You are an expert in a technology field, with plenty to share, but where can you post your opinion to draw the right attention to your brand and drive traffic to your website? Guest posting on well-established tech sites that already have a high circulation in and related to your field of expertise is a great approach. Not only will high quality and insightful blog posts help you to target a specific audience, they will also position you – and your brand - as a thought leader.
Here are our top ten B2B tech blog sites – in no particular order - that welcome high-quality external contribution and are worth getting content onto:
ITProportal – one of the very first technology websites to launch in the UK back in 1999, this media has grown to become one of the UK’s leading and most respected technology information resources. It has an online readership of 1 million people, so is a great place to land editorial.
You need to pitch an idea before writing it as this website only accepts editorial ideas that have been pre-approved. As ITProportal’s goal is to provide content that is engaging and relevant to its enterprise audience, you need to ensure that any content you pitch offers readers a new perspective on the technology industry or a different slant on technology products and the community itself – both here in the UK and abroad.
Once your pitch has been approved, you can write your article up, making sure your post is around 650 – 800 words maximum. You then submit it via an online form: http://www.itproportal.com/contribute/. Be warned though that any content submitted without prior approval will be immediately deleted and your email address may be blacklisted so you cannot submit any other emails to this media ever again.
Make sure that your editorial has a good photo to accompany it – in this case 900x500 pixels, but file sized smaller than 500KB.
Takes up to 4 weeks to go live as coverage is given by the editor on a first submitted, first published basis.
Dark Reading – a US-based online community that is considered by many to be one of the very top read enterprise security media in the world. A part of the Information Week family of publications, which has in excess of 220,000 visitors, Dark Reading has over 122,000 followers on Twitter and a growing social media following with over 8,000 likes on FaceBook and nearly 4,000 members on LinkedIN.
As it’s one of the big boys, Dark Reading only takes 100% exclusive content, so be warned – do not approach with any revised, rewritten or repurposed content of any kind. Any editorial content that you are submitting here need to be seriously high-level top tier content to even warrant consideration.
Guideline is that your editorial needs to fit into one of Dark Reading.com ten community topics: Attacks & Breaches, Application Security, Cloud Security, Data Leaks & Insider Threats, Endpoint Security & Privacy, Mobile Security, Network & Perimeter Security, Risk Management & Compliance, Security Management & Analytics, and Vulnerabilities and Threats.
Each community is led by editors that consider content for their particular section but the general blog community editor is Marilyn Cohodas. Marilyn prefers topics to be suggested to her directly for approval before you ever put pen to paper. Do that via email.
Content needs to be anecdotal or informative but conversational, not technical. Give Dark Reading’s audience a new bit of information or an example that they can relate to or a method of best practice to get them thinking and, more importantly, talking – after all, Dark Reading is an online community forum.
Be warned, from pitch to publication is not a quick progress. It can take a few weeks before publication.
Smashing Magazine – a German-based website written in English and dedicated to professional web designers and developers. To submit any content first read the guidelines:https://www.smashingmagazine.com/write-for-us/. Our top tips for getting content accepted here is to outline your ideas or send a rough draft, for consideration. Keep in mind that the audience is mainly web designers so sending copy on a topic such as security, for example, you really do need to connect the topic to the internet / website / information security and other interesting approaches that are a big deal / relevant to web designers and developers. All content for this website must be design-led (so referring to designers or developers at all times) and – insider tip – the editor wants best practice, detailed step by step instruction articles rather than general overviews or insights. A good tip for this site is to review similar editorials that are on the topics you want to provide content on to take a leaf from – for example, using security again, Smashing Magazine mostly covers security when talking about WordPress or payments so take the approach of a tips guide on how web designers can use HTTP/2 for security.
SC Magazine – is a leading security website that takes guest content on a three month exclusive basis only – so it can’t even go up on your website until after the exclusivity period has ended. If you want to repurpose an article that has appeared elsewhere, such as your website or on another media’s website, you will definitely have to rewrite it to make SC’s versionsignificantly different from the other version(s). Also, ensure that it complies with SC’s editorial guidelines: http://www.scmagazine.com/article-submission-information/section/3380/. There is SC presence in the UK and US, so you may want to pitch one or both.
In essence, your article must be between 500-800 words maximum; written as a vendor-neutral thought leadership/opinion piece, not marketing or sales – so no mention of company name, products or services. Remember to provide a high quality headshot of the author, along with his or her name, job title and the company name plus a link to the company’s website at the bottom of the article and a brief 25 word summary/standfirst underneath the headline in the piece that will be used as the introduction on the homepage.
SC Magazine will tweet and post the article on the day it's posted, which is usually two weeks after the team has received it from you, depending on the timeline/schedule. So, if you want to write something time sensitive, get it to SC three weeks before you want it to appear and alert the editorial team via email to it as well as submitting it via the online form http://forms.scmagazine.com/sc-web-submissions/.
Computing – the UK's leading business technology publication and a pioneering multimedia brand, this title has been going for nearly 40 years and plays a vital role in informing IT leaders on how to use technology for the benefit of their organisations. It is essential viewing for IT leaders so, with over 92,300 people receiving its weekly newsletter and 184,377 online readers every day, is a great site to get an opinion piece into. You need a USP to get coverage that’s for sure, so to ensure that your article is accepted, first send over a synopsis that is unique and truly outstanding to even warrant consideration. Think carefully about how to make your topic – which might be the same as others being sent in by competitors – significantly different from those others. Take a look at what other opinion pieces have been covered recently: http://www.computing.co.uk/type/opinion and then draw inspiration from them to shape your own article outline for approval by the editorial director, Stuart Sumner, who is coincidentally also in charge of content for V3 and The Inquirer. Being such a busy man, grab Stuart’s attention with an amazing subject line.
Business Computing World – a UK blog where inspirational thought leaders hang out, but all content published here is on a paid-for basis. You can publish both press releases and by-lined articles on this site and, for both types of content, you only have to pay a one-off charge of £25 for each submission. This money is non-refundable if you send in something that is not published, so make sure it’s good quality. That’s cheap though as your article/press release will remain on this website indefinitely. To submit content you must first register as a user. You then sign in using your account and complete the submission form: http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/submit/.
If you are posting a press release, it must be at least 250 words and have a legitimate news angle (announcing something new and/or timely), contain content that is IT related, be objective and not written in casual first person language (I, we, you, etc). Your release must also be link-restricted with a valid company email address contained in it.
When submitting a by-lined article for publication, it needs to be at least 500 words and include an author bio at the end. Articles sent in without an attributed author and author headshot won’t be accepted.
As Business Computing World is a UK-based media, it will not publish American- English content so make sure all of your language and spellings are British-English.
Computer Business Review – another UK business technology leader, Computer Business Review is widely regarded throughout Europe as The Economist of the IT industry, with an online audience of 300,000+. CBR, as it is usually referred to, only takes guest content on an exclusive basis. Pitch your idea or send in a draft of the article you want to submit to Eleanor Burns for consideration. If Ellie is not in then Ambrose McNevin is your next port of call.
TMC.Net – a US-based B2B media that covers communications and technology industry news. You can submit content directly via the online form http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/news/usubmit.aspx – but please note that not everything sent goes live. To ensure your submission is accepted by the editorial team, make sure it is original and exclusive to TMCnet and that it has even be emailed to the relevant editor first for approval before it is submitted via the online form.
VentureBeat – a tech innovation US website that was founded in 2006 and covers everything tech from social to mobile, small business to enterprise, health and wearable tech, cloud, games and much more. It currently has over 8 million unique visitors – and 18 million page views – and is read by tech and social bigwigs like Mark Zuckerberg so, to get your article onto this media’s website, you need to offer readers a strong, clear argument that comes down on one side of an issue, or advances a theory. VentureBeat wants to provoke readers into discussion so where possible provide specific examples of companies and true anecdotes to illustrate the points you’re making. The more you have, the better!
The online submission form http://venturebeat.com/guest-posts/ gives you space to include a summary on the core argument of your story and why it is relevant right now so use this section to really sell your submission, but do it in a succinct manner as you only have 2 – 3 sentences to do so. If you can’t summarise into such a short space then don’t even bother.
TechCrunch – this media is focused on sharing news about tech start-ups. You need to be a new entrepreneurial brand, ideally. TechCrunch reviews new Internet products and covers breaking news – send to tips@techcrunch.com, but it is obsessively dedicated to profiling start-up companies only.
To submit content, we’ve already established that you need to be not yet internationally established, so visit here for this year’s monthly topics calendar – including travel, health, education and commerce - which you can submit content on: http://techcrunch.com/join-the-crunch-network/. You can also use this online link to submit your own posts and thoughts regarding any breaking news related to technology. But only the very best stories are ever covered so make yours conversational and insightful, and strictly tied to entrepreneurial and start-ups trends and niches only.
Update: 27/1/2017. As this post is so popular, please send me details of your blog or site if it accepts guest posts, and I will create a new blog post with categories such as entertainment, theatre or sports, where I would put Clickticket, and children's educational toys sites, where I'd list Learning Toy Guide.
We know so many more but obviously we’re not going to share all of our coverage secrets with you 🙂 If you are looking for a PR team to manage your articles and thought leadership, or you just want to raise your profile with the right placement for your guest content pieces, get in touch on +44 121 242 8048 or email us on info@vitispr.com.
