ExO Insight Writer's Guide

ExO Insight is a written word publication for exponential insights from thought leaders, including members of our OpenExO community. We tell stories of transformation while hoping to inspire and drive change in the world for positive impact. ExO Insight is a channel for those in our community and beyond who seek Exponential Insights for Extraordinary Times.

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Why should you write for us?

ExO Insight and the OpenExO community have an extensive network of experts, business professionals, and technology enthusiasts. As a result, we have a worldwide audience.

We are always looking for writers and thought leaders on a variety of exponential topics. Ideally, you love to write and have experience taking complex issues and communicating them to various readers.

OpenExO Media sets out to create products, services, and support mechanisms for our creators. This includes paid media campaigns. The money we earn goes towards promoting articles and products made by our creators. This is a community product.

Benefits and Opportunities for Joining the OpenExO Community

We highly encourage you to have a profile up on the OpenExO community. You’ll be able to engage with a community of over 18,000+ people from all over the world.

1. You would be featured on the Author Page, https://insight.openexo.com/authors/, along with other amazing thought leaders in the community.

2. On your OpenExO profile, you'll receive an author badge. Once you have 10 published articles, you’ll get the gold author badge and at 20 articles, the platinum author badge.

3. Starting 2024, every article will earn you 1500XP points. Experience Points, or XP, are a way to reward our members for their active participation and contributions to the OpenExO community. These points are a measure of your involvement, influence, and impact within the platform. Be sure to check the Experience Points page to see what you can do with XP points.

4. Once your article is live, your article will be shared on social media by our marketing team and mentioned in our weekly newsletter, reaching over 40,000 global readers.

5. Having your article published is a great way to network and meet other like- minded people.

Process

Once you are invited to the platform, the image below shows a workflow towards the publication of your article. The invite to the platform will come from hello@ghost.io via ghost.io, and the subject link will read “Lisa Pereira has invited you to join ExO Insight.”

To sign in go to: https://exo-insight.ghost.io/ghost

Here’s a Loom video if you need additional help. Invitations are only good for seven days, then they expire. Just let Lisa Pereira know, and an invite will be resent.

Getting started

Now that your profile is up on the platform, it’s time for the fun part to begin. What is it that you are passionate about? What’s so fascinating about the topic? Do some research. Are there articles already out there on what you want to say? If so, what new ideas or insights can you provide for the reader on this topic?

Some other questions to keep in mind are:

Who is your reader? What might they know and not know?
The 5Ws are crucial in writing. Be sure to think about the 5Ws

Who?
What? (news, trend, challenges)
Where?
When?
Why?
Additionally, so what? (why it matters and how it fits into a bigger picture) and Now what? (what’s next?)

Creating a Mind Map around your topic is a great way to generate ideas for your article.

Are there any numbers or info about your topic that just makes you go wow!? Here’s an example of data from 25 YouTube Statistics that May Surprise You: 2021 Edition. “300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute! Almost 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube every single day.” We don’t always need to be shocking the reader, but something about your topic should also make your reader think.

Tips for a great article

Articles with a perspective and a tone of optimism layered with intelligence and research will be more favorable. Other tips include:

• Keep your writing between 500 to 1,200 words.
• Split up long sentences. This will help readers to digest what you’ve written better. But, of course, this also applies to long paragraphs.
  Keep an eye out for repetitive words like “and.”
• Use subheadings to break up the text and give your readers an idea of what is in your article.
• When using technical terms, be sure to explain them simply. Try to show a concept if you can.
• Think about ways to enhance your content. Maybe a 40-second video of you explaining a piece of your article and creating an infographic in Canva.

Ask yourself, how is your article adding value to the reader?

Write a headline that grabs your reader

This is your sales pitch, the billboard for your story. A headline informs. A headline intrigues. A headline entertains. Headlines with 8-12 words display better in search results, emails, and social media.

Be concise and conversational. How would you describe your story in a conversation? Avoid sarcasm or wordplay, and make sure your story is focused and has a strong nut graph. What would be the one sentence you’d tell a friend about this article?

Think about your articles most compelling ideas and look for words that communicate that. Start with some of the keywords in your article. Then, how would you sum up your article in one sentence? Once you have a one-sentence summary, there are a few online tools (share through, coschedule) that can help you develop an engaging headline. You can read about more tools in this blog post by Joe Warnimont.

Be sure to tell them early why this article is important. When I taught journalism and English to teenagers, I had to always be thinking the WIIFM (what’s it in for me) of that lesson. I told students why I was teaching a specific concept. The same applies to writing and an article. Tell your reader why they want to read this article.

Keeping your audience engaged

Let your readers know why you wrote this article and why they’ll want to read it, why they should care, and what to expect. Do this in the beginning. Get to the point fast. Check out Josh Bernoff’s website based on his book, Writing Without Bullshit. There are lots of great tips and infographics on his site.

Organize your main points by order of importance. Use examples that people can relate to. Subheadings are also a great way to help you organize your article as well as guide the reader.

Grammar and Punctuation

We highly suggest using a tool like Grammarly. It doesn’t catch everything, nor are all the suggestions right for what you are trying to say. It’s a very helpful tool in catching a lot of what you may have missed. If you are looking to move away from passive voice, repetitive words, and having more clarity in your writing, then a tool like Grammarly is beneficial.

Be sure to follow the AP capitalization rules (you can use this online tool). For example, for the article title, every word needs to begin with a capital letter. When wondering about spelling, is organizations with a “z” or an “s.” It turns out American spelling ranks higher in SEO on multiple browsers.

Regarding punctuation, a period and comma are always before the quotation marks. Example: “The scariest moment is always just before you start.”― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

We encourage editing it yourself. Is your article clear? Are technical areas explained well? And do the details you’ve included take away from the message or add to it?

Citing sources

Be sure to fact-check your work and include credible resources. Link out to articles mentioned when possible. There are a few sites, like https://www.factcheck.org/ that can help you. You want to be credible to your audience.

If you are using Google Docs, you’ll find a fantastic citation tool under tools, so click citations. You’ll want to use Chicago style. OWL, Online Writing Lab at Perdue University, is also a great resource, and they’ve been around for a long time.

Copyright and Attribution

We are fans of Creative Commons. Whether it’s a photo you took or a video you created, Creative Commons has multiple licenses you can choose from for your work. (click on the asset’s license tag to read the terms) They make it easy for you to choose the license so you can share your work.

You can use the Creative Commons search engine or meta-search site to locate assets using the type of license you need. Ideally, you want assets with a CC-BY license. Since OpenExO is a for-profit organization, please read the licensing terms and only use content with a commercial license. Be sure to check which CC license is being offered and identify the required citations and language for permissions.

If you want to know the story behind Creative Commons, check out Lawrence Lessing, the founder’s TED talk. I saw him live in San Francisco in 2007, and he’s one of the few people I know who can effectively use over 100+ slides in under 30 minutes.

Finding images and videos you can use or create your own

Ensure you have permission to use any images and videos in your article. Mention where the image source is. If you are not familiar with copyright, check out Creative Commons licenses.

For images, we recommend Unsplash, but you can also search on Google, Flickr, Pixabay, Pexels, AI Images, and the Wikimedia Commons. MIT Libraries has some helpful information on copyright and how to navigate/find the licensing info on images.

We also LOVE videos. If there’s a video on our video library related to your article, feel free to use it. I can help you embed the video into the article. If you have a brief video you can use or create, that would be fantastic too. This YouTube video shows you how to create YouTube shorts.

If you have a large body of videos that you’d like us to support you with, we would be happy to do that. Here’s an example of what we’ve done for Salim Ismail’s page.

We at OpenExO have been building a platform to support creators and amplify their voices.

Cross-posting Content

You have a great article already posted on your site, Medium, LinkedIn, etc. Can you post to ExO Insight? The answer is yes, but not right away. And there are a few ways to go about it. As you can see from this article on crossposting and boosting your SEO, it’s a little tricky. Of course, you can always write a follow-up piece to your article and post it with us first.

If your article is posted with us first, we would like a seven-day exclusivity on the article. We will be promoting your content as part of ExO Insight. Additionally, it will be shared through all the OpenExO channels. This includes additional social media and website traffic. After seven days, you are free to post the article again wherever you’d like. When you do repost, it’s standard practice to include that “the original post can be found here.” And link it back to your article on ExO Insight. We value original pieces and would love to host your article.

Canonical tags in HTML are another way in which an article can be cross-posted. A canonical tag (aka "rel canonical") tells search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a page. Using the canonical tag prevents problems caused by identical or "duplicate" content appearing on multiple URLs. Practically speaking, the canonical tag tells search engines which version of a URL you want to appear in search results. Adding a canonical tag won’t be possible on every platform. However, you can use canonical tags for places like Medium and WordPress. Here’s how to do it.

How to add a Canonical URL in WordPress

Adding a canonical URL in WordPress is a straightforward process. Platforms like Yoast provide a canonical URL box pre-filled with a best-guess entry, which can be edited within seconds if required. Other versions of WordPress can call upon the self-evidently titled WordPress SEO plugin, eliminating any need to edit the <head> HTML content of each webpage with instructions like <link rel=” canonical” href=http://www.typeyourchosenURLhere.com>.

Here’s how to create a Canonical link on Medium

When your story is ready to be published:
1. Click on the hamburger menu button (the three dots)
2. Then click on More Settings
3. On the More Settings Panel, click on #1 the Advanced Settings Link OR scroll down till you see Advanced Settings.
4. Click on the down symbol.
5. Click on the box under Customize Canonical Link
6. Type or paste a URL link to the story on your website.
7. SAVE the link
You can go ahead and publish your story.

Have Fun!!

Why do anything if it’s not enjoyable? There are many reasons why people write. First, we write to get our ideas out onto the page and share them with others. Second, we write to document our lives and develop our craft of writing. Finally, we write for a positive impact. I’d like to think many of us here in the OpenExO community are passionate about impact. And maybe our words on the page can give someone the inspiration, push, or insight towards making an impact on the world.

If you know someone who loves to write and wants to make an impact, encourage them to write for ExO Insight. They can apply here.