Content Submission Guidelines

As a Guest Contributor, you have the unique opportunity to get exposure by sharing your insights and advice with our readers online.

Our editorial team works tirelessly to ensure every article we publish is top-notch. We choose only the best Free Submissions and work closely with our Premium Contributors to get their articles ready for publishing. Before we can get started, your content must meet our guidelines.

General Overview

In general, we are looking for:

• Write about your industry and/or area of expertise. We are looking for expert advice, how-to content and commentary on select web design, development and digital marketing topics you have personal experience with. Our readers crave your unique insight based on what you’ve encountered in your own career. Choose a topic on which you are most knowledgeable.
• Don’t sell or self-promote. Readers are seeking your best tactical advice and industry expertise, not a sales pitch. So don’t write about how your product, company, service or client is the best solution. We won’t publish it. Instead, inform and educate your audience. Useful content increases your visibility and leads to new opportunities.
• Include your own unique insights and expertise. Avoid generic advice that readers have heard before. Look for specific, tactical, fresh angles on your favorite subject matter.
• Avoid jargon, long quoted passages or academic-style writing. Readers prefer straightforward, accessible content that is easy to share and understand.
• Include a takeaway so your audience remembers your advice. The best way to stay top-of-mind is to offer value. Don’t leave readers hanging.

Requirements

In addition to the guidelines above, every article must meet a few general requirements:

• Your content must be original and previously unpublished. An article is considered published even if it only appeared on your blog, LinkedIn, etc.
• Articles must be between 500-1000 words. We find 700- to 800-word articles do best.
• Include an introduction and a conclusion.
• All sources must be attributed, with hyperlinks, and trustworthy. Try to stick to data from the last 2 years.
• Only links to trusted, authoritative websites are permitted. No keyword links, affiliate links, lead-gen links, company links, client links, etc. are allowed. See more in the “Link Policy” section below.
• If you excerpt material first published on a trusted source verbatim, use double quotes and hyperlink to the original source. Interviews or quotes from third parties are not permitted. Read more in the “Attribution” and “Link Policy” section below.
• Fact check everything before you submit it to us.
• No press releases, please. We are looking for advice/expert opinion.
• No self-promotion or conflicts of interest. More on this below.
• No co-authors.
• No videos or special formatting.
• No book excerpts, though you are welcome to write about a concept from your books.
• No offensive, partisan or discriminatory content. We do not run content on religion or politics, and articles with inflammatory or obscene language will be removed.
• No puff pieces or listicles about vendors, products or people. When you do make a recommendation, be clear about why and offer several reputable alternatives. If you have a conflict of interest, avoid any brand mention.
• Avoid statements that guarantee success or results, e.g., “these 3 marketing strategies guarantee you’ll make millions”.
• We do not publish articles criticizing companies or people. Focus on giving positive, tactical insight.
• Content Limitations
• Rise reserves the right to reject article submissions at any time and at our sole discretion. In the event that a Premium Submission is rejected, you will be refunded immediately.

Additional Guidelines

You can find more detailed requirements organized by topic below:

Byline Information

It is Guest Contributors’ responsibility to make sure that their Name, Company Name, Website and byline are all correct in their original Submission. We cannot change bios and links after an article has been published.

Editorial Discretion

We reserve the right to edit all content submitted for publication, including:

• Line edits for grammar, spelling and syntax, as well as formatting;
• Updates to headlines, subheadings and dek;
• Revisions for length, appropriateness, clarity and style. We will advise you and ask for your final review if we make substantive edits.

We also reserve the right to remove any links that lead to material considered offensive, harmful or that are an attempt to solicit commercial sales from readers, e.g. affiliate links, links for lead-generation purposes, links to company or client blogs. Read more about this in our “Link Policy” below. Our editors reserve the right to not publish content until it meets all guidelines. While we make every effort to ensure that we catch all grammar, style and link issues, mistakes do happen.

Conflicts of Interest

You may not use our publishing opportunities to solicit or accept free or discounted goods or services under any circumstances. We reserve the right to unpublish or delete any content that appears to be promotional or advertorial in nature.

Link Policy

As a Guest Contributor, you will receive a byline with a link to your company when you contribute articles. Only Premium Submissions may include links to your company, product, services or clients within the body of the post. If you do so in a Free Submission, the links will be removed. Any links in the body of your post must serve to either edify the reader or support a statement of fact. If you do link to third-party sources, they must be authoritative, trusted sources such as major trade publications, research reports, reputable news media, etc. Links for any other purposes, including SEO and keyword links (link schemes), affiliate links, lead-gen links, links to your own company or clients, etc., are not permitted and will be removed by editors. Contributors found to be selling links or mentions, or exchanging them for discounted goods or services, will be barred from further contribution indefinitely and may also be subject to legal action.

Accuracy, Copyrights & Fact Checking

It is your responsibility as a Guest contributor to do your research, check the accuracy of your facts and ensure that you have permission to post or quote any copyrighted or confidential information. Our editors will verify accuracy where possible and easy to do so, but it is ultimately your responsibility to ensure the material you are presenting is credible and correctly attributed.

Confidentiality

All Guest Contributors are expected to respect the privacy and confidentiality, as well as the copyright and intellectual property, of the companies or people they may write about, interview or reference without exception.

Plagiarism

Our editors use a plagiarism checker for every submission to ensure content is 100% original. Plagiarism is never tolerated, in any form. Do not submit plagiarized work under any circumstances, or you will be subject to automatic dismissal.

Attribution, Credit & Sources

You may excerpt, quote, paraphrase or reference another reputable published work to support your points and/or edify the reader provided you clearly cite the original source of that information. Use outside sources sparingly to ensure fair use. Failure to do this may be considered plagiarism. For more detail on properly attributing sources, read below:

• Provide links to corroborate any study, statistic, excerpt or research that is not common knowledge. If you do not have a citation, delete the statement, or make it clear it is your opinion and not fact. Links should point to the actual information you are citing, e.g., do not link to a news article referring to a study, but to the study itself, and all data should be recent (within the last 2 years) and from a reputable source. Just link the relevant words, e.g. “a January study from Gartner”, not the full sentence.
• When you quote exact material that was published elsewhere, whether in written, audio or video form, link to the source and put the material inside double quotes. Use these very sparingly, if at all.
• Indirect quotes are when you paraphrase someone’s written or spoken speech. These do not require quotation marks, but they still require a citation.

Intellectual Property, Confidentiality, Representation and Warranties

By submitting previously unpublished, original content (“Work”) to Rise Marketing Co (the “Company”) as a Guest Contributor (“Contributor”), you:

• (i) You hereby grant to the Company the exclusive first right to publish the Work, as edited by the Company in its sole discretion, in the Company Publications and/or affiliated Websites and Publications, and the perpetual right to reuse the Work, in whole or in part, in any and all media, whether now known or hereafter developed, throughout the universe. Contributor will not allow anyone else to publish or use the Work or any portions thereof for any purpose.
• (ii) Contributor also grants Company, for the full term of copyright, the non-exclusive right to publish, print, republish, reprint and use the Works, the unrestricted right to use any cover containing the Works for any purpose at any time, the right to make reprints or stand-alone copies of the article or feature including the Works for any purpose, and in addition, the right to use the Works and/or Contributor’s name and likeness in publishing, promoting, advertising and publicizing the publication(s) and services in which the Works appear, and in merchandising.
• (iii) Company may exercise the rights granted herein in any media now in existence or hereafter developed, throughout the world. In doing so Company may arrange with third parties for distribution, transmittal, publication, promotion or other dissemination of its publication(s) and service(s) or portions thereof containing the Work, or material from Company's publication(s) or service(s), in a collection, section, manner, or area identified as being associated with or containing material from Company or the applicable publication or service, including with any database operator or other service, and may provide links and other enhancements to the Work.
• (iv) Promotional Use. Contributor grants to Company the right to use Contributor's name, biographical information, likeness, pseudonym and/or image for promotional use, said information to be supplied by Contributor.
• (v) Credit, Attribution and Linking. Company shall give Contributor credit in connection with the use of the Work by identifying Contributor in conjunction with the Work as displayed on the Publication and/or Website. Where applicable, Company shall also provide a link to the Contributor’s website.
• (vi) Term. The term of this Agreement (the "Term") shall commence upon the date set forth above and will continue until such time as Company determines, in its sole discretion, to remove the Work or, upon thirty-day written notice by Contributor of its/his/her intent to terminate the Agreement.

You grant the Company such rights to content in perpetuity and to use your name, company name, likeness and other such identifying credentials in association with such content.

Ready to submit an article?

You may submit your Free or Premium article to us by following the instructions on our Write for Us page.