How to get your blog post published on Enterprise Nation

One of the biggest perks of being an Enterprise Nation adviser is the ability to write blog posts for a huge audience of knowledge-hungry small business owners.

Writing a blog post is a fantastic way to get noticed by precisely the people who matter – prospective clients.

And the benefits go beyond boosted visibility. By confidently writing about your area of expertise, you'll very publicly position yourself as a thought leader in your industry or discipline.

How do I get a blog post published on Enterprise Nation?

You'll first need to pitch us your idea, which you can do via the self-serve content upload area on your adviser dashboard.

Select "Post Content". Choose "Blog Post" from the list of content types, fill in the short form with your blog idea and hit "Submit for approval".

What happens when I submit my idea for a blog post?

Your submission will go through to our editorial team. They'll review your idea and decide whether to approve it for publication. Whatever their decision, they'll respond to you as soon as they can.

What happens once you approve my blog idea?

Our editorial team will contact you by email to start the process of writing your blog post. They'll provide a detailed brief, which will include:

• potential titles

• topics your blog post should cover

• keywords to incorporate throughout (for SEO purposes)

• a structure to follow

• a word count to aim for

• links to other relevant content

How soon will you publish my blog post?

While we aim to publish submissions as soon as we can, there's no hard-and-fast rule when it comes to publishing times.

Ultimately, the deadline will depend on how soon you write the blog post and work with the editorial team to hone it into a final version for publication.

What kinds of ideas work well?

Ideally, we like anything that:

• teaches our members how to do something

• inspires them to think about something entirely new

• solves one of their most pressing problems

• helps them make their businesses more professional and successful

There are, of course, lots of formats to convey information, and some common ones we use are how-to guides, listicles and checklists. You could even write a first-person opinion piece if you want to give a fresh take on something topical.

The more specific your subject matter, the better. For example, "How to write a business plan for a café" is better than "How to write a business plan", purely because the generic version is so widely covered.

Industry-specific pieces, in particular, are also fantastic for SEO (and, in turn, your own visibility).

Are there any editorial guidelines I should stick to?

Yes. Below, we've laid out some brief editorial guidelines which should give you an idea of what works and why.

Please understand that we'll refrain from publishing any blog posts that don't fit our house style or suit our audience.

Target audience

The Enterprise Nation community is comprised mainly of small business owners and founders across the UK and Ireland (although we do have some overseas members!). These are the people who will be reading your blog post, so make it truly relevant to them.

Word count

The editorial team will suggest a word count as part of their brief. But as a general rule, a good blog post that covers a topic in enough detail is at least 800 words. We're likely to ask for blog posts longer than this, however.

Tone of voice

Your blog post should read in such a way that people find it:

• helpful

• authoritative

• positive and upbeat

• approachable and relatable

• relatively informal

We steer clear of any writing that's:

• prescriptive

• formulaic

• dry or overly formal

• dense and wordy

• superior or patronising in tone

• clearly produced by a generative AI tool like ChatGPT (see below)

References and statistics

If your blog post includes references or statistics, you'll need to link out to the source so readers know where the information has come from.

Using generative AI tools (ChatGPT etc.)

We appreciate that lots of people are now using generative AI tools like ChatGPT to produce written content.

While we're happy for you to use these tools however you like, we ask that you avoid submitting work that you haven't fully edited first. We want all our content to read as though a human has written it!

Our editorial team will support you throughout the entire writing process and will reject any copy that they believe is overly AI-generated.

Images 

Every blog post we publish has a banner image at the top of the page. If you're giving us an image to accompany your piece, we have a few guidelines to follow:

• Size: The higher the image quality, the better. We can resize images to our default dimensions, so don't worry about height and width. All images should be at least 1920 x 1080 pixels.

• Orientation: The Enterprise Nation platform is built to display images in landscape in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Consequently, please make sure any images you provide are in this format, and not portrait.

• Format: We currently use JPG but can reformat images if you're only able to provide in another format (such as PNG or WebP).

• Content: The Enterprise Nation brand is all about our community of people and the business journeys they experience. As such, we prefer photos that contain a human element and feel genuine, positive, relatable and true to life.

Other image-related things to consider 

• Please don't share images that carry your business branding or contain illustrations.

• Select images that are relevant to the main theme of your blog post.

• If you're providing a stock image, please choose one that fits the style of the images Enterprise Nation uses for its own content.

• Please understand that we may decide to use a different image if we feel the ones you've supplied don't supplement the content or fit our house style.

Exclusivity

We ask that you make your blog posts exclusive to Enterprise Nation. In other words, please don't pitch or use content that you've published, or plan to publish, elsewhere (on your LinkedIn profile or business website, for example). Our editorial team may screen for plagiarism.

As you'll be working to a brief that our editorial team has given you, we hope that your final blog post will be a unique and new piece of writing that our audience will engage with and enjoy.

Promotional copy

While we're happy for you to mention your product or service in a blog post, please be subtle! We avoid publishing anything that reads like an advert or a sales pitch.

How will you promote my blog post?

We'll aim to share posts across our social channels and in our weekly newsletters. They'll also appear in search results across the Enterprise Nation platform.

How often can I submit blog post ideas?

You can submit as many ideas as you like, and the editorial team will review each submission on its own merits.

If we approve several of your submissions, please keep in mind that we may stagger the publication dates. This is purely to give all authors a fair crack of the whip when it comes to getting noticed.

I hope this gives you the encouragement you need to write a blog post for the Enterprise Nation community!

Become an Enterprise Nation adviser

If you're not yet an Enterprise Nation adviser and you have a great idea for a blog post based on your expertise, join today.

There are plenty of other profile-building opportunities and perks to take advantage of too!