Over the years I have received an agonsingly large number of submissions, CVs and emails asking to contribute to teentoday.co.uk. I don’t blame them, the site’s epic. Here’s what I look for, reformatted as a handy guide for people looking to submit their work to blog or website editors:

Write your email or submission letter in a way that’s tonally consistent with the site
You know, because it’s how we talk. My blog is chatty and informal. Please don’t send me an email the begins with Dear Sir, please don’t sign off Best Wishes, and when talking about your interests, make sure you talk about the stuff my blog taks about. Not your ant farm.

Know the blog
I have an ego, I want it stroked. I think working for my blog is an honour and you should too. Tell me why it’s amazing. Have opinions, articulate them clearly and honestly. Ideally, DON’T refer to the most recently published article on the site when doing this.

Know the ecosystem
Writing used to be about words. Not any more. For your words to work for their money, they need to be read. I have a social strategy in place. I rule the youth ecosystem on my amazing Facebook and twitter. If you’re passionate about the things you want to write about, you’ll be in the ecosystem too. Familiarise yourself with my competitor’s sites and social profiles; the other destinations that punctuate the ecosystem. You should be in that world too.

Send writing examples not CVs
My blog publishes articles not CVs. I don’t care about your GCSE B in Home Economics, your keen interest in bird watching, or your six months at the Topshop checkout. I want to know what you can do TODAY. Show me. If they’re good enough, they’ll be on the site before my reply. Don’t send historic work, create something based on what my site does, and if it’s good. I’m sold.

Blog publishers, please add your thoughts, or trash my own… what do you look for from your writer applications?

Welcome to a new series of content To-do Today. This series will suggest one simple-to-implement and pain-free idea that, if relevant should improve your website, the way you work or even the world in general. Today is a tip for publishers of editorial content that should help you drive more page views from your best performing pages and sadly, often-ignored, pages.

The aim: reduce bounce rate of best performing pages and drive people into newer, more engaging content to increase page impressions and increasing the odds of them finding value and therefore returning to the site.

After the jump you can see how.

How:
1. Use your website’s analytics package to define your website’s top 20 landing or entry pages.
2. It’s likely that these top 20 pages make up the majority of your site’s referrals from search. Most sites I have worked on have seen as much as 90% of their search traffic come from just 20 or so well-performing pages.
3. Look at these pages. Are they recent? Are there old pages there? Older pages can often perform better in search because page life is often used as a quality metric in search algorithms*.
4. Look at those pages, are they ‘working hard’. Is that content still relevant and accurate? Does you site have a newer version of it? Is there more related content published recently? If so, there’s the opportunity to make these landing pages work harder.

Time to get editing: Add contextual links, highlight more recent content, focus on things that someone on the site might not see on the old page but may well appreciate. Drive them deeper in your environment. Generate more page views from them, help them explore great content, turn them into fans.

Did it work: Here’s how you assess if it worked…

* Anecdotal and potentially evolving due to the move to real-time search.

Just like a functional build of a platform or any other web tool or functionality, I’ve always believed that editorial environments (both in terms of functionality and content) can be built using an (agile) ‘implement, assess, evolve’ methodology.

That is to say, get something out there immediately, assess how it is received using comments on-site and in the social spaces, analytics, and other user feedback, and evolve from there. Unlike a newspaper or book, the web allows quick change and evolution, and to not take advantage of this wastes resource and money.

That said, some simple planning can give you, and the people working for you a greater sense of who the website is for and about, and a structure to work within.

After the jump you can see my process for the conceptualisation and delivery of a new editorial environment, whatever platform (website, blog, twitter account) that may be in.

The steps below outline how I’ve historically worked to plan editorial environments. It’s my approach, and you can feel free to take from it what you like. I’d love to hear your comments and criticisms below as I’m always trying to learn from the experience of others and start a debate.

The approach I like to take is to limit each of the below to about a day’s worth of work, and the final result to be at most a one-pager. I don’t know about you, but I’m a massive fan of brevity, and there’s no way even the most complex editorial environments couldn’t be described on a side of A4. If it takes longer, I’d bet my collection of low-rent mediocre American romcoms that it’s doomed to fail.

1. Who am I talking to…
Start by learning everything there is to know about your current or potential audience. Obviously start with their age, gender, passions, but also look at their fears, aspirations, brand affiliations, where they spend their time online. Profile them, learn about them, know them inside out. This information is what helps you make a product that resonates with them.

2. Can I make money and who else is out there?
You have an audience, and you’ll be starting to think about the product at the end of this process, but now is to assess what else is out there for them. If you have commercial aims you should be collecting information on the competitor set – uniques, revs, anything you can get. You might have found your audience has an insatiable appetite for gossip, but at this stage you might realise there is a proliferation of

3. Define editorial tone
If you have commercial ambitions and passed through stage 2, or you’re really not fussed about making money… you’ll find youself here. Your tone is all about the feel of your writing, humorous, honest, blunt, sarcastic, aspirational, etc or any mix. If you’re blogging your tone may very well just be your voice. But having consistent values and a feel for the writing and how that appeals to your audience should give you  a structure to work within.

4. Define editorial publishing schedule, form, highlights
There are many things that form great editorial on the web.

Once you have decided the tone of the content you will create and, you need to assess the form and frequency of which you will publish this content. I traditionally break down content into the following.

– Short form – short/newsy/bloggy content usually frequently delivered

– Trend driven – potentially longer / more in-depth content that can have relevancy over several months.

– Long form – content that lasts longer, usually that doesn’t ‘expire’. Not newsy or timely content but instead stuff that can be put online and left.

– Highlights – what are the core editorial offerings that make is unique. What do we do best.

5. Build the environment
The reason that defining the publishing schedule and form of your editorial is imperative? Because… this defines how you plan your website or platform to best sell and deliver this content.

- Would a series of health guides work well as a blog? How would I find the information.
- If you’re publishing lots of newsy-content does a portal-like site make sense.
- How do you sell different forms of content in the most logical and engaging way?

6. Execute, assess, evolve, iterate
Because it makes sense

And there you have it. Obviously some of these steps and processes may well be defined and planned already, others may take more time. But for me, these are the core steps in building a product. Depending on your time, budget and motivations, these stages my be insignificant or life or death, but either way, thanks for taking the time to read this post, and let me know your thoughts below…