Writing A Guest Post - Being Brunel
Thanks for deciding to contribute to Being Brunel!
This page collects together everything you need to know (and most of the things you don’t) about writing a guest post for the site.
The Guest Post Process
Guest posting on Being Brunel is fairly relaxed. Once you’ve got a post, you just need to send it to me. As long as I can open it, I do not mind what format you provide the post to me in (.doc, .docx, .odt, e-mail, .html, etc.) Once received I’ll put it together on the site, and send you a preview for approval before going live. Updates are possible after publishing, but will not be reflected in the subscribers’ e-mail.
Being Brunel currently updates once a week (I am actively working on increasing the frequency). I try to separate out guest posts so people don’t forget who I am, which means there may be a short wait before the post is published. This means that if you’re interested in doing regular contributions, it might be worth nothing that ‘regular’ in this current context would mean every two months or so.
Guest Post Essentials
About the Author
All guest posts include an ‘About the Author’ block (see left). Along with the thumbnail picture, it contains a short blurb and a link. I can put this together for you, or you can provide me with the information. Similarly you are welcome to write as an individual or as a company.
It would be helpful if you could also provide me with a relatively large (~700px square) image to form the header/thumbnail of the post. If you can’t, don’t worry too much; I will be able to find a CC licensed one on Flickr- it just might not be as relevant.
More Than Just Text
Most standard text formatting is available (bold, italic, underline, etc.) as are both numbered and bullet lists. Articles can also be separated with several subtitles. All posts on Being Brunel can include embedded/linked video, images, picture mosaics and picture galleries. It is helpful if you can send all images separately, and not embed them in the content you give me, as it’s not always easy to extract them again.
Advanced Formatting
This is an aside, it should be a quote from the article.
Being Brunel has a number of ways you can make your article look better. If you just give me the content I will automatically take a guess at where these graphic devices are best used. You are more than welcome, however, to specify how and when they are used yourself.
Further Info
This is a further information section. Use this if you’ve got a lot of exposition that is related to the article, but doesn’t need to be read; or can easily standalone.
The five types of devices currently provided are an aside (above), a furtherinfo box (right), a download button, keypoint, and separator (below, in order). Note that both the aside and further information boxes can appear on both the left and right side.
A keypoint stands out from the article.
Topics, Style and Readership
I’ve left this section until last, because chances are you already know what you want to write about, and how you’re going to write about it. Remember that Being Brunel is largely aimed at younger engineers, and I do my best to keep a more honest, off-beat, style to make the site more engaging. At a guess I would aim for 700 words, but that is by no means set in stone. As for topics; well I’m always happy to throw about some ideas and see what sticks, but we’ll have to do that by e-mail.
Finally– thanks again. Being Brunel is a personal endeavour, and I do it because I think that Civil Engineering is interesting enough to talk about when I get home from work. The site doesn’t make money (in fact, it costs me about £130 /year), is unlikely to make me president of the ICE, and takes up far too much of my time; so the best reward I can hope for is to engage a few more people.
– Thomas Michael Wallace
