Blog Contributors : Write for Developer Nation blog and our Contribution Guidelines

General Discussion
1

At Developer Nation, we’re always on the lookout for interesting developer-centric content.

If you want to share your knowledge, talk about a project you’re working on, or start a new tech blog series, you can do it on Developer Nation, which attracts developer readers from around the world.

Contribution Guidelines :

Keep our audience in mind :

The audience of Developer Nation consists of developers of all skill levels:
professionals, students, and hobbyists. We welcome guest posts at any skill
level.

  1. Articles for student & hobbyist developers: share practical coding tips,
    tutorials, getting started with XYZ, easy-to-digest guides on complex
    topics, roundups of tools, technologies, events, etc.

  2. Articles for professional developers: share tool/technologies/platforms
    comparisons, step-by-step instructions, tutorials, walk through a process
    of building a project, opinion pieces about technology or industry trends,
    comprehensive guides.

What do we not publish?

We do not publish articles that aren’t written for a developer-first audience in
mind. Topics include :

● Political pieces
● Digital marketing
● Design tips for non-developers
● Press releases about new product updates and launches.
● Promotional articles about your company and/or product, full of links to
your product.

What do we publish?

The Developer Nation community is a global community helping software
creators grow throughout their coding journey. It is a space where they can set
the right foundations for their career, learn how they stack up against emerging
software development trends, get tips and discover opportunities for
professional growth.

In that sense, we are looking for content along the following lines:

● Tips on pursuing a specific career direction
● Trending skills and how to acquire them
● Resources and communities they can join that can help them excel in
their projects
● Formal training
● Practical coding tips
● Tutorials, how to, getting started with XYZ
● Developer tool listicles focusing on tools that make devs’ lives easier
(e.g productivity, learning, etc.)
● Interviews and personal stories sharing how they learned, evolved or
even switched careers

And ideally about the following technologies:

  1. Quantum Computing
  2. Self-Driving Cars
  3. AI-assisted software development
  4. Brain / Body computer interfaces (e.g advanced prosthetics, neural
    lace)
  5. Drones
  6. Robotics
  7. Blockchain
  8. NFTs
  9. Crypto

Writing style

  • Use plain language and minimal jargon. When in doubt between sounding
    cool vs understandable, go for understandable.

  • Use references to reliable data and research (don’t forget to add links!)
    but make it sound friendly and welcoming to the reader

Writing guidelines

  • Your article submission should be ideally 700 - 1,500 words, with clearly
    defined structure (introduction, H1, H2, H3…, conclusion).
  • Please avoid mentioning your organisation or service often unless
    compared to other similar ones.
  • Please make sure any links you’re adding to the article text add value
    to the reader:
  • We prefer the links to lead to the articles covering similar topics
    (rather than leading to generic home pages or product sales
    pages).
  • We also welcome links to the event pages, tutorials, how-to
    articles, videos, podcasts.
  • If you link to research about developer stats and trends, we
    encourage you to check out Developer Nation Research page
    with free reports and link to those.
  • It’s optimal to have 1 link per 300 words (so 2-5 link total for the
    whole text).
  • Please avoid linking to Wikipedia or directories.
  • Please make sure the links are not broken (e.g. do not lead to
    404 pages).
  • Please make sure the links are safe and follow https protocol.

Make it SEO-friendly

If you would like us to re-publish an article you have already published
elsewhere, at the very minimum we’re asking you to do the following in order
to prevent de-valuing content on Developer Economics blog in terms of SEO:
● Change the title
● Change the intro text
● Change the sub-headings
● Include key Phrase
● Preferred Article Tags
● An Excerpt
● MetaData Description (Optional)
● Include a canonical URL to the original article

All of these elements need focus on 1 keyword/key phrase (so the chosen
keyword/key phrase needs to be consistently used in the title, intro text, at
least one subheading)
Please make SEO changes before you share the draft with us!

Creatives

  • Please send graphs, charts or illustrations as attachments in .jpg or
    .png formats.
  • If taken from another source, please list the original source and
    creative commons credentials.
  • We reserve the right to create a cover image for the article that is
    aligned with Developer Economics branding and style.

The process

a/ Original Content
Please send over your pitch to ayan.pahwa@slashdata.co or community@developernation.net
Your pitch should include:

  1. Who is the target audience for the article, and what level of experience is
    it aimed at?
  2. What will the target audience take away from reading the article?
  3. Why are you the best person to write this article? Include links to other
    writing and details of your own expertise.
  4. Your proposed outline. This will be 100-200 words with the main
    headings and a summary of what you will cover in each section.

We’ll get back to you on whether this is a go/no-go and set dates in the first
case.
If your pitch is approved, follow these steps:

  1. Send us a draft of the article, with briefs for graphics or ready images to
    include.
  2. We’ll go through it and let you know what changes we suggest.
  3. Please send us your final draft alongside a short author byline (100-150
    words) with your recent photo, your email address, social handles (e.g.
    Twitter - optional) and any preferred hashtags, which we can include at
    the end of the article
  4. Expect publication of the article and promos from our side (inclusion in
    our weekly newsletter, tweets, Facebook posts) on the communicated
    dates.
    b/ Previously Published Content
  5. Send us a link to the existing article (canonical URL). We’ll prioritise
    multimedia content, especially videos or podcasts!
  6. We’ll confirm the content or make another topic suggestion. In the former
    case, please make suggested updates as above, before sending us the
    draft.
  7. We’ll also review the content and advise on any final changes. Please
    also send us a short author byline (100-150 words) with your recent
    photo, your email address, social handles (e.g. Twitter - optional) and any
    preferred hashtags, which we can include at the end of the article
  8. Expect publication of the article and promos from our side (inclusion in
    our weekly newsletter to 13K devs, tweets, Facebook posts) on the
    communicated dates.
  9. Include a Canonical URL for where the article was previously published (if
    it has).

Publication Process Breakdown below

● Idea
● Suggested topics
● Pitch original content
● Wait for Approval
● Draft brief (with graphics)
● Submission (suggest possible cover image)
● Plagiarism Check
● Your article is reviewed by Developer Nation Team
● Article is Accepted or Rejected or New Recommendation
● If Accepted, suggested changes are sent back for review
● For a reposted Article (Request for Canonical URL)
● SEO Check by Developer Nation Team
● Cover Image/Slider produced by Developer Nation Team
● Publication
● Promote Blog in our biweekly NL
● Post published on Developer nation blog
● Snippets of the article are posted on Social Media
● Reach Out(including link to article and join the community)
Thanks, that’s all folks :slight_smile:

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