12+ important tips for contributors

Want to become a regular Memeburn contributor? Here are some important guidelines to help ensure your contributions are published often. Any questions, queries, suggestions or additions? Email us at info@memeburn.com.

For more general information (our contact, advertising or social media details), visit our Contact Us page.

1. While not essential, digestible lists and descriptions work best for the reader, ie: “8 tools to make your site social”; “The 10 big mistakes of web development”; “8 things not to do when designing your site”; “The 10 Android apps you can’t live without”, “5 tips…”. Feel free to include snappy sub-headings to break up long strings of paragraphs.

2. Try to be specific, narrow-in and focus on a particular aspect of your expertise. General articles come across as wishy washy and generally end up saying nothing. Be bold, focused and say what you feel or die unfulfilled.

3. Speak to a broad audience. Do not speak about “marketers”, “customers”, or “clients” when a term like “people” or just “we” can be used instead. We’re a convergence site — we speak to everyone, not just the old-school traditional business segments.

4. Attitude is fine. We like attitude.

5. Don’t patronise the reader by mentioning and marketing your company name or blog. Don’t be afraid to mention competitors either. Try to be objective. Your article will ultimately have more impact. The marketing happens in your bio and via the social media links there listed. You’re part of an ecosystem, remember.

6. Don’t feel you need to mention your country or region, unless really relevant to your article. Try not be too parochial and you’ll get a bigger audience — Memeburn publishes to Google News worldwide. Refer to your country of origin if relevant to your point or the article is specifically about your country (ie “The top ten startups in Nigeria”). Memeburn is aimed broadly at emerging markets (Africa, Asia, E Europe, S America, Russia), so adding this as context if relevant to your article will work too.

7. Don’t write as a “South African” or a “Brazilian” or as a “Russian” — write objectively even though you are from that country. Treat the country you are writing about as any other.

Don’t: “As South Africans, we are used to poor venture capital”
Do: “In an emerging market country like South Africa, there is poor venture capital access”

8. The site’s brief is to look at emerging technology, media and advertising technologies and trends. The site has a penchant for social media trends, social networks, mobile and online media and journalism trends, web development, CMSes, the future of print and well… just the future. Readers love ‘How to’ and resource articles. Write them and we’ll all prosper.

9. Contextualise items, places, companies you refer to. You are writing for a global, varied audience — don’t just refer to MXit and expect all to know what you are talking about. Tell readers it’s a Cape Town-based Instant Messenger and social network. Tell them that First National Bank is a South African Bank or that Mocality is a MIH-owned mobile business directory for Africa. Even well-known companies like Google and Facebook should be contextualised (i.e make sure people know Google is a search/internet giant and that Facebook is a massive social network). Wikipedia works particularly well for this — look it up and link to it.

10. A list of Memeburn topics can be accessed here.

11. Be interactive. Reach out to your readers. Ask questions in your story. Suggest polls we could add to your story. Invite feedback and you’ll see the number of comments soar.

12. Don’t forget to send us your updated profile details with links to your social media sites. You are welcome to change your pic and bio at anytime too.

13. It goes without saying that we want you to contribute original pieces written exclusively for Memeburn. We don’t want to re-publish stories you have already posted on your own blog or elsewhere, please.

13 b. And most important of all, we do not accept plagiarised content under any circumstances.

14. Please do not include links within the piece that do not explicitly add value to the content, this also means SEO and advertising links. They will be removed before publication. Links can be placed in the author’s biography/blurb.

15. Include your references as hyperlinks, if you can. Talking about recent research on social media stats? Help readers out by linking to the report. Additionally, if you can find sources within Memeburn, link to that source instead.