Guest Post Guidelines Template

Thanks for contributing to The College Monk! We’re teaming up with some of the best minds in the world of marketing and sales to educate founders and revenue leaders on their growth strategies. By partnering together, we want to showcase your thought leadership while promoting your brand as a trusted resource in your space.

Being a large college site, we get a high volume of inbound requests for guest posts that aren’t quite the right fit for our site. When that happens, we prefer to refer these leads to trusted partners or the spam box.

With that in mind, here are some guidelines and recommendations for each piece of content that you submit.

Before you write: What we look for

In general, posts we accept for guest content fall under the following themes:

  • Higher Education
  • Grad School
  • Master’s Degrees
  • Online Learning
  • Educational Technology

While brainstorming what to write about, ask yourself these questions:

  • Will this topic be relevant to The College Monk’s audience?
  • Will this post offer solutions (that don’t require the purchase of my product)?
  • Am I qualified to write about this topic?
  • What insight can I bring to this topic that nobody else can?
  • Is the content already covered on the blog?

When in doubt, get in touch with us for any questions at info@thecollegemonk.com.

Note: We want content from individuals who have industry-level experience in the education space. 

Our Guidelines

  • Posts should be 1,000 – 1,500+ words in length unless previously discussed... We find this is a sweet spot with our readership, and you’ll fit in with the rest of our blog this way. Longer is good, too.
  • Break up your content, so it’s easy to read. This means including headings, subheadings, bullets, and any other visual elements to increase the readability of your piece. Write in clear sentences. (i.e. don’t use big words to sound clever!)
  • Write in a natural, conversational tone. We want to share content that is authoritative, but not robotic. We’re producing blog content — not Wikipedia pages.
  • All content MUST BE ORIGINAL. We do not accept duplicate or syndicated content as guest posts. (i.e. you can’t republish the same article/articles).
  • Always name your sources. We understand that you’re an expert, but our audience might not be so sure.
  • Content posted today should still be relevant next year.
  • Your article should be education-neutral and written with the intent to add value to our readers.
  • No defamatory or abusive content will be allowed, no matter how strong or justified your emotions or arguments are.
  • Only 2 links throughout the article. If the placement of links is your goal, then The College Monk is not a good fit for you unless that link is relevant and provides value, (i.e link to a blog article back to your site that is helpful and relevant and NOT a product page.)
  • At least 1 – 2 Internal links are required to the most relevant content on The College Monk, external links for citing purposes are welcomed too.
  • A minimum of 1-2 images in total are required, including one featured image. If an image cannot be provided that is fine we will take care of it.
  • Actionable Takeaways. Recap the takeaways of your article as bullet points or a conclusion at the end of your post.

NOTE:*The College Monk reserves full editorial control and may edit submissions as we see fit. These edits include anything from removing too much self-promotion to optimizing for SEO, grammatical errors, and more.

Our Process

  • First, agree on a topic and title. Don’t start writing until we’ve done this! But please don’t feel intimidated and pitch us your ideas if you have any.
  • Once we’ve agreed on the topic, give us a deadline for when you expect to submit the article for us to review.
  • After you’ve written your draft, send it to us as a Google Doc. Use these sharing settings:
    • On – Anyone with the link.
    • Access – Can edit.
  • We will check for any plagiarism and writing mistakes.
  • Please give us 1-2 weeks to respond back accordingly if not sooner. If you do not hear from us within 2 weeks, you may reach out to us.

Submission of Article

Submit your article to info@thecollegemonk.com with the subject line “Guest Post from [your site name]“, only after you have contacted us.

  • We’ll make edits in this Doc, so make a copy if you’d like to keep an original version of your writing.
  • Send a short, 1 - 2 sentence bio. This can include a link to your LinkedIn profile and/or your website please no product links.
  • We’ll let you know when the post is scheduled to go live.