Article Guidelines

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Article Guidelines

Publication Requirements

What We Publish

IoT For All is dedicated to providing the highest-quality, unbiased content, resources, and news happening in the Internet of Things (IoT) and related disciplines such as AI, VR/AR, data science, telecommunications, and so forth. All content must offer a good, clear answer to “how will reading this be valuable to me?”. Good answers include: It’s educational, it’s informative, it provides useful resources to the reader, or it’s entertaining. Ideally, it’s a combination of these.

Keeping an approachable voice in mind does not negate the need for originality in articles. Articles generally covering either long-standing or popular topics in IoT likely are already covered on our site. When in doubt, more specificity in the topic is typically better. For example, rather than covering how IoT is involved in smart cities, cover cybersecurity risks associated with connecting city utilities to the internet.

We do allow crossposting. Keep in mind that if an article was originally written for a platform such as your company’s blog, heavier edits may need to be made to avoid discussing your company, products, and services directly.

What We Don’t Publish

We try to avoid heavily promotional content — basically that content is directly trying to sell the audience something. We aim to keep our content free of promotional material to provide a better environment for educational and resourceful content. Think, “what can readers gain from this content even if they don’t use my services?” ‍It’s best to avoid discussing products or services directly, especially stuff you or your company offer. While there are exceptions (such as comparisons of services/products that equally represent all services/products mentioned), generally this content doesn’t suit our audience well. 

To maintain the quality and impartiality of our content, we reserve the right to refuse articles that don’t align with our mission and beliefs or to revise submitted content such that it better reflects our non-promotional values. We understand this is a very hard line to draw, and it’s obviously subjective, so please don’t take it personally. Our main objective is to be known as a trustworthy place in which to consume IoT-focused content without having to worry that what you’re reading is skewed toward a certain vendor(s).

Writing Guidelines

How to Write Your Content

To contribute to IoT For All, the first thing you need is content. And the first step to writing content is thinking about who you’re writing for. After all, you can write the world’s best how-to manual for designing and developing a nuclear engine, but if your audience is a twelve-year-old amateur poet, it’ll likely miss the mark.

STEP 1

Choose an Audience

Our target audience is comprised of three personas. Each is detailed in our Personas Guide. Your topic must be framed for one primary persona.

Implementer

A decision-maker implementing IoT in their company. They have some knowledge of the value of the IoT and are investigating or actively pursuing new IoT initiatives in their company.

Enabler

Works for an IoT company that is selling products, services, and/or solutions to the Implementor, enabling them to implement their initiatives or to build products/services.

Newbie

Could eventually be an Implementor or Enabler, but for now they’re completely new to IoT. This person is looking for help getting up to speed.

STEP 2

Choose a Content Type

Your post can be written to perform well in search results (searchable) or to perform well on social channels (shareable). Each has its merits and a distinct approach, detailed in our Content Types guide.

Evergreen Content

Content that might not get high engagement immediately but will build up significant volume over time.

Temporal Content

Content with high engagement, particularly on social channels, in the short term but have high drop off.

Both kinds of content are important and accomplish different goals, so you should aim to write a mix of both.

Writing for SEO vs. Writing for Social

STEP 3

Write Your Content

We currently publish using AP guidelines. Our content is currently edited and published for American English. Content originally published in another language is fine but will be re-formatted to be optimized for American English.

If other resources are quoted or referenced please include proper citation by linking to the original source. Use credible, non-promotional sources.

Write in clear and easy-to-understand language. Too often, IoT-related resources written by engineers are overly technical. We publish a range of resources—from non-technical introductions to highly-technical teardowns of specific IoT technologies. However, always remember that simplicity comes after complexity. Strive to include as wide an audience as possible in your writing. And if highly technical language or acronyms aren’t essential to the specific piece, don’t use them. Lastly, add a little personality to your writing!

And finally, your post should be between 500 and 2000 words.

Personas

Choosing a Persona

The Internet of Things and related disciplines represent a huge, varied collection of individuals and organizations. Overall, we are focused on providing content and resources to the builders and buyers of IoT solutions.

To help you make sure your content will perform well with our audience, we’ve included personas that you can use for reference. These personas represent the types of people we provide content and resources to as well as what they’re interested in.

Although there will be posts that are useful for multiple personas, you should always have one specific persona in mind when writing content. If it’s not clear who a post is aimed at, we may ask that you rewrite the post or choose another topic.

Implementer

This person is a decision-maker implementing IoT at their company. They have some knowledge of the value of the Internet of Things and they are either investigating or actively pursuing the implementation of new IoT initiatives at their company.

Examples of an Implementor

A C-Suite Executive who wants to learn about new IoT technologies and how other companies are using IoT, so she can keep her company ahead of the competition. She’s interested in relevant news, examples of use cases, and best practices for implementing IoT in her own company.

A C-Suite Executive who has heard about the transformative power of IoT and wants to investigate whether he should implement IoT solutions at his company. He’s interested in introductions to IoT concepts and solutions, best practices for digital transformation, and examples of use cases at other companies.

A mid- or high-level manager who is actively pursuing an IoT project at her company. She’s interested in the best technologies to use and how to approach the project to guarantee its success (both before and after launch).

Enabler

This person works for an actual IoT company. That is, a company that is selling products, services, and/or solutions to the decision makers mentioned above, enabling them to implement their IoT initiatives or to build IoT products/services. For example, an employee at an IoT connectivity company, or at an IoT sensor company, etc..

Examples of an Enabler

A Director of R&D who’s on the lookout for new technologies and advancement in the industry that his company might want to implement or pursue. He’s interested in the latest news and advancements related to underlying IoT technologies.

A business development employee who wants to stay up to date on general industry trends. She’s interested in conference recaps and industry reports.

A C-Suite Executive who’s deciding on the strategic direction of his company. He’s interested in thought leadership about the direction of the industry.

Newbie

This person could eventually fall into either of the above two categories, but for now they’re completely new to IoT. Maybe they’ve just joined an IoT company, or maybe their company has recently decided to pursue IoT transformation. Either way, this person is new to many IoT terms and concepts and needs to get up to speed.

Examples of Content for Newbies

Simple, easy to understand explanations of basic IoT concepts.

Multi-part posts that represent an educational course in an IoT topic.

Resources to get up to speed.

Content Types

Choosing a Content Type

When writing your posts, it’s critical to decide what kind of content you’re writing: content that might not get high engagement immediately but will build up significant volume over time (Evergreen content) or content that will be very popular with high engagement, particularly on social channels, in the short term yet have high drop off (Temporal content). Both kinds of content are important and accomplish different goals, so you should aim to write a mix of both (here’s an interesting article that explains more).

Evergreen Content

When writing Evergreen content, SEO is an important consideration as it’s likely that the majority of the total traffic will come from organic search. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, when you’re writing for SEO, you’re writing your post in such a way that it will:

  1. Be more likely to be searched for by potential readers (via search engines)
  2. Once searched, appear higher in search results

Both of the above points are important. The first is important because, although you may rank high for a particular search term, if no one is searching for it then it doesn’t matter. The second is important because most readers won’t ever go past the first page of search results, and higher posts in search rankings are more likely to be clicked on and read.

There’s an entire industry and art around improving SEO for content and web pages. If you want to do your own research to discover awesome keywords to target, that’s great and we encourage you to do so! But for the purposes of IoT For All, it really comes down to common sense.

Ask yourself, “is the topic I’m writing about something that people would search for?” And ask, “will people continue to search for this topic over time?” Here are some good examples:

In general, how-to posts or posts that answer a question tend to be good for SEO and therefore great Evergreen content. Again, just use your common sense about whether your post would be something that someone would search for.

We’ll take care of the meta description, page url, and other SEO optimization factors after you’ve submitted your post for review/editing.

Temporal Content

These kinds of posts are posts that might not be searched for much, but these kinds of posts do two things well:

  1. They target current events and are therefore highly shareable via social media channels. People want to share them because it signifies something about themselves (like showing they’re a thought leader or that they’re in-the-know).
  2. They’re likely to attract clicks when they show up in social media feeds. Social media feeds are cluttered, so posts with current, relevant, interesting, and attention-grabbing topics tend to do well. Also, topics with a question that the person wants to know the answer too.

Here are some examples of posts that do both well:

As you can see from the examples, lists (e.g. “X things that…”) tend to be successful. Also, the first two posts demonstrate to the person’s followers that they’re in-the-know (because those posts are about IoT predictions and a conference’s takeaways respectively).

We’ll share your posts across all of our social channels when they go live, but it’s also up to you to share with your own personal networks too! We’ve also found that relevant subreddits and LinkedIn groups can drive a lot of traffic, so we encourage you to pursue those channels as well.

Submission Process

How the Submission Process Works

Now that you have your first piece of content, you’re ready to get started. But before we can get ready to publish, you need to get us your content. Here’s how to do it.

STEP 1

Sign Up To Contribute

Check out our Writer and Member Programs. They enable you to submit different types of content and to publish under your own brand.

Join the Community

Write articles and other content to share!

STEP 2

Content Review

As soon as you submit your content to the proper submission portal, it’s delivered directly into the hands of our editorial team. They’ll review the article for content, grammar, and perspective audience, and we should get back to you in approximately 4 to 7 business days. We rarely take longer than that to respond, but if we do, don’t worry – our small team is just having a particularly hectic week.

STEP 3

Scheduled for Publishing

After being reviewed and accepted, your article can take from seven days up to one month to be published, depending on the queue and editorial planning. Don’t worry, we’ll let you know via email exactly when your article will be published as soon as we’ve scheduled it and you’ll receive a link when your article goes live on the site.

FAQ

FAQ

Is it really free?

Yup — totally free. I know it sounds too good to be true at times, or you think there has to be a catch. Nope — no catch, once you’re onboarded as a contributing writer, member, or Partner you can submit all the content your heart desires.

Will IoT For All crosspost content I’ve recently written?

Absolutely! If you have content you have already created and posted elsewhere and you want to breathe new life into that content, then IoT For All is the perfect place to do just that. We do ask that whenever possible you write an original post for IoT For All to share. Original just means that you wait at least two weeks after the post goes live on IoT For All before you publish elsewhere (like your own personal or company blog), for SEO purposes.

Once my content is posted on IoT For All, can I crosspost it elsewhere?

Of course! You own the content you create if you want to crosspost your content to other publications that is totally fine with us.

If you do create an original post for IoT For All, we do request that you wait 2 weeks before crossposting to other outlets to let the full power of our SEO optimization take effect.

Interested in contributing to IoT For All regularly?

Our goal is to bring together the smartest minds in IoT to share knowledge through various forms of content, all aimed at educating the world on the value of IoT. So if you believe in our mission, we’re always on the lookout for talented Writers (individuals) and Members (companies) to join our community—for free.

Join the Community

IoTforALl
IoT For All is the #1 IoT publication and resource dedicated to providing the most relevant and valuable content for the Internet of Things industry. We are the trusted voice for IoT where professionals, newcomers, and experts share their insights, knowledge, and experiences for the betterment of the ecosystem.

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