Guest Posts

Guest Post Guidelines Template

Would you like to contribute to the Tin Can Tourists community? By partnering together, we want to showcase your knowledge and experience while promoting your brand as a trusted resource in your space.

Being a fairly niche camping community that focuses on vintage trailers and motorhomes, we get inbound leads all the time who aren’t quite the right fit for our community. When that happens, we would like decline the contribution offer.

With that in mind, here are some guidelines and recommendations for each piece of content that you submit.

List of Desired Blog Post Themes and Topics

In general, posts we accept for guest content fall under the following themes:

  • Vintage Trailers and motorhome history
  • Camping education and opportunities
  • Camping Products
  • Tips, guides, how to’s, and advice for vintage trailer owners
  • Advice and products for trailer restoration and maintenance

While brainstorming what to write about, ask yourself these questions:

  • Will this topic be relevant to the Tin Can Tourists audience?
  • Will this post offer solutions (that don’t require the purchase of my product)?
  • Am I qualified to write about this topic?
  • What insight can I bring to this topic that nobody else can?

When in doubt, get in touch with me at tct1919@gmail.com

Note: We prefer content from people with hands-on experience in camping and vintage trailer ownership, restoration or education. If you’re a freelance writer trying to get experience, we might not be the best fit right now.

Guest Post Content Tips

The guiding light behind our community is to share content that’s educational, engaging, and entertaining … not product-focused or promotional.

Posts should be 1,000 – 1,500+ words in length. We find this is a sweet spot with our readership, and you’ll fit in with the rest of our blog this way. Longer is good, too.

Break up your content, so it’s easy to read. This means including headings, subheadings, bullets, and any other visual elements to increase the readability of your piece.

Write in a natural, conversational tone. We want to share content that is authoritative, but not robotic. We’re producing community website content — not Wikipedia pages, so don’t shy away from showing off your sense of humor. That said, if your guest post was a movie, the highest rating we’d want to see on it is PG-13.

All content MUST BE ORIGINAL. We do not accept duplicate or syndicated content as guest posts. If your post has appeared anywhere else on the web, we can’t publish it on our blog. If you quote other content, link to it.

Always name your sources. We understand that you’re an expert, but our audience might not be so sure. If you’re going to drop some stats or facts, link back to the original source.

Talk about your real-world experience. Draw on your own personal experience to speak authoritatively about what you know.

Take a position. If you disagree with common wisdom on a topic, talk about why the mainstream point of view is wrong or misleading. Back up your perspective with facts. Take screenshots. Include interesting data. Support your arguments with external references.

Other Things to Include in Your Guest Post

  • Statistics. Research shows that 94 percent of people are 53 percent more likely to believe content that’s supported by 26 percent more data. (Okay, that’s made up. But try to include verifiable first or third party research, statistics, and data in your post.)
  • Outbound Links. Does somebody else have a great point of view on a topic? Want to make sure people know a certain definition of a word or concept? Link to it. Make sure these links are to authoritative sites. Only link to your site if it’s a highly relevant blog post.
  • Lists and Bullets. We’re fans. Readers are fans. Most people skim articles until they find the value. Bullet points make this easy.
  • Actionable Takeaways. Recap the takeaways of your article as bullet points at the end of your post.

NOTE: *Tin Can Tourists reserves full editorial control and may edit or tweak submissions as we see fit.

Guest Post Logistics

  • First, we’ll collaborate and agree on a topic and title. Don’t start writing until we’ve done this!
  • Once we’ve agreed on the topic, give me a deadline for when you expect to submit the article for us to review.
  • After you’ve written your draft, send it to me as a Google Doc. Use these sharing settings:
    • On – Anyone with the link;
    • Access – Can edit.
  • I’ll make edits in this Doc, so make a copy if you’d like to keep an original version of your writing.
  • Send a short, couple sentence bio. This can include a link to your LinkedIn profile and/or your website.
  • I’ll let you know when the post is scheduled to go live.

Guest Post Promotion

Please feel free to promote your post through your social media, newsletter, or link to it from your blog.

You can even include a snippet of the post on your blog, with a link back to the original content on our site (this is important so that we both avoid duplicate content penalties).