Editorial Guidelines
Thank you for your interest in writing content for IT Specialist.com!
We take the quality of the content written for the site very seriously and, as such, we have created these tips and guidelines to help you to make the most of your content in terms of maximizing your readership.
Our Audience
The readers of IT Specialist content, no matter the writer, are IT professionals looking for help and advice in the cybersecurity field or industry. So please bear this in mind when creating content – that you’re writing for an IT audience, rather than for end users, and they’ll be looking for some form of return on the time they invest in reading your words.
They’ll also be looking for information that can help them with today’s issues not just predictions of the future. In this respect, you might feel that you’re treading over old ground, but don’t let this worry you – what we call “back to basics” submissions are often some of the most popular and appreciated content.
Finally, if you’re new to writing and struggling to get started, please take a look at our other articles for inspiration and an idea of how to structure your message.
Article Writing Guidelines
To begin with, before submitting your proposed content, we highly recommend reading some of our latest posts to develop a sense of what we publish. Please then adhere to the following guidelines to increase your chances of your content being accepted:
- Always keep our audience in mind and try to address their needs, challenges, and pain points in your writing.
- Have a clear and concise main message. Ensure that your introduction and summary both address the point of your post.
- Be prescriptive. Don’t just tell readers to do something. Explain the how.
- Tell a story. Cover who, what, when, where, how, and why. Make it personal and where appropriate share things you’ve done and seen, lessons you’ve learned, problems you’ve solved, etc.
- Make it long enough to engage readers. We don’t have a maximum word count, but we do have a minimum word count of 600 words.
- Be thoughtful when including links. Posts with too many links back to your website will be edited/rejected, instead spread the link love to a variety of sources.
- Self-promotion. Avoid promoting your company or products in your post. Posts that are written as sales-pitches or read like marketing material will be rejected.
- Give credit. Check your facts and cite your sources.
Where possible, if suggested content doesn’t meet our guidelines we’ll work with the author to help improve their article. This will be done via our content review process. However, please note that any overly self-promoting content will be automatically rejected.
Our Content Review Process
Once we receive your proposed content you can expect to hear back from us within 1-2 working days. We will then send you back your content complete with our editorial mark up and comments for you to process. Quality content takes time to edit and prepare, therefore it is possible that your content will go through more than one round of edits before publication. Once finalized, we will let you know the planned publication date of your article. We will also notify you as soon as the post is published.
What Topics Kind of Topics is IT Specialist.com Looking For?
We’re looking for any content related to Cybersecurity, as well as sister topics such as security awareness training, artificial intelligence, physical security, information technology, etc. Content suggestions include:
- Understanding Cybersecurity
- How to get started with Cybersecurity
- Useful resources for Cybersecurity
- 10 top tips for Cybersecurity
- Selling Cybersecurity to senior management
- AI's influence on Cybersecurity
How do I Submit an Article to IT Specialist.com?
Please submit your full draft in a Word document to writers@itspecialist.com. If your post is accepted we’ll also require you to provide a 30-word biography along with links to your social networks. Thereafter, you'll be given the option to post articles in draft form on your own for review.
Does IT Specialist Publish Press Releases?
If you have industry news to share, we ask that you submit to us your overview and/or press release (ideally ahead of its publication) by emailing us at pr@itspecialist.com. We may not always publish your press release in its entirety, but if it’s of great interest to readers we might write our own article based on your news. We may need to schedule a short phone conversation to enable us to do this.