Do you have an idea for a post that you’d like to see on RCG? Or better yet, do you want to become a regular contributor?
Back when RCG was launched in March ’05, I knew I wanted to create something special. I don’t remember exactly when I first published our mission, but I know it was early on and it is something we consistently strive to accomplish. The mission Rain City Guide is simple. We want to be the best resource for real estate information in the Seattle area.
If this is something you’d like to help us accomplish, then it’s pretty simple to get started. However, the traffic and exposure of RCG can be a bit rough for writers not used to writing on a blog that gets lots of comments and attention on each post. For obvious reasons, there’s an editorial process you’ll have to go through before you’ll get published… but it’s not very complicated and assuming your intentions are good, then I’d love to add you to our community of contributors.
Your First Post
So here’s the steps:
- Register with Rain City Guide by clicking on the”Connect with Facebook” button on the homepage. (Obviously, this also requires that you have a Facebook account).
- Email me to let me know why you are interested, what topics you might consider posting and, assuming you’re a real estate professional, what type of work you do. Assuming it looks like you’ll be a good match for the RCG audience, then I’ll promote you to a “contributor” status.
- Fill out your profile. This will only be available after you’ve registered. Check out the “about the author” section under one of my posts to get an idea of how this information will look when your post is published
- Sign up for a free gravatar using the same email you use to register. This will ensure your photo shows up at the bottom of articles you publish
- Write your first post!
Once you write your first post and save it using the button “submit for review” I’ll get an email which will prompt me to review the article to ensure it meets RCG standards (SEE RCG STANDARDS SECTION BELOW!). Especially for first posts, I’ll almost always give some constructive criticisms. Typical advice I might give on a first post includes:
- Recommending some more links for the post
- Making the article shorter (i.e. taking out the fluff)
- Adding photos/videos
- Adding tags/categories to their post
Once we both like the post, I’ll write a small introduction for you, hit publish and you’ll be a RCG contributor!
Follow up Posts
After you’ve written your first post, it’ll get much simpler in the future to publish articles. All you’ll need to do is to return to this page, write a post, and hit “Publish for review”.
I’ve found with new authors that once we go through a few posts on RCG, the review process get much quicker and easier… and pretty soon, I’m typically publishing articles by experiences contributors within only a cursory review of the article.
Rain City Guide Standards
While I hate rules, I’ve found that a few guidelines (standards?) can help keep things running much smoother. Over time, here are a few things I’ve found work best on RCG:
- Avoid obvious self-promotion. Don’t bother trying contributing if you’re goal is to simply link back to your website/blog with every post. Rain City Guide has some awesome SEO juice it can pass along to your site, but I won’t publish your post if it reads like an SEO play. I’ve explicitly allowed you to give yourself a nice link back to your site on all your posts in the author section. You might have to trust me on this, but if a consumer wants to learn more about you, they’ll follow that link!
- If you are going to attack something… attack ideas, not people. (i.e. “your idea sucks