Blogger Tips & Guidelines
THIS IS FOR OUR BLOGGERS
Thanks for blogging at www.wellness101life.com. When you blog, always log in using your user name and password at this link: wellness101life.com/wp-admin. Please note that is a different link than the normal member login so it’s important to use this link in order for you to access your blog dashboard.
BLOGGER GUIDELINES
We’ve put together a few tips and guidelines to help you post effectively for yourself and the community. We’re a team, so if all of us follow these guidelines, we’ll all have a more enjoyable and fruitful experience. Blogging can lead to sales of your products and services because of name recognition, it can lead to speaking engagements, it can lead to co-host opportunities with Wellness 101 media platforms and more.
1. WHAT SHOULD I POST?
Post wellness-oriented blogs that are educational, inspirational, thought provoking and/or empowering. Don’t post blogs that would be considered advertisements only for the benefit of your business (i.e. slamming your competition, posting your monthly sales special, etc.). They won’t get read (we’ll delete them) and they may turn off readers from reading other blog posts that can help them improve their wellness. If you’re going through a personal wellness journey, please share it with our readers. People love to read transformational stories! Have fun with it. Build a rapport with our readers and build a following. All posts must include a Featured Image. More on that below.
2. TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS TO ADD A POST
In the left column, click on “Posts” and “Add Post.” In the right column, you’ll see sections for Format, Categories, Tags & Featured Image. Here are some instructions for those items:
a) Choose the proper format for your post. For example, if it’s a video, click video.
b) There are six main categories: Eat, Stay, Play, Live, Learn & Heal. Please check the box that best matches your article. We’ll be creating subcategories also under those. Please DO NOT create any new categories, but you may create subcategories (if the system allows you at your access level — if it doesn’t, please suggest subcategories to us). For example, under the Eat category, there may be subcategories of organic, raw, meats, salads, smoothies, etc. Do not use the “50 State Challenge” category.
When you pick the category, please only pick one — the one that matches the post best. You can use many tags, but only one category. That will help us to help the readers find the selections they are looking for.
Here are the categories, along with a brief description of the types of stories that fall into each category:
EAT – Anything food or beverage related
STAY – Hotels and resorts
PLAY – Fitness, sports and recreation activities
LIVE – Lifestyle activities such as travel, social gatherings, hobbies, etc.
LEARN – Instructional pieces
HEAL – Healing remedies and first-aid
c) Put tag words in the Tag section that apply to your post. This will help with search engines and it will help readers to find stories about the topics they are searching for.
d) Please add at least one photo to the body of the post (by clicking on the photo icon in the tool bar above the post) and make sure you click on the Featured Image button to choose one of your photos to be a Featured Image. ADDING A FEATURED IMAGE IS VERY IMPORTANT — AND IT’S MANDATORY. That will put that photo on the preview of the post to show up on the home page as stories rotate through there. You must use your own photos or have full permission (by license) to use photos by others. Do not copy and past photos from the web that may be copyright protected and need to be secured by license. Such photos will be removed and you may risk being suspended as a blogger. By uploading your photos to the site, you approve our use of those photos.
3. FREE SOURCE FOR PHOTOS (IF YOU DON’T USE YOUR OWN)
We encourage you to use your own photos whenever possible because they will help to brand you! You can also use photos that you are licensed to use. Photos are available for free use from FreeDigitalPhotos.net. There are a few easy steps you must complete in order to use their photos. It only takes a few minutes and it’s worth it. They have great photos there and they will help get your stories read by a lot more people. Please follow the instructions they give you closely as they relate to use of their free photos and acknowledging the site and the image creator. You must publish an acknowledgement to FreeDigitalPhotos.net and the image creator wherever you use this image, for example: Image courtesy of criminalatt at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Find out more information about publishing acknowledgements:
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/acknowledgement.php
4. POST FREQUENCY
Please post weekly (at a minimum) to ensure that fresh content is always on the site. Posts don’t have to be long. Preferably they’ll be in the 100 to 750 word range. There’s no limit to the posts you can load up on the site. In fact, the more you post and the more followers you get, the higher your chances of being featured in our national media programs such as radio and TV shows in development!
5. AUTHOR CREDIT
If you include quotes or materials written by someone else, you must give that person credit. It’s not good enough to say “from Facebook” or “from a book I read.” All info that has been created by someone else must give that person full credit as the author or the post must be removed.
THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF OUR WELLNESS 101 LIFE COMMUNITY!
Please let us know if you have any questions that can’t be answered in the help section of the blog.