Guidelines for Guest Bloggers

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Want to Submit a Guest Blog Post?

If you would like to submit a Guest Blog Post there are a couple of things you need to know

If you’re not already a member of Vetanswers, then we ask that you join our Community before we publish your Guest Blog Post.

The good news is that Individual Membership is free for everyone who works in the veterinary and pet industries.

Individual Membership is FREE for everyone – click here to join

Unless you work in a veterinary practice/hospital, etc., we also require you to select a Business Membership for your veterinary supplier business. You can select from 12 Month Premium, Practical, or Free Business Membership options.

Click here to find out more about all of our Business Membership options.

If you work in a veterinary practice, hospital, or specialist centre, we’re generally happy to publish whatever information you submit.

However, we still require you to be a Vetanswers member.

Individual Membership is FREE for everyone – click here to join

Guest Blogger Banner - dog with typewriter

Want To Be A Guest Blogger?

Vetanswers aims to publish useful, applicable, helpful, and interesting information for our members in the veterinary industry.

We are always on the lookout for content that will suit our members’ wide range of knowledge and experiences, most of whom are in Australasia (but not all!).

From experienced business owners to vet nurses taking on leadership roles or those thinking of starting their own businesses, we aim to publish and share information that will help.

Overall we’re pretty flexible here at Vetanswers – we really just want to publish great content from our Members, including:

Those who work in veterinary practices, hospitals, specialist centres, etc.
Those who work in the animal and pet industry;
Those who work in charities and not-for-profits;
Those working in businesses supply goods and services to the veterinary industry (veterinary suppliers).

Work for a Veterinary Supplier and want to share your knowledge with our Community?

If you work for a Veterinary Supplier (that is, any business other than a veterinary practice, hospital, specialist, etc., or charity) and you’ve chosen a Free Business Membership, we’re happy to publish a Guest Post as part of our ‘3 Things I bet you didn’t know about…’ Guest Blog Series.

If you’d like us to publish more Guest Blog Posts from you or your company, then you’ll need to consider either a 12 Month Premium or Practical Membership – you can click here to find out more….

If you’ve chosen either a 12-month Premium or Practical Business Membership, we’re more than happy to publish your regular Guest Posts, space permitting.

As much as we love to share a wide range of information with our Community, we also retain the right not to publish a Guest Blog Post for any reason.

You don’t have to be an experienced blogger; you just have to have something that you want to say – we can help you with the rest!

All You Need to Know About Being a Guest Blogger for Vetanswers

New or second hand?

We definitely get much more excited over posts that have never been published before, but we’re also open to republishing a post that you may have already published on your company blog. In this case, we’ll always include a link to the original post.

Once it’s been published on the Vetanswers website, we are happy for it to be re-published elsewhere – but only on the proviso that it includes an acknowledgement that the post was originally published by Vetanswers and a link to the original Post. E.g. “This Post was originally published by Vetanswers www.vetanswers.com.au/blog/post/veterinary-practice-web-sites-with-wow-one-step-at-a-time/60

Living forever

As your Post will continue to live forever on our website we can always promote it again e.g. ‘Daily Top Tips’, ‘From the vault’, ‘Our favourite blogs’ etc. So, the more interesting your post is, the more likely it will be re-promoted.

Tell us all about you

Your post will be published under your name as the author.

We will also set up an ‘Author’s Profile’ page that includes your photo, a brief bio, and links to your website, email and social media accounts.

All of your blog posts will also live on your ‘Author’s Profile’ page. Here’s my Author’s Profile Page to give you an idea.

Loving Links

We love internal links and would be very impressed if you included a link or two to other blogs we have on our website.

We also don’t mind if you link to other posts on the internet as long as the links are relevant to the post content and there are not an excessive number of links because frankly we find that extremely annoying and so assume others do as well.

Spreading the Lurve

Once a Post is published, it is promoted in our weekly Veterinary Community Connection eNews and multiple times via Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

We also encourage (and greatly appreciate!) if you could also promote your guest blog post through your social media channels, website, newsletter, etc.

Guest Blogging – The nitty gritty

Here are the answers to your most commonly asked questions…

How long should my blog post be?

Well, how long is a piece of string? The answer is – it depends!

Generally, we suggest between 200 and 1,000 words, although we’ve never managed to write one in under 350 words! To be honest, the only reason we suggest 200 words is to not scare off potential guest bloggers.

We are happy to publish longer blogs but may also suggest dividing them into Part 1 & Part 2.

What format should my blog post be in?

Please email all draft blogs as Word documents, which will then be converted into posts on the Vetanswers website.

Once it’s been loaded onto its new home and appropriate images added, if time permits, we will generally send a link back to you for approval. If you would prefer to see your Post before it’s published, please let us know, and we’ll get it back to you nice and early.

You must also credit all sources, etc., you may have quoted in your post. Although our blog posts are not scientific documents, it’s still important to give credit where credit is due!

Do I need to supply images?

We’ll track down images suitable for your post, but feel free to make some suggestions.

We just need to ensure that we have permission to use all images published in our blog posts. For this reason, we tend to use image sources on Canva.

Will you edit my blog post?

We’ve been known to be somewhat picky, so please don’t be offended if we make some changes to your Post that we believe will improve it even more.

This means your Post may be edited prior to publication for spelling, grammar, quality or clarity.

Our aim, though, is always to maintain the style and feel of what you’ve written. Sometimes, editing may just involve breaking the content up using headings, etc.

Tasty Tips for New Bloggers

Never written a blog post before? No problems – it’s not hard and we’re here to help.

You’re the expert; it’s time to share your knowledge and experience with others in our veterinary community.

Tips on topics:

If you work in a veterinary practice or pet business, why not write a post on:

- - Challenges in your job
  - What you’ve learnt in your job
  - What you love about your job
  - An interesting case study (everyone loves a case study!)

If you work for a veterinary supplier you could write a Post on:

- - FAQ’s
  - How your new product/service will meet the needs or solve a problem faced by those that work in the veterinary and animal industries (as long as it’s not a straight sales pitch!)
  - What you’ve learned from working with the industry
  - How things could be done better

Tips on writing a post:

Here are some tips on writing blog posts that you may find useful, some of which we found on the very helpful website: ‘Men with Pens Guest Post Guidelines and Policies’

- - When thinking about your topic, try to come up with something that is a bit different and has a focus
  - Once you have your topic, jot down a few pointers as to where you want your blog to go – think about the point/s you want to make – this will give your blog post a good structure and ensure you stick to your point.
  - Now – just start writing.
  - Don’t aim to create a masterpiece in one sitting – just start writing.
  - Don’t even think about the word count – just start writing
  - Expect to re-write and polish your post a few times before you’re happy with it, the important part is to – just start writing (getting the idea yet?)
  - Just start writing!
  - Leave your post for a day or two, it’s amazing what you’ll notice when you look at it with fresh eyes.
  - Start with a good strong introduction – make a bold statement or something that will grab the reader’s attention and make them want to read more
  - Think about the structure and formatting of your blog as there are a few things that make online blogs much easier to read:
    - shorter paragraphs
    - Sub headings
    - Bullet points
    - Lots of white space
  - Add in some strong impact statements (but don’t go overboard!)
  - Have a good conclusion or wrap up – your Post should have an ‘ending’ so try to add a summary with a good strong finish
    - Ask a question or add something that will encourage readers to comment on your Post
  - A killer headline can make all the difference to your post being read or ignored – no matter how awesome your content is.
    - There are many posts that discuss the best type of headings that will encourage the most number of ‘clicks’ & often the following types of headings are suggested:
      - 10 top tips to…
      - The secret of….
  - Here’s a nice basic blog post on the art of writing a good title: ‘Are You Writing Rockin’ Blog Post Titles?’