Cleverism is a community of people that share their experience and learnings from starting and growing a business (“entrepreneurial track”), how they got a job and excelled in it (“career track”), and how to be happy and productive while doing so (“personal development track”).
REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD CONTRIBUTE
01 Reach massive and relevant audience
The Cleverism magazine is currently read by more than 2 million people every month. In addition, we reach more people via our more than 500k fans on Facebook, 9k email subscribers, and our Youtube channel. You will not only be able to reach our relevant audience of influencers, experts, and entrepreneurs, but also get a backlink, receive feedback from the Cleverism community, and are able to reach potential customers, employees and supporters.
Regular contributors have the ability to attract new customers and investors for their business idea.
Good contributions typically generate thousands of views while great, SEO optimized contributions can generate more than 10,000 views.
02 Build authority
Your contribution is linked to your person and business. This makes writing super important as you can position yourself as an expert in your domain (e.g. entrepreneurial track, career track, personal development track). By contributing to the Cleverism community you position yourself as an expert and learn from the Community’s feedback.
The more high quality learnings and tips you share with our community, the faster you build your authority.
03 Improve people’s life
All the great learnings and tips that you share with the Cleverism community will enable thousands of people to act on it. From our point of view, this is the best thing. You will help people improve their life’s and the life’s in their community by sharing what problems you had to overcome, how you felt, and how you overcame those problems.
At the end of the day, this is what life is all about. Sharing your knowledge, helping others, and inspiring others to do the same.
This is what the Cleverism community is all about. Sharing knowledge.
WHO SHOULD CONTRIBUTE
If you have experienced challenging problems and learned something valuable from it, then you can become a rockstar contributor to the Cleverism magazine.
Entrepreneurial track
Entrepreneurs, Venture Capitalists, Business Angel, Experts (Marketing, Sales, Human Resources, Accounting, Operations, Data Science, Technology, Strategy)
Career track
Everybody that excels at finding a job or performing greatly in a job, helpful recruiters
Personal development track
Productivity experts, personal development experts
THE EDITORIAL PROCESS
Let’s start with how you get your contrbution published on the Cleverism magazine.
Step 1: Pitch your idea
Fill out the form at the bottom of this page and propose a topic or two you would like to write about.
Full article is fine too. Read the style guide and conditions below to understand what type of content we publish.
If you send a full article, please make sure you send your bio with it as well (2-3 lines max, one link, one photo with 150×150 pixels).
If we can’t publish your post, feel free to publish it somewhere else.
Topics we are looking for
Cleverism is about improving people on their entrepreneurial track, career track, and personal development track discussed above. Therefore, your contribution must fit into one of those buckets.
Step 2: Editing your post
In order for all of us to save time during the process, we will limit the number of drafts to 3. This means, your first draft of the article should be well-researched, well-written with no grammar or spelling errors, and in line with our style guide.
If rework is to be done, we will send you some high-level suggestions for improvement. Listen to the suggestions, ask clarifying questions if necessary, and then send us back the adjusted second draft.
The second draft should incorporate all suggested improvements and should be ready to be published. If not, we will send some further suggestions for improvement.
Once you send us the third draft, we will either publish or turn it down. If that’s the case, feel free to publish your article elsewhere.
Conditions for the guest post
The main rule for your article to be published is simple: Write really, really helpful content. We don’t publish rubbish.
- 100% original content, never published anywhere else
- Minimum 1700 words, extra kudos for articles for 3000+ word articles (the longer the article, the more readers in general you will reach with your post)
- Well-researched, practical, insightful posts
- Every claim needs to be backed up with factual data, studies, experiments whereas you link to the research
- Make the article easy to read by using headings/subheadings, bullet points, and numbers lists when possible, and break-up paragraphs that are longer than 5-6 lines in Microsoft Word.
- Support your arguments with (legal) photos and graphics
EDITORIAL STYLE GUIDE
Follow these guidelines, this will save all of us time and you will almost be certain to get your content published.
#1 Stick to the Guide
Over the last years, we have learned what content gets read and shared the most. We publish long-form, evergreen content that helps people on their entrepreneurial, career, or personal development track.
We aim to write epic content that is 10x better than everything out there. if somebody wrote about the topic already, and we can’t write 10x better on the content or from a different angle, then we won’t write about it.
Follow the guide and your article will almost certainly get published and be read and shared for years after publication.
#2 Opinions are Worthless, Facts are Everything
Everybody can write about his opinion on a topic, but this is almost always worthless for other people. Do extensive research and backup all your claims.
Instead of saying “Most people want to become entrepreneurs”, find one or more studies that back this claim up. Also find out why something is the case (“why most people want to become entrepreneurs”).
The basic rule is simple: Do research.
#3 No Basic Bullshit
If you are thinking about writing articles like the following, think again:
- 7 things successful entrepreneurs do
- 39 mistakes when interviewing for a job
- 21 CEOs tell us about their secrets
- Make millions with this method
The Cleverism community is comprised of entrepreneurs, innovators, experts, and business people. They want the real thing, we don’t need to tell them the basics.
Dig deep and write for smart people.
#4 Write for Smart People
This relates to the writing style. Our readers love if you write crisp, to the point (e.g. “this is how it works”). They hate super emotional and hyperbolic writing style (e.g. “Wow! The biggest secret you ever wanted to know”).
Do lots of research, tell a story, and respect the reader.
#5 Understand the Why
Everybody can write a list of high level tactics or concepts. And those posts might be good for some audiences. Lots of blogs do exactly that.
For the Cleverism magazine this is different. Instead of writing only about the “what”, try writing about the “why”.
For example, it’s easy to say “entrepreneurs need to validate their business idea” and leave it like that. Try to write about the “why” (e.g. “entrepreneurs need to validate their business idea in order to test critical assumptions early on. This will speed up the decision to continue or abandon the business idea; thereby increasing the capital efficiency as less capital is allocated to unsuccessful business ideas”).
When in doubt, act like a child that asks why all the time. Ask why so often until you almost get annoyed.
#6 What’s the takeaway
Imagine you wrote a 5,000 words article based on lots of research. Good, this can be intellectually stimulating.
But go on step further. Ask yourself: What can the reader take away from your article? Can he apply it in real life? Is it actionable?
Show and guide the reader to what his takeaways can be.
#7 Every word must add value
Just because Cleverism publishes 2,500+ word articles doesn’t mean there should be fluff. The goal is not word count, but comprehensive information.
Please don’t use word count as a success factor. Success of contributing to the Cleverism community comes from well-researched, crisp, and to-the-point written articles that are actionable. Those articles will get read and shared the most on Cleverism.
Some comments on wording.
Don’t use superlatives
Things like “the best”, “the worst”, and “the most” are not objective and reflect lazy writing and research. Use objective language.
- “Most effective marketing technique” vs “This marketing technique was used by company X in situation Y and generated the following results, 1,2, and 3”
- “We have the best Chinese restaurant” vs “Our Chinese restaurant has won three Michelin stars in 2016”
Specifics beat superlatives.
Conclusion
(note: always write a conclusion to your post)
Main criteria for getting published: Write very, very good content. We don’t publish rubbish!
- 100% original content, not published elsewhere
- Minimum 1700 words; extra kudos for 3000+ word articles (again, word count is not the goal; it’s the byproduct of a well-researched article)
- Posts need to be well-researched and practical
- Every claim needs to be backed up by a link t0 a study or research
- Respect the reader and avoid fluff and superlatives (again: every word needs to add value to the reader)
Contributing to the Cleverism magazine is not easy, but it’s worthwhile, because this type of content people will love to read 2-3 years from now.
APPLY TO BECOME A CONTRIBUTOR FOR CLEVERISM MAGAZINE
