Instatus – Write for Us

Yes, you! Are you looking to become the next guest writer for the Instatus blog? If you’ve got an idea related to SaaS, technology, product management, or customer success that’ll contribute to our industry and interest our community, we want to hear about it.

Let’s clear one thing first: we put quality above all! That’s why we don’t just accept articles from anyone. We know our readers have high expectations from our blog, and we always seek to provide as much value as possible. We expect our guest blog writers to do the same.

With that being said, we’ve put together a guide that’ll introduce you to some basic guest post guidelines. This will help you discover more about Instatus and determine what articles we do and don’t accept to figure out if you’re the right person to write for us.

A Few Words About Instatus

Instatus sets up beautiful automated status pages in minutes that help businesses map their incidents, monitor downtimes, and keep customers happy by building trust. What’s not to love?

Instatus is ready to jump in the fire in case of unplanned outages to help businesses return online faster.

The most important benefit is that it contributes to a healthy company culture by avoiding frustration due to improper resource management.

Select a Topic

What We Publish

Instatus is all about technology, software, product, startups, customer success, software development and DevOps So those are the topics we talk about. Your guest post should bring value to the table, share exciting ideas, shed light on common industry questions, share perspectives and provide authentic content. Tips, advice, case studies, success stories, and interviews are always juicy topics that interest our readers.

What We Don’t Publish

We don’t publish irrelevant topics or content that’s already been analyzed thoroughly in previous posts. We also don’t publish promotional content; the whole point of guest posting is to show your knowledge and expertise in the field. Naturally, any misleading information, fake data, or data without credits to the original sources are not included. Finally, plagiarized text or text written by an AI tool is a deal-breaker and an immediate no-no.

Mind the Content Guidelines

Now that we’ve established the pool from which you should be generating topics for your blog posts, let’s elaborate a bit more on Instatus’ standards when it comes to quality guest posts and other content.

Original Content

That’s right! Your content should be 100% original—no repetitions of older content and no copying of articles from the web. Google doesn’t like plagiarized copy, and neither do we. At the end of the day, we don’t solely care about rankings but also about providing real value to our readers to help them grow healthy businesses. That’s the reason why quality and authenticity are so important to us!

You also need to keep in mind that we don’t like fluff and generic ideas! On the contrary, we love actionable tips and contextual examples that take readers by the hand to act upon real-time solutions. Focus on:

• Frameworks, strategies, examples, statistics, and models
• Screenshots to back up your arguments. For example, you can use screenshots from Instatus’s features or an interesting case study you’d like to share, or other valuable tools, like we did in this article talking about the 5 best open source status page services
• Anecdotes to make your narrative more conversational, approachable, and fun to capture the reader’s attention.

Keyword Dense Copy

The more keyword-optimized your content is, the better your chances of getting in front of the right eyes. 😉 Let’s face it; search engines like Google are more clever than ever. So, you want to make sure that your content has depth and is focused on your keywords. Before starting writing, perform keyword research by using a tool like Ahrefs. After specifying your keywords, you want to categorize them into:

• Focus keywords (the most high-performing ones) that you’ll be mentioning the most times.
• Longtail keywords (low-performing ones) that you’ll be mentioning fewer times.
• Question keywords and “People also ask” phrases that’ll help make your post more relevant.

Don’t forget to mention Instatus at least 3 times throughout your article by hyperlinking to relevant landing pages. Your content must be comprehensive. For example, suppose you’re writing on how to protect yourself from domain hijacking. In that case, you first want to analyze what domain hijacking is and why it occurs, provide some examples to support your arguments, and then provide an actionable listicle of the actions you should take to avoid becoming a hijacking victim.

Target Audience

Always keep in mind to whom you’re talking to with your guest post. Most of our readers are already DevOps professionals, IT specialists, or product managers, so they’re familiar with terms, procedures, and frameworks. You want to avoid all the fluff―you’re not writing for your tech-phobic mother. Instead, go straight to the point and speak directly to their needs.

Easy Reading

According to a Nielsen Norman Group study, 79% of users read-scan through pages. This indicates that your article needs to be well structured, clear, and concise so that the majority will easily consume it. It should include short sentences and paragraphs between 45 words.

Make the narrative fun and keep the tone conversational. The article should read as a continuous storyline from one post to the next, even though this is your first post for Instatus.

Good Grammar & Spelling

It goes without saying, but please double-check your article for spelling and grammar mistakes as they give a wrong impression to the readers. You must have a native English writing level and feel comfortable creating high-quality easily-readable content for demanding readers. Install a grammar checking tool like Grammarly and make proofreading your favorite habit.

Relevant Internal & External Links

Links are equally important when writing an SEO-optimized article. External links allow you to give credits to other web creators about images, statistics, examples, or case studies you might borrow in your article to avoid plagiarism issues. Additionally, external links create a web of similar-content landing pages that Google ranks higher in search results. Just make sure that the external links you’re using are reliable. Promotional, out-of-content, or links to other companies will be removed.

Similarly, internal links help connect relevant articles between your own blog to keep readers navigating your website a little longer. You can check our existing blog posts and decide on at least 4 of them you want to link in your guest blog. Ensure that you’re also using the proper organic and relevant anchor texts. For example, if you’re saying, “Read this Instatus article”, you’ll want to place your link in the anchor text “Instatus article” not behind “read this”.

Logical Structure

Your copy should flow from one topic to the other effortlessly. Below we’ve included an outline template to help you in your guest post creation:

Introduction

• Keep it brief, around 2-3 paragraphs
• Use a checklist to summarize your main points
• Mention the focus keyword in the first line
• Mention Instatus at least once with a relevant hyperlink

Body

• Break your topic into sections with the proper H2>H3>H4 headings and break a section into subsections if it has more than 4 paragraphs.
• Use at least 2 linked brand CTAs per 1000 words
• Paragraphs should be maximum of 45 words
• Mention focus and secondary keywords throughout

Conclusion

• The heading should be a CTA
• Mention Instatus with a CTA

Some stylistic guidelines you should keep in mind about Instatus is that:

• We write in American English
• We use title casing for headings and subheadings
• We make our sentences short and straightforward to keep the text snappy and vivid
• We dare to have fun, be playful, and educational at the same time
• We include at least 4 paragraphs per section with around 45 words per paragraph
• We create a narrative around our product―status pages―to show readers how the product can help them solve a problem

Why Become a Guest Post Writer?

Ghost posting is one of the most popular SEO strategies to earn high authoritative backlinks from relevant industry websites, reach new audiences and get a new stage to showcase your knowledge and expertise. In addition, it helps build long-term relationships with market leaders and exchange audiences and points of view. Finally, it recognizes you as an industry authority that others can count on for guidance and resources.

Are You The Right Person To Write For Us?

Suppose that what you’ve read so far excites you, and you’re an experienced SEO writer with stellar grammar, research skills, and knowledge around technology, SaaS, and product management. In that case, we’d encourage you to become an Instatus guest post writer!

Get in Touch!

Are you up for the guest posting challenge? Then let’s get in touch! Send us your article to write@instatus.com, and we’ll contact you for the details. Don’t forget to bookmark this post to refer to our guidelines when writing your article, and feel free to read existing content on Instatus blog to get familiar with our tone and style.