Marketing Guest Blogging Guidelines [2020 Edition]

Hi there! Thanks for your interest in writing a guest blog for HubSpot. We're glad you're here.

The award-winning HubSpot Blogs have over 7 million monthly visits, and we're always looking for more brilliant contributors to join our ranks.

If you have exceptional writing and/or design skills and would like to share your expertise with a large audience of marketers, growth hackers, and business owners, we'd love to hear from you.

Please take some time to review this entire page — it should answer any questions you have about what kind of content we're looking for and how the submission process works.

Also, we value your pitch, but due to the volume of requests we receive, we cannot respond to all submissions.

The Bare Essentials for Every Post We Publish

Successful guest contributions are comprehensive, data-driven, and interesting posts that teach our readers something new about the world of business. While we tend to skew toward content about specific marketing tactics, that's not all we talk about.

We're also interested in publishing any topic that marketers care about, which includes things like hiring, team development, job hunting, writing, design, math, and larger internet trends, among other things.

We also look for a few things in everything we publish:

• Original concepts, compelling arguments, and high-quality writing. We will not republish anything that's been published elsewhere.
• Article reflects the writing style/tone of the Marketing Blog. We aim to be casual, yet helpful, and typically we stay away from buzzwords and jargon.
• Proper attribution of data, quotations, and outside content referenced in the article. Note: All data should have originated within the last two years.
• No more than one link to your company's website (Note: This includes your website homepage, blog, pricing page, etc ...) in the body of the post.
• Link to at least 3-5 other HubSpot blog posts in your piece. For example, if you're writing a piece on a recent welcome email experiment you've run, link to HubSpot's ultimate guide to email marketing, our roundup of top email marketing services, and our email marketing tips to improve opens.

The Different Post Types We Accept

We've conducted extensive studies to uncover which types of blog posts work — and which don't. Here are some of our most successful blog post types:

• Experiment / Analysis: Did you recently run a marketing experiment the likes of which have never been done before? Or maybe you completed an analysis of your own or your customers' data that yielded fascinating insights the world show know about? Write it up and send it over. These posts should include hard data, actionable takeaways, and thorough explanations of each step in the experiment or analysis process. Readers should have enough information to replicate your experiment or study if they'd like to.
• Examples of Experiment Posts:
• Disproving Best Practices: The One- vs. Two-Column Form Test
• Why We Unsubscribed 250K People From HubSpot's Marketing Blog
• Why You Should Start with Copy Instead of Design: A Data-Backed Lesson
• Canonical: These posts give readers in-depth tactical takeaways that are supported by relevant, recent examples, original quotes, original graphics, and current data. While we don't like to put a word count on our posts, these tend to run at 1,500 words and above. When readers finish this type of post, they should be able to immediately execute on the given topic and have very few questions left on how to do it.
• Examples of Canonical Posts:
• Typography 101: Everything a Beginner Should Know
• The Start-to-Finish Guide to Nailing Your Next PowerPoint Presentation
• How Ad Blocking Works: Everything You Need to Know
• Graphics: These posts rely heavily on an infographic, data graph, or other visual aid created by the author. Usually, they feature a few paragraphs of introduction, the embedded media itself, and not much else. The graphic should be comprehensive and easy to read, have a compelling narrative, contain plenty of white space, and feature up-to-date data that's properly sourced.
• Examples of Graphic Posts:
• How to Spell Words You Don't Know: Techniques From Grammar Experts
• A 5-Step Process for Writing a Standout Networking Email
• 12 Data-Backed Tips to Increase Your Conversion Rate on Twitter

While we certainly publish posts from time to time that don't fall into any of those categories, your post has the best chance of being accepted if it matches one of these formats.

What We Won't Accept

There are some things we simply can't accept:

• Anything that's been covered on our blog before. Please do a search of our site before submitting your articles.
• Anything that may be construed as a link-building scheme.
• Anything that's too promotional for your company or organization.
• Anything that's offensive or inaccurate.
• Anything that's overly critical of individuals or companies — this is not a site to air grievances.

The Not-So-Fine Print

• Submissions must meet the HubSpot blogging team's quality standards in order to get published. Editors reserve the right to reject contributions at their discretion.
• We cannot allow you to republish your guest post to your own blog, LinkedIn, Medium, or Inbound.org afterward. Here's more on what you can do besides sharing it like crazy.
• The HubSpot blogging team reserves the right to edit and adapt your guest blog content as we see fit, and update it in the future for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
• HubSpot reserves the right to include calls-to-action to HubSpot content, including but not limited to email newsletters, ebooks, and other downloadable content.
• In rare cases, contributed posts may be removed from the blog and recycle the URL.

How to Submit A HubSpot Guest Blogging Post

Step 1: Conduct a Google site search. If there is only one step you complete to turn in a pitch, this should be the one. Note: This is not a normal website search. Check out how to do a Google site search here and add another skill to your set.

Didn't click on the link we just provided? You wouldn't be the first. Simply copy and paste this URL in your search bar: “site:blog.hubspot.com/marketing” and add a space followed by the keyword you're targeting with your pitch.

For example: “site:blog.hubspot.com/marketing branding trends”. In this example, you'll see HubSpot has published quite a bit on branding. If you still want to pitch a branding topic, make sure you're telling us what differentiates it from the dozens of other branding pieces on HubSpot.

Step 2: Format your post appropriately.

• Don't sacrifice depth for the sake of brevity. We don't enforce a strict word count on the blog, but most articles should fall in the 1,000 - 1,800 word range. Instead of trying to hit a specific word count, focus on clear, in-depth explanations that readers of different levels can understand and learn from. It's better to over-explain a concept than under-explain and leave some readers in the dark.
• The best blog copy is simple, accessible, and clear. Don't get stuck trying to make a complex sentence structure work when a simple one works better. Take the most direct route to your points, use your natural voice, and avoid unnecessary filler words. Looking for more resources on drafting your blog post? Here are a few posts to check out:
• The Anatomy of a Perfect Blog Post
• How to Write an Introduction: A Simplified Guide
• What's the Best Way to Write a Blog Post? Marketers Weigh In
• 8 Writing Tips I Wish I Knew Before I Started Blogging
• Your Blog Posts Are Boring: 9 Tips for Making Your Writing More Interesting
• Paragraphs should be no more than three to five sentences long and formatted using H2s, H3s, and H4s, when appropriate.
• Add bulleted lists to help break up dense copy chunks. Numbered lists should be formatted as number + period.
• Always include a conclusion.
• When including images, gifs, or screenshots, cite the image source as: “Image source” and hyperlink that text with the page you found the image on.
• Example here
• Tip: Copy and paste your post into Grammarly, or Microsoft Word and run a spell check. We prefer these editing tools for catching sneaky misspellings, and extra spaces. Feeling extra word-nerdy? Use Hemingway Editor to check for run-on sentences, difficult sentence structure, etc ...

Step 3: Submit your pitch of finished blog post to guestpost [at] hubspot [dot] com with the following:

• Formatted subject line: “Guest Pitch: [Tentative Title of Post]”
• Your completed post or pitch in a Google Document with editing permissions turned on for “anyone with the link.”
• If you're including images, make sure they're compressed and add them into the Google Document, and provide proper attribution below each image (e.g., Image source).
• Short author bio, headshot, and any links to your LinkedIn or Twitter accounts you'd like linked.

If your article meets editorial standards and aligns with our content strategy, we will respond to let you know your article will be published. That process may take up to 2 weeks and the publish date could exceed this timeline based on the needs of our editorial calendar.

Due to the volume of requests we receive, we cannot respond to all submissions.