Guest Post Requirements

If you’re thinking of a blog post for this site, the checklist is below. I highly encourage you to use it precisely as a checklist. Please ensure your draft satisfies all of these criteria.

When posts don’t hit these points, I usually have to decline them.

Please note: Everyday, I receive emails from people who have NOT done their research or followed the criteria below. For this reason, if you email the address at the bottom of this post and do not follow the criteria below, it’s unlikely you will receive a reply.

Do you understand my niche?

My blog is about high intensity training business. Unfortunately, high intensity training has become very ambiguous. This is why I receive a lot of irrelevant guest post requests.

On this blog, HIT is referring to a strength training protocol popularised by the late Arthur Jones and a handful of others during the 1970s. It typically advocates brief, infrequent, and intense training performed with a single set to failure, slow movement, and a larger emphasis on safety.

If you do not possess knowledge of this form of high intensity training and HIT business, then it is highly unlikely your post will be right for this blog.

The purpose of your post MUST help HIT business owners with their business/personal training.

Substantive posts and original content

An article that feels too short, or that lacks depth, will be sent back. I like posts to be 1,750 to 3,000 words or more.

Dive deep into the topic and treat the post as seriously as you would a full-page for a high quality media outlet. It’s easier to cut the unnecessary stuff than it is to figure out what’s missing. When possible, back up what you’re saying with research or stories, as well as data taken from your own experiences.

Content must be completely original.

IMPORTANT: Send me a few topic ideas before drafting anything

Before you write a post, email me 1-3 of your best topic ideas based on all the above points, including prospective titles and a few bulleted “takeaways” for each. If you draft something without my thumbs up, I can’t help if I then reject it as unsuitable!

When in doubt, link it out

My readers and listeners come to me for ease-of-use and resources. So, if you write, “I once went to the Resistance Exercise Conference , where I learned about the book Body By Science,” you should link out to what I bolded. Make it easy for readers to dig deeper! TECHNICAL REQUEST: Always have links open in a new tab, please. In other words, I don’t want people to leave my site. Here’s how to format links to open in a new tab.

Next, for bonus credit, please suggest further reading from past posts on my blog that are relevant, and link to them. Search the “Topics” sidebar for ideas. In all cases: always TEST your links before sending the draft to me.

Include actionable takeaways and recommended next steps

Readers care about your story, of course, but they also need to learn specific lessons from your post. Thom Tombs gave readers actionable “next steps” they can take, and you can clearly see this in his guest post on “How to Help Your Clients by Closing the Sale”.

Create quality “evergreen” content

Nearly all of the posts on this blog are written to be just as relevant, if not more relevant, five years from now. No matter what year a post is read, the content will always be relevant and people will tell their friends about it. Having evergreen content is what helps this blog grow, and it’s the most important thing to keep in mind when writing your post.

Use the right formats

– Please write the post in Google Docs. This allows me to easily suggest edits.
– Please use high resolution images at approximately 500 pixels wide. Please email me the image as attachments, just in case I need to access them or tweak something.

Remember and accept that I have final editorial call

This means that I might want to delete or rework sections entirely.  If you’re not OK with me freely editing your stuff (mostly for clarity and format), my blog isn’t the right place for your piece. I do the least necessary, not the most possible.

Have fun with it!

If it’s not fun for you to write on some level, it won’t be fun for my readers to read. Tell stories, crack jokes if you like, and be yourself. Try and enjoy the process and the end product will be better.

Optional

Media works

Having pictures and/or video can provide a richer reading experience, assuming the pics/videos are high quality.

You’ll notice I have photos (roughly 500 pixels wide) at the top of almost all posts. It helps things to provide one such picture or find one on Flickr.com (search with checking “creative commons” and sorting by “most interesting”).

 

Please email your draft to lawrence @ highintensitybusiness.com

Thanks for reading and hope it helps,

Lawrence