Editorial & Article Style Guide
We thought it would be helpful for you to provide the following article guidelines. Naturally, not all guidelines should be used in every essay. They are general.
1. Find a way to relate your article to a person going through a major life transition. Remember who the MojoCircle audience is. You may want to discuss an issue faced by many people around midlife and how you resolved it or how you suggest it can be resolved.
2. Provide relevant and quality examples and supporting facts to backup your ideas and positions. Our readers do not appreciate mindless rants or unsubstantiated wisdom.
3. MojoCircle is not a pulpit. Sharing your passionate and unwavering perspectives is fine; remember your point of view isn’t the only one. We are here to inform, enthuse, support and stretch our thinking. What we do is simply provide the options for people’s consideration, and we do it well.
4. Use humour and intelligence. A happy, healthy, and successful MojoCircle reader requires humour and laughter. Note; if you cross the line into disparaging remarks or rude idioms we won’t publish your article.
5. Look to the past and future for inspiration. We’re not the first trailblazers suggesting how to deal with midlife crises. Many others have come before us and we have titans walking in our presence today pioneering the future. So find these folks and use them as models. Comment on their philosophies and tactics. Weave their teachings into your own stories. It’s a powerful way to bolster your credibility.
6. Actually read MojoCircle. If you submit an article for our consideration and have NOT read MojoCircle, I promise you we’ll know. Reading our policies and past articles is the best and truest way to get a feel for our style. You’d be surprised how many submissions we get that aren’t even close! Don’t be that person.
7. Write in a conversational-friendly voice. This may be the most important style element, so pay attention please. If you’ve never written for the web before (or you’ve been off line for a while) then understand that traditional writing styles may not do well here. Write in your real voice. Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Break up your article with sub-headlines, quotes, and other relevant yet entertaining titbits. Use bulleted and/or numbered lists. And use active voice!
Requirements for Guest Posting
Here are some general yet essential requirements that need to be followed.
- You must write all of the content yourself. No ghost writers allowed.
- No affiliate links are allowed. But you are permitted to link to supportive sites (including your own).
- If the article you submit has been published on other sites (including your own) you must inform us and give us a link to the original post.
Article length and structure:
Article Length 800 – 1200 words
Article Structure
Introduction: 60 – 200 words
Main Essay: 700 – 1400 words
Check it out: 60 – 100 words
Quick Tip / Action point: 100 – 200 words
Author Bio: 50 – 80 words
If you’re leveraging someone else’s idea, content or article – then source it. Link back to it and/or provide quotes in block-quote. Stealing is bad karma. Please don’t do it.
Editing Policy
We expect that the article you submit has been fully edited and PROOF READ to the best of your ability. Mind you, we don’t expect you to be an expert at this but a flaky, rough draft is unacceptable. We’ll examine your article for grammar and simple typo mistakes. We reserve the right to apply these edits as we find them.
Images Policy
The MojoCircle style of branding is the unique, creative, and sometimes funny images we use to lead our articles. You are encouraged to find an awesome image yourself for your article. But make sure it adheres to a creative commons license and is valid for re-use.
Further, if you use a creative commons licensed image (we recommend searching via Flickr.com) then you must cite this image in your article at the end.
Lastly, we reserve the right to change your image without notice if we feel there’s a better option and/or if you did not comply with creative commons requirement.
SEO Policy
We do our best to amp up our Google-juice with each and every article. And we appreciate your help to make each article its SEO best.
This means three things – (1) meta title, (2) meta description, and (3) meta keywords.
- A powerful title that is catchy, enticing, and filled with good keywords (see #3 below).
- A max 160(ish) character summary of what your article is about. Use active voice and as many of your strong keywords as possible.
- All the highly searched words and phrases that apply to your article.
We recommend using Google’s Keyword Search Tool and Google’s Wonder Wheel. Both are free to use and very easy.
We highly encourage you to submit the above three items with each article submission. It will go a long way to helping your odds of publication if you do. And if you don’t have a clue about SEO, now is a good time to start learning. It’s a valuable skill that will carry your writing career far.
Publication Policy
Please remember that your article submission is not a guarantee that we’ll publish it. If for any reason your article does not conform to our style requirements and MojoCircle standards and philosophies then we will not publish your article.
Acknowledgement
Our great thanks to Maya Mendoza & Savvy’n'Smart Magazine for inspiring our style guide.