Become a contributor to the Blockchain Pulse community

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The Blockchain Pulse blog hosts emerging conversations, stories and opinions from around the blockchain community, and we would like to extend an invitation to thought leaders and subject matter experts who would like to add their voice to this space. Your stories can include summaries of important breakthroughs or technical achievements and their potential uses, industry insight into how blockchain will change business, event summaries or other personal viewpoints about blockchain.

We’re not looking to brand your content for IBM, that is why we ask you to keep the blog as brand agnostic as possible. Self-promotional snippets can be hosted on your author page, but we are looking for narratives that are written with all readers in mind, no matter their level of expertise with blockchain technology — we seek to educate and advance the conversation around blockchain.

Basic writing guidelines for submission

We would like to see articles that are interesting to the blockchain community as a whole. Ideally, posts should range from 750 to 1,000 words and be original content. Guest posts should remain as vendor-neutral as possible, though your article can mention vendors hosting an in-person event. However, the post shouldn’t feel like an advertisement of your services. We will only accept content that has a 48-hour exclusivity window, meaning that we’re the first to publish and after two days, you are welcome to republish your article on other channels with canonical tagging so search engines recognize this as the home for your content.

We can help with the process, but your “syndicated” article should include a “rel-canonical” tag and a blurb at the top of the republished article saying, “<TITLE> by <AUTHOR> was originally published on Blockchain Pulse” with <TITLE> linking back to the article and “Blockchain Pulse” linking back to the Blockchain Pulse blog’s home page.

Educational articles are always welcome. With blockchain being so new, the more material that helps the community to understand what blockchain is and how it can be used is always welcome. Keep in mind, since there is a lot of content explaining blockchain technology, posts that tend to get the most engagement are those teaching or showing blockchain concepts through specific use cases or in a unique way. Also remember, we try to avoid any and all commentary on broad political issues. We do the same for any critical commentary as we always try to approach the blockchain community with a positive and inclusive attitude.

Promoting your unique content

Your blog will be shared on IBM Blockchain’s Twitter handle tagging your personal Twitter handle. Please feel free to retweet or share. Don’t forget to share your work on your own social channels.

Submitting your article for consideration

Please email your pitch or working draft in a Word document to IBM Blockchain Social Lead kyle.schlapkohl@ibm.com for consideration. You will receive confirmation that we received it, and either acceptance of the draft into the editorial pipeline, or feedback and direction for revision and re-submission. Your post will be lightly edited focusing primarily on IBM Style, grammar, and formatting that will help increase SEO and readability. The edited draft will be sent back to you for review, adjustment and approval.

Once there is an approved final draft, we will arrange a publish date so you can plan to promote accordingly through your personal and company channels. We’ll do our best to publish on the timeline you would like, but the more time you give us the better. We do however, reserve the right to adjust publish dates as necessary. Original images or graphics are strongly encouraged, but please be sure graphics contain only enough text necessary for labeling. Any further necessary explanations of graphical content should be included in the article body for aesthetics and readability.

One last thing we will do before publishing will be creating your author profile. Send us a 300×300 head-shot and short bio of under 100 words. Additionally, we can include URLs to your social links like LinkedIn and Twitter.

We endeavor to be easy to work with, so there is no requirement for contractual agreements about your article. We operate on a good faith basis around each piece being exclusive for a 48-hour period to the IBM Blockchain Pulse blog.

Finally, if in the future you’d ever like to update information in your blog post, or remove it for whatever reason, just contact us through the same email above and we will do our best to accommodate your wishes promptly.