CC courtesy of futurespace via Flickr
We want to encourage more women in business to blog. It’s a great way to promote your business, learn new skills and inspire and support others. Prowess 2.0 offers free blogging opportunities to women who run their own small business and to not-for-profit organisations that support women in business. See below for our submission tips and guidelines.
We also consider submissions from ethical companies that support women in business. If you would like to discuss the options available please get in touch.
Prowess 2.0 Women in Business is the UK’s top-ranked online centre for women’s business information, support and inspiration.
- Prowess 2.0 is Google Page Rank 6 – the highest ranking of any UK women in business site. It is ranked 234,000 globally by Alexa (9,200 in the UK).
- Prowess 2.0 attracts 84,000 visitors each year, 7,000 per month (Google Analytics). Awstats puts visitors at 19,000 pcm (230,000 pa).
- Our monthly e-newsletter is circulated to over 2,000 women in business. All of whom have subscribed directly.
Guidelines for Prowess 2.0 Bloggers
Relevance. The post needs to be in some way relevant to women who are starting, growing or managing businesses. Approaches can include: tips, advice, information, shared experience, analysis, comment etc. You could also check-out our editorial calendar for ideas about the key themes we’ll be looking at in the coming months. We also welcome ‘stories’ and case studies of real women in business – see here for more details.
Readability. Use plain English. Reading it out loud helps, write as you speak. Short sentences, bullet points and lists all make articles easier to read and scan.
Your blog post should be original and unique. It must not have been already published elsewhere. You may re-post articles on your own website a few weeks after publishing but you MUST say it was previously published on Prowess 2.0 and link to the original article on Prowess 2.0.
Reasonable length – minimum of 500 words, max around 1200 words.
Links – URL links to high-quality sources of information you mention in the article are welcome. We will provide an author credit with a link to your website.
No overt commercial plugs. A good quality article that’s really useful is a better plug for your services than an outright advert. By all means, do write about your area of expertise, just don’t use it to bang on about your own services or product – that’s an advert not a blog post. It’s a fine line, but aim to keep it subtle! Your profile and business will be promoted at the end of your article.
How to submit. Please send your article as an attachment, ideally in ‘Word’. Do not use fancy formatting, please keep the layout very simple. Use single spacing after full stops. Include a short credit and link to the author’s site.
Title and teaser. Please suggest a title and a short teaser for the excerpt, eg:
- The ‘not so secret’ secret behind SEO
- The latest thinking on how to get your website higher up the Google search rankings.
Images/ Media – Good pictures make a huge difference – they help, but they’re not vital. Please make sure any images or media used are royalty free. Stock XCHNG and Foter are good sources of free images. Provide a ‘credit’ for the photographer if available and a URL link to the source if appropriate. Articles featured on our home page ‘carousel’ need photos that are landscape and at least 595 mm wide. If you are sending photos, please attach them as a .jpeg to your email.
Editing
All posts will be reviewed before being published. We may sharpen up the headline and make a few minor tweaks. Anything more than that will be discussed with you by email and completed or approved by you before publication. If the article just isn’t right for Prowess 2.0 we’ll let you know and give you some helpful feedback.
To get started
To get started, first please send a brief summary of your proposed blog (eg. headline and 3-5 bullet points) to editor@prowess.org.uk
If that seems to be on the right lines we will invite you to submit your article. We can’t guarantee that we will accept all submissions. It has to be right for Prowess 2.0. But we will aim to give everyone who submits useful feedback and encouragement.
Contributor listings
One-off contributors have a sentence at the end of their article with information about themselves and a link to their business website.
If you intend to make more than one contribution, we can set you up as a contributor with a biography box. For the bio box we need the following:
- A square head and shoulders photo of you in electronic format (jpeg).
- A short biography or promotional text – max. 50 words.
- A URL for your own website and any social media links you want in your profile (please provide the full http address for all links).
Submission Checklist
- Text is in a ‘Word’ attachment
- Headline
- Teaser
- Author credit and web address or bio box information
- Single spacing after full stops
- Read out loud for ‘readability
- You are sure that the article is original and exclusive to Prowess 2.0
- Optional – relevant photo to illustrate the article is attached as a .jpeg.
Promotion
We want to develop a mutually supportive community of women’s business bloggers. We’ll do our best to promote your articles through our newsletter and social media - please do the same, for your own and fellow bloggers stuff. You can also raise your profile as a blogger by promoting your link with Prowess 2.0 through your own websites and profile pages. Link to: Prowess 2.0 Women in Business – the leading online centre for UK women in business. Women in business support, resources and news.
