: https://youtu.be/263xIymvLl4) We understand that you may not be able to contribute such thorough masterpieces, which is why you are more than welcome to contribute just a passage to an existing blog post as an add-on.

If you want to write about a topic we don't already have a blog post about, please contribute a skyscraper post for higher chances of getting accepted. Otherwise, please contribute to an existing blog post to have higher chances of getting accepted. A niche edit or contribution to an existing article does not come with an author bio but you can still insert one link to your website. When you write a whole skyscraper blog post, you can insert multiple links to your website and get an author bio as well.

Don’t feel like you have to complete your entire article before pitching it to us. You may submit an idea, a draft, or a finished article. Feel free to also include a short pitch of about a paragraph or two that summarizes your argument and tells us why your article matters to small business owners. You'll get feedback about your submission and we'll help you because we want your article to be at its best. We're also happy to discuss if you're not sure if your guest blog fits our guidelines but you still think our readers will love it.

Our guidelines: Here are a few tips to get your guest blog post accepted

1. Make it thorough and comprehensive
• Aim for 1,000 to 4,000+ words, depending on the subject
• The more thorough, comprehensive, detailed and helpful your article is, the better
• The length should make it more valuable, not watery
2. Links to your website and social media profiles
• The use of self-serving or self-promotional links is limited to one link per contribution to an existing article. When you contribute a new skyscraper blog post, you can insert multiple links to your website and get an author bio as well.
• Yes, the backlinks are do-follow links.
• No, not all pages are eligible to link to. You can link to relevant, high-quality, valuable and user-friendly content pages that offer the reader an opportunity to learn more about a directly related topic the article itself can’t cover in depth. Pages that promote offers that are in direct competition to the offers of the Dragon Digital Marketing agency are generally ineligible because it would harm our own business to include them.
3. Disclose any affiliations, relationships or partnerships you may have
• Including affiliate links or links to your own website and other offers is absolutely okay, if you disclose it with a statement like "As an {affiliate, partner, owner, employee, etc.} of {Company X}, I earn a small commission from qualifying purchases at no added cost to you."
4. Read our blog
• Try to get a sense of what we publish and develop a feeling for our brand language and brand voice
5. Consider what our readers are looking for
• Write for small business owners and not for digital marketers
6. Have a clear structure
• Convey your main message in your introductory paragraph as well as a hook and get people excited to keep reading
• Have a clear line of argumentation
• Maintain the correct structure of headings and subheadings (super important!)
7. Make it actionable
• Explain how to do a certain thing step-by-step instead of just telling readers to do a certain thing
• Make it concrete and give examples, details and metrics
• Use analogies, metaphors and mnemonics to deliver aha moments for readers who may be scratching their heads
8. Be human, add value and write with personality
• Say "you", "I" and "we" as much as you can and avoid "the", "people", etc.
• Tell a story, share things you have seen or experienced, lessons you've learned and problems you've solved
9. Give credit and prove your claims
• Cite your sources and link out to them within the main body of your article, no footnotes
• Link to a credible source for each number or stat you mention e.g. Statista, etc.
10. Write with a casual tone of voice and use simple language
• An 8-grader should be able to fully understand it
• You can use slang sparingly
11. Make sure you explain uncommon abbreviations in the first occurrence
• E.g. "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" instead of just "SEO" to keep it beginner-friendly
• Common ones like "e.g.", "i.e.", etc. are ok
12. Provide images
• Providing images is not a must but a big plus
• Feel free to design your own (branded) graphics, pictures, images, illustrations, GIFs, statistical diagrams, etc. or take your own photos. We are happy to include them and give you more brand awareness.
• Stock images are welcome too if they don't have a copyright
13. Be passionate

Here are a few no-gos that make us feel sad inside:

1. Press releases, sales pitches, plagiarism or unoriginal content
• We want our readers to benefit from fresh, original thought leadership content that teaches them something or educates them about a topic. If you want to guest blog here for promo, that's fine but you have to make it subliminal and indirect. Dragon Digital Marketing is all about being inbound and helpful and not salesy.
• The point of a guest blog post is to show that you are a thought leader. Your only goal should be to educate our readers on a topic that helps them out.
2. Directly promote your product, business or service
• You may mention it if you have some original research or other resources that are related and relevant to your article. If you add many links to your own or your client's product, business or service, our readers will pick this up as subliminal ads and simply won't like or share your post. They probably won’t even read until then end.
3. Include images you don't have the copyrights for
• Treat others as you wish to be treated and only use things with permission.
4. Links to low-quality or unethical sites
• We are BIG on user experience.

Our purpose

We help small business owners to get more visibility online and grow their business by showing them the power of inbound digital marketing and how to raise awareness and attract people to them.

Our content

We love to educate, motivate and inspire small business owners, entrepreneurs, startup founders and everybody who aspires to be that. Our content is not for marketing professionals. We believe in a growth mindset and learning and that everybody can do a little, because a little can make a big difference and can go a long way. We publish beginner-friendly content and aim to create actionable, helpful articles that explain complicated digital marketing tactics in simple terms.

Our tone

Our brand is friendly, upbeat, encouraging, optimistic and professional. We want to be seen as friends that give digital marketing tips in a conversational tone.

Topics we love

Our target audience is made up of entrepreneurs, small business owners, freelancers and startup founders, not digital marketing professionals.

Topic suggestions you can write about:

• Social Media Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Lead Generation
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
• Content Marketing
• Marketing Analytics
• Affiliate Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Native Advertising
• Marketing Automation
• Online PR
• Anything related to the topics mentioned above

Topics that aren't a good fit

We like to stick to our niche which is small business marketing.

Examples for topics we can't publish:

• Entrepreneurship
• Motivation
• Sales
• Web hosting
• Web development
• Paid advertising because we are advocates for organic inbound marketing

How to submit your guest blog post (and what happens next)

Email us your submission.

We prefer a Google Doc because it allows us to easily provide feedback and guidance directly within your draft.

Here’s what happens after you hit send:

1. We'll read and review your article and determine if it's a good fit for our digital marketing blog.
2. Once you've addressed our comments and send us your revised draft back, we'll review it again.
3. We'll let you know if we accept your article and when it goes live on our blog.

Frequently asked questions