Please read our guidelines carefully to ensure you’re happy with them before submitting your application and so that your application has the best chance of being successful!
General
Familiarise yourself with Puppy Tales and have sense of the content we publish.
Consider content topics that you know well and/or that will be of interest to our community.
Please limit the formatting of your article, plain text is preferred for preparing the article for the website.
Successful applicants will be expected to contribute a minimum of four articles over an initial six month period. We work will closely with you during this time to craft great content and share this with the Puppy Tales Community.
Once you’ve been accepted as a Contributor we will be happy to brainstorm ideas for articles with you, chat about article structure, help you source images and otherwise provide any guidance and assistance we can.
If an article you’ve submitted isn’t what we were hoping for, we’ll let you know. We may provide some guidance to help you edit and resubmit the article. If we decide the article isn’t suitable, you keep your article – and you’re welcome to submit it for consideration elsewhere
We expect you to also share your published Puppy Tales articles like crazy on your social media accounts.
Length
The article needs to be long enough to be high quality, comprehensive and cover the content in sufficient detail. The reader is not to be left with half the story or having to find further information or do their own research if they want to use or act on the content in the article.
The majority of our articles are a minimum of 1,000 words in length – some can be up to 2,000 words. We will, however, consider more concise articles with big impact or that are more visually based.
We accept video content, however all videos need to be high quality and professional, and we ask that you provide written content (min. 300 words) with your video content.
Accuracy
If you’re claiming something in your article, be able to back it up! We like experience, research, stats and numbers. If you have data or a source for information in your article – please reference that at the end of your article.
Proper attribution is to be provided for quotes and other third party content included in the article.
Writing Style
Tone is everything. We like articles to be informative, interesting and positive. Help our readers feel empowered and inspired to make their lives with their dog better.
We write our articles as a part of the dog loving community. We love anecdotes, stories or examples from your experiences that help make the article feel personal.
Conversational is best. Write as you naturally talk, not academically or formally.
Make your article interesting and easily readable by including subheadings, and using short sentences, paragraphs and bullet points to break up content.
We are happy with both catchy headlines and informative headlines – do what suits your article best. We usually keep them relatively short – under eight words.
We try to start with a strong lead sentence or hook, that captures interest and encourages the reader to continue reading.
If you want to emphasise a phrase or word, use italics rather than underlining as it is may be taken as a link if underlined.
If in doubt, have a look at the tone and style of content already published.
Photography & Visuals
We want high quality original photography and graphics to illustrate our articles.
Each article is to have at least two good quality images – a feature and one other. That said, we LOVE visuals, so the more the better. .
Screenshots, sketches, drawings, infographics and other original visual content may also be perfect to accompany your guest article.
Wherever possible, we avoid using stock photography.
You must own the copyright or be able to provide us written permission to use any photography & visuals submitted to accompany your article.
If you’re not able to provide or source suitable photos, talk to us, we have a large photography collection and may be able to provide suitable photographs to accompany your article on Puppy Tales
Editing
We use British English in Australia, and therefore on Puppy Tales.
We will edit all articles that appear on Puppy Tales. Rarely will an article be heavily edited, but we may change the title, correct spelling/grammar and otherwise edit so that the article is readable and successfully hits the mark with our readers.
Links
Links contained within the article are only to be used to offer further detailed explanation of a term or concept in the article. If it’s essential to the article being useful and actionable, then such explanation needs to be included in the article submitted.
Any links deemed inappropriate or promotional may be removed or may result in the article not being accepted for publication.
Links to your business or personal website and/or social media can be included in the author bio that accompanies each article.
We do not allow affiliate links in the body of the article.
We will use nofollow links at our discretion.
Where it’s fitting, Puppy Tales may link to other relevant articles or include a call to action in your article
Author Bio and Headshot
As one of our contributors you will receive full author credit, consisting of your name at the head of the post, and a bio with a photo and social media/website links at the end. When your fourth article has been published we will also include your full bio as a Contributor on the Puppy Tales Team page.
We’ll give you a link to your website and up to two social media links in your bio, which we will include at the end of the article.
Please avoid being self-promotional in the body of your article. Save that for your author bio.
You will need to provide a headshot of yourself that is clear and well lit. If you have a photo of you and your dog/s that you can also provide, then please do as we will use that on the contributor page.
Republishing
As already mentioned articles are to be unique to Puppy Tales. But of course we would love you to share them with your followers and friends on your website or blog. One suggestion is to do a short post on your own blog on the day it goes live, where you have a snippet and an image and point your readers to your Puppy Tales post via a link.
Articles may be republished in full on your own site/s after at least 60 days have passed since it was published on Puppy Tales. When republishing articles, please include the statement “This article was originally published on puppytales.com.au” and include a link to the article on Puppy Tales. This just helps with duplicate content issues in search engines.
Your article once accepted and published on Puppy Tales may not be submitted to any other publishers, media or sites.
