Contribute to TechReport

The TechReport Mission

TechReport is dedicated to transparency in the hardware and software space. We work with the industry’s top technologies, thinkers, and companies to tell the stories that drive this world forward. We strive on a daily basis to answer the critical questions on your minds – about the speed, quality, performance, and platform issues, and how all these ecosystems come together for you. Our content lives at the intersection of entrepreneurs and enterprise. The birthplace of these new technologies will impact every industry they touch.

Our Focus

• We cover Hardware and Software…exclusively. 
• We cover new topics that no one has covered or even thought of yet.
• We also cover existing topics, but with a new angle or insight.
• We are provocative, but backed by data and rigor.
• We are controversial and sometimes combative, but always driving towards a conclusion.
• Why does someone need to read this? (In other words, did we answer a question?)

Not Our Focus

• We don’t cover apps. (RARE exception: An app that has connected a whole bunch of new things in a community. Which probably means it’s not really an app story, right?)
• We don’t follow individual crowdfunding campaigns (although we do periodic roundups of interesting crowdfunding campaigns).
• We don’t do games (sadly).

TechReport Guest Author Guidelines

TechReport is seeking guest contributors to enhance our relevant content with current, valuable information about topics like transport, smart cities, connected devices, industrial, health and more.  All content shared is intended to assist our community of readers understand today’s technology.

We welcome high-quality guest contributions from experts who fit our content style. The content should attract those founders and inventors who are building the disruptive technologies and bringing the solutions for the masses around the world. Our readership is tech-savvy. Don’t talk down to them.

HOW TO ANNOY US

We get a lot of emails, and deleting them is time-consuming. And the irritation it causes is down right bitter! Our colleagues don’t like us to be irritated. Then we do things like take the last cup of coffee and not refill the machine, and so on.

We shouldn’t have to say it — but if you send us an inappropriate pitch (meaning something we clearly do not NOT focus on as a subject, or don’t want), it will be ignored and deleted. Yes, we understand everyone has a client who “kind of” fits in one of our areas of focus. Spam is in the eye of the beholder. We know inappropriate when we see it, and we don’t explain “why?” either.

Your follow-up email asking us if we’ve had a chance to read your inappropriate pitch? Also deleted.

Clearly – anything biased – racially, religiously, whatever we don’t approve — will be terminated with prejudice. Ironic, in a way. Now you know how whoever you slighted feels.

So, are we good? Good. Let’s hang it out.

Write and Submit Your Author Bio/Profile

When you establish an author profile with us, please include the following information:

• Biographical information, which will be attached to every post that is published on TechReport. This should be a short and sweet “tweet” type bio of who you are and why you’re important. Limit your bio to 200 characters.
• Twitter profile. This allows us to tag you online so that you can share your post.
• LinkedIn profile. This helps readers see your expertise, background, and credentials as well as connect with you.
• Your personal website or company name along with your role and URL.
• A 200 x 200 profile photograph – This will be setup through Gravatar. Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up a Gravatar picture. This photo of you will also show up on any other WordPress site out there with this email.

Blog Post Lengths

• We like to have posts that range from 900 to 2,000 words.
• Longer blog post lengths are accepted provided they give additional, relevant information that readers can use and helps bring them back to read more on our site.
• Longer, in-depth posts are also more likely to be picked up by some of our media partners.

Citations, Links, and Relationships

• Please have the first two links in every post point to — relevant internal TechReport content — that relates to your topic.
• Use external links for any third-party perspectives, evidence, and statistics.
• Only use credible sources, including research studies and major publications. Do not use Wikipedia.
• Disclose the nature of any relationship with a company or person that is mentioned in your content.
• If your post is a non-sponsored, non-affiliated product review, there needs to be a disclosure included at the top and bottom of the post.
• If you use a quote within an article, you may only link to their Twitter handle unless previously approved by our editorial staff.
• Please do not overly self-promote your own business if you include it in any of your content. We will remove anything that we deem too promotional.
• Our editorial staff reserves to right to add rel=”nofollow” to any link or remove a link attached to words or images both before or after publication
• Do not link to any questionable sources or industries, such as pharmaceuticals, casinos, payday loans, or pornography.
• Buying, selling, or trading links that appear in posts is strictly prohibited.

SEO Best Practices

• HTML formatting related to bulleted lists, headers, bolding, etc.
• 1 WordPress category.
• Shortened titles in the meta title section.
• Alt tags for any images used in the blog post.

Formatting

• Spell out numbers 0 to 9 (one, two, three, etc.).
• Write out the word, percent (25 percent – NOT, 25%).
• Use one space after all punctuation.
• Use the Oxford comma format.
• Capitalize first and last words in headings. All other words are capitalized in a heading except articles (an, a, the, etc.), coordinating conjunctions (for, and, or, but, etc.), and prepositions that contain three or fewer letters (in, one, at, etc.).
• Headers in H2 tags and sub-headers in H3 and H4 tags.
• No spam or div tags (this means DON’T write in a WordDoc. And, DON’T copy and paste from a WordDoc). Write and publish from our site.

Images

• We use your own photography that you have chosen to fit your piece. Provide photos of your products or choose photos from Pexels. By uploading your own photos, you grant us access to use them.
• A featured image should be least 650 pixels wide and 400 pixels tall. Make sure that the featured image appears correctly IN your post, before submitting your post.
• Use center alignment for photos within the blog post unless they are aligned with text.
• Set the display size for all images to “large.”
• Upload at least one image per blog post and place it within the first approximately 150 words.
• All images must have alt tags and title attributes. Use the title of the post or a brief photo description.
• Do not use charts, graphs, or illustrations from other websites unless our editorial staff has approved it.
• We do not accept any images that have a brand, logo, or external links displayed on them. There should not be any branded images that may appear to make the post into sponsored content. And DON’T embed your photos – yes we notice this.
• Memes are not acceptable images for our site.

Our Publishing Process

• You can apply to become a contributor here.
• When submitting, make sure that the document is accessible to anyone with the link. Do not share it via a specific email address.
• After you hit the “Submit for Review” button, here’s how our process works for reviewing the content:
  • Our Editorial Assistant checks that it follows our editorial guidelines.
  • The post undergoes copyeditor review. Grammar, spelling mistakes, and content flow are checked. Links and references are reviewed for accuracy, relevance, and adherence to our linking guidelines.
  • If the editorial staff has requested that you make changes, it will go on Editorial Hold.  Your post will be published faster if you quickly respond and make the required changes. If you see “Editor Hold” on your post’s status but have not received an email with requested changes, please contact us.
  • Once all editorial changes are completed, your post will be changed to “Ready for Publishing” status. Typically, each post involves a two to four-week turnaround from post submission to publication.

Follow Us Everywhere

First, if you have not already done so, please make yourself an account with each of the follow spaces on social media:

• Twitter – Follow and tweet as many as you can.
• Facebook – Like a few posts because it helps us grow.
• YouTube – Subscribe to our channels because it increases our views.

ENOUGH ABOUT US…WHO ARE YOU?

You can apply to become a contributor here.

If you are an agent (PR, media relations, good friend, sly frenemy) submitting on behalf of your client and it will be a one-off submission for publication, you should submit through the same process.

If you’re a freelance writer interested in ongoing work, or a guest poster looking to talk to our audience on an on-going basis, you’ll need a TechReport/WordPress profile. It’s free and critical if we’re going to be working together a lot

• Once you submit, a TechReport editor will look at the post for content, grammar, etc, and they will make the determination to publish it. The TechReport team alone maintains final editorial control.
• As with our comments on inappropriate pitches to TechReport – whether in terms of subject matter, writing style or bias – any posts submitted not matching our content guidelines will be deleted.

We’re very busy, so you may never find out why we didn’t ultimately take the submission, but generally, if it hasn’t been published within two weeks (unless there are some kind of timelines for release of the information in the post) it’s probably not going to be posted.

Our Content Verticals

If you’re a freelance writer looking to pitch us story ideas or a PR/media relations person with a press release (again, see our note about spamming, above) please familiarize yourself with TechReport and its verticals.

We deliver our mission to our audience with a tailored set of content verticals designed to engage our readers, foster conversation, and drive community.

These verticals are:

• Hardware – We love hardware reviews of different chips, devices, setups, rigs, etc.
• Software – We do deep dives on some of the best software there is to offer.
• Connected Devices & Smart Homes – This is where the stories of wearables, home IoT, sensors, and all connected endpoints live.
• Data/Security – The foundation of IoT is security, data, and privacy, and here great new innovations will happen.
• Health – From hospitals to people’s homes, IoT will bring together health and data in new ways.
• Platforms – The underlying technologies driving the future of the IoT are the platforms being built today.
• General News – We love news on what’s happening in the tech world as it relates to the TechReport site.

Content Republishing

• To maximize the search ranking potential, there should be no duplicate content issues.
• Content can only be republished on Medium. You may not republish content from our site on your company or personal site until two weeks after being live on our site.
• If we see a post published anywhere besides our site or your company or personal site, then we may remove your post from our site.

Other Notes on How to Contribute to TechReport

• We don’t guarantee to publish your submission, but we will review it and make a yes/no decision on publication. Because of the high volume of submissions, we’re not able to give timetables on review or feedback beyond an acceptance or rejection. Please don’t email us to ask about the status of your submission because this leads to further delays.
• We reserve the right to edit the post as needed for style, content, length, etc. Our policy is to give guest authors a chance to review our edits before posting when possible, but TechReport retains final editorial control.
• By submitting a post to us, you are affirming that the content is original to you, the author, and has not appeared elsewhere online or in print. We may accept previously published material. If this is the case, please state where and when it ran when you submit your post.
• We don’t pay for guest posts.

Benefits of Guest Posting on TechReport

Here are some of the benefits of providing us with high-quality, relevant content:

• Author Bio on the TechReport website
• Exposure to millions of readers that could be your target audience.
• Syndication relationships with a wide range of media companies
• Exclusive access to yearly Cabin meetup.

If this all sounds good, then we look forward to receiving your submissions and working with you. Apply to become a contributor here.