LocaliQ Blog Contributor Guidelines

Our guest contributors are a collection of industry experts, marketers, and business owners who cover a range of topics from sales, marketing, data, and entrepreneurship.

Interested in contributing to our blog? Email Stephanie at stephanie.heitman@localiq.com with a subject line that includes [GUEST PITCH].

About the LocaliQ blog

Not super familiar with our blog? Not a big deal–here’s a little more information to help you understand the types of topics we cover and who we cover it for.

The LocaliQ audience

The LocaliQ blog is meant to help everyone from local business owners to advanced marketers learn more about marketing–in all its forms. Basically, if you have even a passing interest in marketing, we want to provide some kind of content you’ll be interested in.

Our content

Our goal is to provide high-quality content that makes marketing more accessible and easy to understand for our readers. We also want to provide the most relevant and up-to-date information, best practices, and tips available to help them make the most of their marketing.

Here are some types of content we like to receive from guest contributors:

First-person accounts of online marketing strategies or tests.
How-to guides for marketing techniques.
Lists of successful and compelling ad strategies or types.
Industry-specific advertising advice.
Examples/templates to provide starting points or inspiration.

NOTE:

The LocaliQ blog doesn’t accept previously published, sponsored, or overly promotional content.
We only accept posts that are timely, accurate, original, and resonate with our audience.

How to pitch to us

We prefer topic pitches over completed submissions so we can better track and more quickly respond to them. That being said, here are some best practices that will help us to respond to you faster and, if your topic is a go, get it published sooner.

Familiarize yourself with the LocaliQ blog. Read a few of our posts to get an idea of the style and format we prefer as well as our tone.
Come with ideas. Bring us your ideas (and title suggestions!).
Check to see if we’ve published your topic already. If we’ve already published a similar post, consider whether you could write something more up-to-date, or approach it with a fresh angle or different perspective.

The best way to see if we’ve covered your topic is to do a site search on Google:

(Pro tip: Don’t include the brackets in your search.)

Tell us about yourself. If you have specific experience or expertise that makes you the person to write this post, tell us! Also, if you have existing writing samples or publications, please share a few!
Include [GUEST PITCH] in your subject line. This helps us with responding (and with knowing if you’ve read our guidelines already!).

What we need in your guest post

Once we agree on a topic and you get the go-ahead to start writing, keep these tips in mind:

Adequate length: 1,500-3,500 words please!
Good formatting. We like a clear introduction, strong H2s, and a conclusion. Our writing tone is approachable yet knowledgeable, so don’t be afraid to add a little personality!
Keyword-targeted content. We’re all about SEO, so we want content that is optimized around a keyword with strong volume.
LocaliQ links. We’ll add more internal links when we’re editing the post, but if you could add in about three LocaliQ links to start, that would be great!
A short bio at the end. Just 1-3 sentences about who you are, what you do, and/or what you’re passionate about. Feel free to include links to your business website, LinkedIn profile, or social media handles.
Images. THIS IS A BIG ONE! All LocaliQ posts include one image early in the introduction, and then one per every 200-300 words. This helps us get your post published more quickly. The images don’t have to be original (although those are great) or earth-shattering.

Note: You may include up to two links to your blog or service (or a blog/service you support or represent). The managing editor will have the final say over which links are included. Submissions that require too many edits will not be accepted.

Feeling stuck with images?

Sometimes including images is a no-brainer, and other times it takes a lot of brainpower to find the “right” fit.

Here’s help you if you get stuck:

Types of images. All kinds of images can work for a blog post, but here are some ideas:
- Screenshots of a process you are describing.
- The graph or visual depiction of a stat you provided (just provide a link to the source).
- Real-world examples of the strategy or tactic you’re describing.
- Recycled LocalLiQ or WordStream images — do a site search in Google images (site:localiq.com “image you’re looking for” or site:wordstream.com “image you’re looking for” (without the quotes)) to see if we have one you can recycle.
The best way to provide images:
- Paste them right into the Google or Microsoft doc and we can save them off of there.
- BUT, keep image sizes no smaller than 800px wide as much as possible (in some scenarios it just won’t be applicable or necessary;).
- When taking screenshots, zoom in and then take the screenshot to avoid a too-small or pixelated image. If you’re using an external monitor, move the window to your regular screen for the best quality image.

Guest posts we love

The best guest posts include great topics, interesting titles, unique perspectives, high-quality images, actionable advice, and aim to engage readers. Here are a few examples of exceptional guest posts that we love from both LocaliQ and WordStream:

What to expect

Interested in pitching us an idea? Here’s what to expect.

You’ve pitched–now what?

Once you’ve emailed your pitch, response time will vary depending on the current content calendar, but we do our best to respond in 1-2 weeks. If you haven’t received a response after 2 weeks, please feel free to follow up!

Your pitch was accepted–Yay! Now what?

Once we’ve reviewed your pitch, we’ll let you know whether we’ll consider a draft. If the draft meets our quality standards, you can expect the following:

Edits. Because the content we publish varies so significantly, our process for editing guest posts isn’t strictly defined. We do edit the content to ensure it matches the LocaliQ style guide (generally following AP Style). If we need anything on your end–a better quality image, a change to a section, or further elaboration on something, we’ll let you know. If the post requires too many edits or doesn’t align with our audience, we will not be able to accept it.
Exposure. The LocaliQ blog is growing significantly in traffic MoM and benefits from domain authority from our sister site, WordStream.
Social promotion. We promote our content on the LocaliQ, WordStream, and ReachLocal social sites. We’ll ask for your social information to tag you in our promotion so that you can share it with your network, too.