7 apps that would make terrible TV shows

Popular gaming app QuizUp is officially becoming an NBC television show, so we thought about what other apps would make great, terrible or hilarious programmings. Completely unfueled by lunch, here’s what we came up with. Shazam Shazam the game show is a family-friendly programming that lets you compete to see who can recognize songs at the drop of a hat. If you can’t tell apart your Bon Jovi from your Bon Iver, consider getting a hearing aid or subscribe to a music streaming service (or three.) Crossy Road In Crossy Road the TV show, you’ll compete to get yourself across a…

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Keyword Planner Broken

Keyword Planner seems to be broken. Does any one know when it will start functioning better?

We have tried virtually everything, from trying to block IP traffic to setting up new billing adwords accounts.

Campaign Statistics for Universal App Campaign

Hi

I have created a new Universal App Campaign for one of my apps. I can see the no. of impressions, clicks, and conversions(installs) for my campaign. But, I want to see more detailed statistics like:

In which location, was my add shown?

Which type of ad generated best conversions?

In which device, my ad was shown?

If it was a search ad, what keyword triggered my app?

if the ad was shown inside an app, which app was it?

Can anyone help me in finding these stats in dashboard?

I am not sure, but I think this type of stats is available for ads that we create manually. For other campaign types, we have a create an ad manually, but in Universal App Campaign, ads are created automatically, so there is no tab to access the ads statistics in the dashbaord.

The Best & Worst Subway Map Designs From Around the World

If you were to design a subway map, what would you design for: geographical precision or visual clarity? Is it better for a map to accurately represent the geography at street level, or for it to be abstract and easy-to-understand?

In 1972, Massimo Vignelli chose the latter -- visual clarity -- when he designed a map of the New York City subway system. To Vignelli, the only way to make the crazy twists and turns of the city's subway lines comprehendible to the public would be to, well ... straighten them out.

So he redesigned the map so that all the lines ran either vertically or horizontally. He also made Central Park -- normally a rectangle -- into a square. That's Vignelli's map on the left:

Image Credit: 99designs

The New Yorker called it "a nearly canonical piece of abstract graphic design." But many people focused on the "abstract" part of that description, and it didn't sit will with them. While Vignelli's map was easier for people to navigate, it wasn't an accurate portrayal of the geography. In 1979, it was replaced with a more geographically accurate map -- the one on the right.

Was that the right decision? In 2013, a team of MIT researchers used the Boston subway map to study how the human visual system collects information. They found that "a map need not stay geographically faithful to be visually useful. In certain real-world applications, this understanding might be critical; designing in-car navigation maps that take peripheral vision into account could potentially save lives."

There are dozens of subway systems around the world, illustrated both by maps that are confusing but geographically sound, and maps that are abstract but more soothing to the eye. Let's take a look at some of the world's subway map designs and see how they differ in complexity, abstraction, and style -- and what makes some designs better than others.

The Best Subway Maps in the World

1) London, England

London's subway map is reminiscent of Vignelli's for New York City: It abstracts the city into lines that are only vertical, horizontal, or at 45-degree angles. London's subway system is extremely complex, and while this map may be difficult to read at a small size and employs a complicated color code, it provides a coherent overview.

Image Credit: mapa-metro.com

Compare the subway map above with geographically correct subway routes below:

Image Credit: ArcGIS

2) Berlin, Germany

Like London, Berlin uses a geographically distorted visualization of its subway system as the main map for travelers. MIT researchers found that subway lines taking sharper turns are easier to follow, and major transfers are crisper as a result.

Image Credit: mapa-metro.com

Compare the layout of Berlin's subway map above with the geographically correct layout below:

Image Credit: 99designs

3) Lisbon, Portugal

Because Lisbon's subway lines are simple and the stops are spread out, the geographically accurate route map actually works fine here. While a more angular map might pass the blink test more readily, this map gives travelers an idea of where exactly in the city they're going.

Image Credit: Lisbon Travel and Holiday Guide

4) Washington, D.C., U.S.A

Washington, D.C.'s subway map uses horizontal, vertical, and 45-degree lines to illustrate its subway map. By including waterways, greenways and parks, and even the most popular monuments right on the subway map -- which are also illustrated in the angular, abstract style -- travelers get more context for each stops' location. This is especially helpful for those who aren't familiar with the city or are visiting some of the most popular locations.

Image Credit: Crazz Images

Compare the above map to a geographically accurate version to get an idea of how the former improves readability:

Image Credit: Charles Buntjer

5) Melbourne, Australia

The map of Melbourne's subway system below is still just a draft, but it's one that The Age reports will likely replace the current map in the next year or two. First, take a look at the draft:

Image Credit: The Age

And compare it to the current map, which will likely disappear soon:

Image Credit: The Age

The subway map upgrade isn't a drastic change in style. As you can see, both the draft of the new map and the current map both employ the geographically distorted style of Vignelli's NYC map. Instead, the biggest change is in the coloring. While the old map uses only blue and yellow, the draft uses 10 different colors and several patterns to give a better indication of where trains move throughout the city.

6) Moscow, Russia

Moscow's subway map has gone through many iterations since its inception in 1935, becoming more and more abstract as time goes on. The result is what you see below: brightly colored, angular lines set around a circle that immediately catches your eye. It's also great how well the major transfer hubs pop: outlined groupings where two, three, or four lines meet.

Image Credit: Moscow Metro Official Site

The Worst Subway Maps in the World

7) Stuttgart, Germany

While the straight and crisp lines in Stuttgart's subway map make individual stops and transfers easier to navigate, the perspective isn't very easy on the eyes. A bird's eye view of the map would make for an easier-to-understand design.

Image Credit: Planetolog.com

8) Mexico City, Mexico

Thankfully, there are other versions of Mexico City's subway map than the one below -- but this one is still used by the city as one of the official maps. It's chaotic if nothing else -- especially with the road map overlay.

Image Credit: Geo-Mexico

9) Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo's subway system is one of the most complex in the world, so it's no surprise its map is nearly frightening to look at. With so many symbols and colors, it's hard to make sense of where you need to go.

Image Credit: Tokyo Metro

Several designers have taken on the challenge of trying to redesign Tokyo's subway map to make it more comprehendible. Here's one iteration:

Image Credit: The Guardian

What do you think of these subway maps? Which styles do you find easiest to understand? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.

LG’s first laptop for the US is a MacBook Air rival

LG is launching its range of Windows laptops for the first time in the US, kicking things off with the slim and light Gram series. Available in two sizes and a range of configurations, the new laptops are lighter than the MacBook Air. The 14-inch variant weighs only 2.16 lbs — that’s 0.8 lbs less than Apple’s offering, but a wee bit more than 2.03 lbs MacBook. The LG Gram weighs only 2.16 lbs and is just half an inch thick Both the 13-inch and 14-inch versions are only half an inch thick and feature a 1080p IPS display in…

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Million Dollar Content - An Analysis of the Web's Most Valuable Organic Content

Posted by rjonesx.

As much as we like to debate content vs. links, sometimes great content just seems to dominate. I don't mean to say that great content doesn't get great links, or that the purposes of creating great content is not to get links, but simply that some content on the web seems to shine through the SERPs.

Content might not be king, but it has lot of sway in Google's kingdom.

After sifting through tons of SERP data to find million dollar answer boxes (answer box results that rank at the top for keywords driving millions of dollars in traffic), I decided to dig deep to find content just like it across the web. But I wanted to do something different, something harder. I wanted to find content that didn't have huge Domain Authority. Sure, it is easy for the Wikipedia's and YouTubes of this world to rank for huge keywords, but what about the little guy? Are there any pieces of content out there bringing in millions of dollars of traffic coming from domains with Domain Authority around 50 or lower? And if so, what sets this content apart from the rest? Let's find out!

First, I needed a little help in deconstructing exactly what makes this great content tick. I enlisted the SEO greats - Garrett French of CitationLabs who essentially wrote the book on linkable content, and Mark Traphagen, Internet social guru extraordinaire from Stone Temple.

So let's begin.

Finding great content

I didn't want to start with any assumptions. I didn't want to assume that great content was pretty, or thorough, or authoritative. I wanted to judge content by its results, not its features. I set 3 distinct qualifications:

1. The content URL couldn't be a home page.
2. The domain couldn't have a Moz Domain Authority above 55.
3. The content URL had to earn more than $1,000,000 a year in traffic based on a recent click through model, traffic volume, and estimated CPC of the keywords for which it ranks.

With those parameters set, I went digging. With SERPScape and the MozScape API, we quickly uncovered dozens of contenders out of just a sampling of the data set. So, what did we discover? What patterns did we find across the board? What set this content apart?

Feature #1: On-point

One of the most obvious trends was simply how perfectly and thoroughly the top content answered the users queries. It wasn't that the content was necessarily long (although in many cases it was). However, the content was highly relevant, regardless of its length. Take for example this "bed sizes" web page on SleepTrain.com.

Most webmasters would be content with just throwing up a quick intro paragraph and dimensions, but the SleepTrain site provides it several different ways...

1. An overlay comparison image with Dimensions
2. A textual table listing of sizes
3. Several separate images showing people placement on the different mattresses
4. A textual analysis of common bed sizes describing who would and would not fit by their height.

Now, I know what you are thinking. This isn't all that great!, but everything must be seen in context. Look at the next several listings. Wikipedia is a nightmare of text, BetterSleep is just text, bedding experts is a little better, but doesn't have the first overlay chart, SleepCountry only has the overlay chart... No other page in the top 10 answers all of a user's questions as thoroughly but succinctly as the SleepTrain site.

But don't take my word for it, we saw this over and over again in the data. We know that good, thorough content can rank well, and we saw just that. The average topical relevancy scores of our Million Dollar Content pieces were significantly better time and time again than the average competition in the SERPs.

In fact, some pages had scores that were truly mind blowing. One particular page on resume templates hit 99.96% relevancy! To get that level of precision, not only do you need to be highly thorough, you also have to be highly restrictive to prevent the addition of content that isn't relevant. That means no filler. Subsequently, this one particular page ranked for over 2,000 related keywords!

Feature #2: Bold

Conventional wisdom rarely helps you win in a competitive atmosphere. If you do what everyone else thinks should be done, you are predictable, and predictable is beatable.

For a few years now, one of the items on my regular audit list has been page speed. We know that TTFB (time-to-first-bite) correlates with search rankings, that fast download speeds correlate with increased conversions and better user engagement, and we even have an official announcement from Google that page speed matters for rankings.

Well, StyleGlam gives Google a giant middle finger when it comes to page speed. The page is bold, image-laden, and is even filled with ads.

The page clocks in at a turtle's pace of 24.9 seconds to load and an elephant's weight at 7.49MB in size! But maybe that is the point.

The game of SEO is all about compromises. When you make a page load quickly, you often have to compromise on images, text, and thoroughness. When you make a page informative, you might have to compromise on conversion rates. In this case, the webmasters came up with a completely different balance. They chose not to compromise on thoroughness, information content, conversion points (look at the ads!) and instead let page speed die a horrendous death. But the trade-off worked!

StyleGlam wasn't the only site we saw throw page speed to the wind in order to go big. Sites in the resume space, calendar, degree and health care spaces often took refuge in being big before being quick.

But we also saw the opposite true. Paired-back resources that answer one question very quickly, very easily, very simply can also win. What seems to never make its way to the top though is conventional content on a conventional sites. If you aren't a big brand, you better be different, be better, be bold.

Feature #3: Fresh

Can content survive in high spam, high value keyword niches? You bet it can. I was shocked when I came upon this one, as it was just a well managed blog post that was now several years old. It was surrounded by the latest entrants into a niche that was notoriously getting shut down and cleaned out: free streaming movies.

So how does a simple blog post on the best free movie sites manage to bring in $1,000,000+ in traffic not just this year, or last year, or the year before but for years and years on end?

Well, one thing we noticed about it and many others was content freshness. I can't tell you how many times a client has been scared to update their content that already ranks. "But what if I break it? What if I lose rankings?"

Not updating your content IS breaking it.

The truth is that if you are not updating your content regularly, Google will have to assume that your content is losing its reliability. So why not? Over time, you will build up a great backlink profile by sheer longevity, while at the same time keeping content as fresh as new competitors entering the space.

The author here found a great opportunity. People wanted to find these sites, they kept disappearing, and someone needed to keep an up-to-date record of the best ones. Now, the webmaster didn't create it once and leave it, or update it annually. They updated it regularly. The net result?

This piece of content has enjoyed long-term, million-dollar rankings while competitors have come and gone. They have ranked for thousands of keywords for several years by simply creating great content and keeping it fresh.

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Linkable million-dollar pages

I am now going to turn this study over to Garrett French. Garrett is the founder and chief link strategist of Citation Labs, a link-building agency and campaign incubator. He's developed multiple link-building tools, including the Link Prospector and the Broken Link Finder. He also co-wrote The Ultimate Guide to Link Building with Link Moses himself, Eric Ward. Garrett and his team lead monthly webinars on enterprise content strategy and promotion from the Citation Labs Blog.

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Only 34% of the content studied has at least 1 link in OSE. That's right - there are tons of pages getting $1,000,000+ worth of organic search traffic yearly that have few if any external links. A lack of links does not necessarily demonstrate a lack of linkability, but I will say that overall these pages don't seem "designed" for linkability.

Before we get to individual examples of linkability though (they do exist in this set!) I'd like to outline some basics on how we evaluated these pages.

• At Citation Labs, we divide linkers into "curators" who collect URLs for a single existing resource page and "editors" who publish new topic pages. Tactically speaking, the curators support broken link building and "link request" efforts, while editors support PR and guest posting campaigns.

• We believe that it's primarily the linkers themselves who define a document's linkability - both by their decision or not to link and how many potential linkers there happen to be.

URLs Linkable to Curators

Linkable Document - Timberline Knolls

Drug addiction, a subcategory of mental health, is one of the single most linkable topics we've encountered in our work thus far. This URL provides clear and comprehensive information for concerned loved-ones of a potential heroin user. These concerned loved-ones are a "linker-valued audience."

To get a quick read on how many curators might be out there for this topic, search for this query heroin inurl:links.html. We use the inurl:links.html portion of the query to get a sense of volume. There's a ton out there for this document which makes it not only linkable but worthy of further promotion on its own.

Curators are - relatively speaking - quite rare. The existence of curators seems to be topically-driven and are especially prevalent across health and education.

Linkable Document - Wixon Jewelers

I would examine the potential for a broken link building campaign in the "birthstones" area for this URL. In addition, it appears (based on this query: birthstones inurl:links.html) that there are enough potential opportunities to support a request campaign as well.

Birthstones probably won't get curators linking quite like addiction will. That said, they remain embedded in our collective psyche and if a related URL happens to be dead this could be a great candidate for a linkable page.

URLs linkable to editors

Linkable Document - SMU Mustangs

I'm not a sportser, but this URL stood out in our analysis because it had 60+ root linking domains. This seems to be a hub for SMU's football team, complete with a calendar. Bloggers, sports journalists, opponents, local events websites, all of these folks should be interested in linking to and supporting this team. Businesses could consider starting a competitive football team to replicate this effort ;)

But seriously, one takeaway, especially for local, is supporting the beloved local sports teams and events.

Linkable Document - The Best Schools

At first pass, my strategy would be to promote via PR, ideally in conjunction with the ranked schools to help them get the most out of their top ranking. Secondly, I'd run a low-scale branded guest posting effort. Guest posting topics could cover "following dreams," "seizing the day," "increasing your income," "going back to school as a parent", etc. If you repackage the data for a linker-valued audience (Best Online Colleges for Seniors) you could potentially build out a link request campaign too.

Linkable Document - Top 10 Home Remedies

The title - "How to Get Rid of Pimples Fast" - makes this one a tough pitch to skin health curators. That said, I think it could be a fantastic citation opportunity in a guest posting campaign. Target blogs that are more lifestyle oriented - makeup blogs perhaps, dating advice blogs etc - and build out titles that are not necessarily directly related to pimples or blemishes themselves.

Here are a couple more in that same vein - they could work well as supporting citations in a guest posting effort:

StayGlam: Nail Designs for Short Nails

Hair Style On Point: Top 10 Short Men's Hairstyles in 2015

Most editors would not think twice about allowing those links to live so long as they fit topically and have potential appeal to the reading audience.

Linkability takeaways

The majority of these million dollar pages are not purely linkable, but many could support link building campaigns. Pay close attention to the link profile of the entire domain for link building campaign guidance - the ranking pages may not be there based on their individual link earnings.

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Shareable million-dollar pages

So how do these million dollar content pieces actually perform in the very different context of social media? We'll let the venerable Mark Traphagen, Senior Director of Online Marketing at Stone Temple Consulting and give us some insights on how this high performing content makes out in the world of social media. Mark is a world traveler, speaker, consultant and is actually a Klout Top 10 Expert for SEO & Content Marketing, meaning he actually does know how to make this social stuff work.

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Just as Garrett revealed above that million dollar content does not necessarily have to have a lot of external links (or even any at all), so I found that there is little-to-no correlation between the number of social shares and whether or not content will win Russ's million dollar prize.

45% of our sample group had no social shares at all (according to Buzzsumo) and 66% had fewer than 300 shares.

Of course, just like having a lot of good links "sure can't hurt," having a lot of social shares certainly increases the chances that your content will do well organically. In fact, the page with the highest number of social shares in the sample group (it had over 1 million) also has the lowest domain authority of the group (21). Moreover, 60% of the pages with 1000 or more social shares have a DA of 40 or less.

Now I'm not suggesting that this proves that the million dollar status of those pages was driven directly by their social popularity. In fact, I consider it unlikely that social popularity is a direct ranking factor at the present time. However, it is likely that wide exposure via social media increases the chances of activity that very likely does factor into Google's ranking algorithm.

Before I take a deeper look at the most-shared content, I have to share two interesting tidbits from my examination of the pages Russ sampled for this study:

• Facebook is as killer for this type of content as most people think it is. For those pages with at least 100 social shares, a whopping 92% had the vast majority of those shares occur via Facebook. For most of those, almost all the social sharing happened on Facebook.
• None of the pages that had zero social shares had visible social sharing buttons. To be fair, several of them were simply landing pages linking to other content, and thus not really shareable. But most of the rest have characteristics that typically make content more attractive to shares, yet they provided no easy opportunity for visitors to take that action.

The shareability winners

Let's examine the factors that most likely made the three most-shared pages in our sample set so shareable.

80 Nail Designs for Short Nails - 1 million shares

This stayglam.com page is almost embarrassingly easy to analyze, as Buzzsumo shows that all but about 800 of its 1 million+ shares came from Pinterest.

If there ever were a textbook example of "made for Pinterest," it's this page. The entirety of the content is 80 dazzling images of colorful and exotic nail designs, such as the following:

The images are fashion-centered, brightly-colored, and oriented toward a female audience, the perfect trifecta of Pinterest shareability.

Here's the kicker: those 1 million Pinterest shares happened in spite of the fact that the stayglam.com page has no social share buttons! This serves as clear proof that if your content is amazingly shareable, and in particular well-adapted for a particular social network, visitors will share it even if it isn't easy to do so.

It's probable, though, that the vast majority of those 1 million shares weren't made directly from the content page. The most likely scenario is that a few influential Pinterest users did the initial sharing, and then thousands upon thousands of other Pinterest users repined those shares.

How to Get Rid of Pimples Fast- 73,300 shares

People love to share "how to" content that they think will be helpful to their social connections. Why? Social psychology tells us that the feeling of being helpful to others conveys as much benefit to the giver as to the receivers, and often more.

A HubSpot study found that content with the word "how" in the title is among the most shared on Twitter.

Furthermore, this content piece speaks directly to a very common (and embarrassing) problem with quick, easy fixes, exactly what people in such a situation seek. The page also has several easy-to-understand infographics, which undoubtedly make it even more appealing to share. The Open Graph image tag is properly set so that the most appealing of those images appears in shares on networks like Facebook and Google+.

Finally, this piece of content, like the previous, exemplifies that highly-shareable content will be shared, even if the site itself does not make sharing easy. In this case, the page does have share buttons for Twitter and Facebook, but they are at the bottom of the page, and below ads and other navigation. Nevertheless, once the content found its way to Facebook (where almost all of its shares occurred), it took off.

Positive & Inspirational Life Quotes- 15,800 shares

Frankly, this page has very little going for it other than the one thing that probably earned it 6.3K shares on Facebook and another 1000 on Twitter. It is well-optimized for a very popular sharing category on both those networks: quotations.

According to a New York Times commissioned study, people share content to satisfy any of four psychological needs. Those needs are:

1. Entertainment
2. Self-definition
3. Relationship building
4. Self-fulfillment

Inspirational quotes fulfill at least 1, 2, and 4 of the above, and probably help contribute to #3. They are entertaining in that they fit the kind of light, easily-digested, feel good moments that many people turn to Facebook and Twitter for. Quotations also help us define ourselves to our tribe. They are a quick "tag" to aspirations that are likely shared by others in our social circles. Finally, quotes provide self-fulfillment, as sharing them makes us feel like we have contributed something positive to the world (and with very little effort!).

Out of our sample group, this was the only content that had a volume of Twitter shares worth mentioning. Most likely that was because a number of the quotations used a "click to tweet" feature, where a Twitter user can, with one click, share the quote to her Twitter stream. Even though the previous two examples show that highly-sharable content can get shared even without the site providing an easy way to do so, making that content one-click sharable can boost the share volume even higher.

Shareability takeaways

• Social shares are not necessary to achieving million dollar content status in search. However, in some cases having them may improve your content's chances in that regard.
• Content that meets the criteria of being highly shareable sometimes needs little or no boost from the publishing site itself, as long as enough visitors take the initiative to share it themselves. A recent Buzzsumo study published here on the Moz Blog found that "surprising, unexpected and entertaining images, quizzes and videos have the potential to go viral with high shares." However, the study showed that those content types typically earn few links, even if they are highly shared. This confirms Garrett's findings above.
• While making content easy to share (by providing easy-to-find share buttons, for example), while not necessary, can boost the number of overall shares, and/or get the content shared to other networks where an influencer hasn't done the work already.
• Despite all the negative press about how much Facebook has reduced the ability for brand content to get organic reach, it remains by far the most "viral-ready" social network. If your content can get a good toehold there by being shared by some influencers, Facebook can still provide organic reach magic. Of course, paid boosting of content can vastly accelerate the chances of that happening, and this study did not examine whether any of the content was supported with paid social advertising.

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Overall takeaways

So what are the takeaways? What makes something million-dollar content? I think there are a few standouts...

1. Go big and bold. You have to stand out from the crowd, and if you can't do that with your domain authority, you have to do it with your content.
2. Stay relevant, both in freshness and thoroughness. Know what your user wants and deliver it.
3. Some sites just get lucky, but other sites make their luck. There were certainly a number of pages that still seemed to rank inexplicably, with average content, few social shares, and even fewer links. Don't bank on that. Do the leg work and you too can create million dollar content.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

From HBR to Mashable: How to Be a Guest Writer on 11 Popular Sites

Guest blogging is a wonderful and mutually beneficial relationship between writer and publication.

It's great for the writer, of course, who might be looking to get her name out there as a thought leader and industry expert while also helping grow her own readership.

At the same time, it's great for the folks at media outlets. It's a good look for them to publish a diversity of voices and opinions on their site -- not to mention more articles means more indexed pages, which can be a boon for a site's SEO.

Most media outlets allow people to submit authentic, original articles on topics that are relevant to their readership. But each one has different requirements and submission instructions. While some require you to submit full articles, others accept topic pitches and are willing to work with you on an outline. Some will get back to you in a few days if they like your post, while for others, it could be a good few weeks if at all.

When you're trying to submit a guest post, it can be confusing to sort through all these different requirements. That's why we've scoured the websites of top media outlets for their submission guidelines and instructions. From HBR.org to The New York Times to Business Insider and more, check out the list below of top media outlets and their guest blogging guidelines.

Before you submit anything, remember to spend time reading through the site to get a good idea of the topics and formats they like to publish. (For more tips, read about the 12 essential elements of a guest blog post.)

Guest Blogging Instructions & Guidelines for 11 Top Media Outlets

1) Entrepreneur.com

Entrepreneur.com is geared toward business owners who are starting and/or growing their own businesses. Their writers cover "actionable information and practical inspiration for business owners."

To Contribute:

Here's their "Become an Entrepreneur Contributor" page.

• To become a contributor, go to their "Become an Entrepreneur Contributor" page and fill out the form.
• Along with your basic information, it'll ask for links to your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, themes or story ideas you'd cover, why you're an expert on the topic, and links to samples of your work.

Do you create video content? If so, they also offer the opportunity to apply to become a part of their growing video network. Read more about that here.

2) HBR.org

HBR.org is Harvard Business Review's online publication, which covers a wide range of topics including strategy, leadership, organizational change, negotiations, operations, innovation, decision making, marketing, finance, work-life balance, and managing teams.

The content is original and sometimes even disruptive -- if it's about a well-worn topic, they'll be looking for a unique argument or insight. ""HBR readers are smart and skeptical and busy," they write. "If you don’t capture their interest right away, they will move on to something else."

They publish articles written by subject matter experts. Ideas and arguements should be backed up by evidence, whether it's in the form of supporting research, relevant examples, or interesting data.

To Contribute:

Here's their "Guidelines for Contributors" page.

• Send a short pitch to web submissions@HBR.org.
• They prefer you send them a short pitch instead of a full article so they can give early feedback. However, they do need to see a full draft before officially accepting your piece, even if they've asked you to write it.
• You may be asked to do multiple rounds of revisions, as they have a very thorough editorial process.
• If they’ve passed on something you’ve submitted, they encourage you to try again with another idea. If their editors have said no multiple times, it may mean your work isn’t a good fit for their audience.
• Article length can vary. They also publish graphics, podcasts, videos, slide presentations, and just about any other media that might help us share an idea effectively.
• They retain final decision rights over headlines.
• The piece must be original and exclusive to HBR.org. They don't publish pieces that have appeared elsewhere, that come across as promotional, or that do not include rigorous citations (though these may not appear in the finished piece).

3) The New York Times' Op-Ed Section

The folks over at The New York Times allow submissions to their Op-Ed section only. What does that cover? Op-Ed and Sunday Review Editor Trish Hall explains: "Anything can be an Op-Ed. We're not only interested in policy, politics or government. We're interested in everything, if it's opinionated and we believe our readers will find it worth reading."

In particular, Hall says they're partiucularly interested in publishing points of view different from those expressed in Times editorials, which tend to be pretty liberal. They're interested in presenting the points of view that are to the left or right of those positions.

To Contribute:

Here's their "How to Submit an Op-Ed Article" page.

• Submit a finished op-ed article to opinion@nytimes.com.
• Alternatively, you can fax it to +1(212) 556-4100 or send it by mail to the following address:

The Op-Ed Page
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

• Articles tend to be 400–1,200 words long, but they'll consider submissions of any length.
• The piece must be original and exclusive to The Times. They won't consider articles that have already been published either in print or online.
• They like writing that's in "conversational English that pulls us along. That means that if an article is written with lots of jargon, we probably won’t like it."
• You can also submit an opinion video. Read more about that here.

4) Inc.com

Inc.com is an online publication that publishes articles with advice, tools, and services to help small businesses grow. You'll find their contribution guidelines are fairly short.

To Contribute:

Here's their "Contact Us" page.

• Pitch your story idea to pitches@inc.com.
• If you'd like to become a regular columnist for Inc.com, submit your request to contributors@inc.com.

We recommend keeping your email pitch as simple and straightforward as possible.

5) Business Insider

Business Insider is an American business, celebrity, and technology news website. Most of their contributors are experts on one or more of the wide range of topics they cover. Contributors include professors, investors, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, executives, attorneys, consultants, authors, professional service providers, journalists, technologists, and engineers.

To Contribute:

Here's their "How to contribute to Business Insider" page.

• Send the final draft of your piece, a proposed headline, brief bio, and links to any other pieces you've published to contributors@businessinsider.com.
• Their syndication team will review your submission and get back to you if it's something they're interested in posting. They can't make publishing guarantees.

6) Fast Company

Fast Company is an online business publication that covers topics in technology, business, and design. They publish leadership-related topics like productivity, creativity, career development, culture, strategy, and innovation.

What type of articles do they like? Ones that "introduce new ideas and advance conversation around topics and trends that engage our readers -- think op-ed rather than marketing," they write. "We appreciate lively, polished writing that balances research or news with fun and memorable anecdotes or examples that help illustrate your point of view."

To get a better idea of the types of pieces Fast Company likes to publish, read their post, "How To Write Thought-Leadership Pieces That Get Published And Don't Make Editors Want To Die."

To Contribute:

Here's their Guidelines for Submission page.

• Send completed articles to Leadership Editor Kathleen Davis at kdavis@fastcompany.com.
• If you think your article would be better suited for one of Fast Company's sub-publication Co.Design, Co.Exist, Co.Create, or Co.Labs, then consult their masthead and send your idea or completed article to the appropriate editor for consideration.
• Article length is typically 1,000 words or fewer.
• They request that guest posts are exclusive to Fast Company's site for 24 hours, after which time they can be reprinted in part or full on other sites, with a link back to the original article on Fast Company. (They'll syndicate articles that have already run on another website occasionally, but typically would rather print original and exclusive content.)
• If they like your article, they'll likely get back to you within a few days. They review submissions about once a week and aren't able to respond to all submissions. They're cool with you sending one follow-up email to check in, but after that, you can assume it wasn't a fit.
• Contributed articles run online only. The print magazine is almost exclusively written by staff or by professional journalists who contribute regularly to the magazine.

7) Mashable

Mashable is a social networking and web news blog. While they do write a lot about technology, it's not their core focus -- so they're not necessarily interested in online tools, software, and similar topics.

To get a better idea of what the folks at Mashable are looking to publish, read their posts "12 Tips for Getting Your Startup Featured on Mashable" and "12 Things Not to Do When Pitching a Story to Mashable."

To Contribute:

Here's their "Submit News" page.

• Submit a pitch, tip, or full article by filling out the form on their "Submit News" page.
• The form asks for the topic of submission, asks "What's the scoop?", allows you to attach up to two files, and asks you to check off whether it's an exclusive story, a news update, a hot tip, an editorial suggestion, or something else.

Want them to write about your startup or business? You can also submit to their Startup Review series by sending an email to news@mashable.com.

8) Forbes' Opinion Section

Forbes publishes content on business and financial news, covering topics like business, technology, stock markets, personal finance, and lifestyle. They allow guest contributions to their opinion section on any topic related to public policy, politics, arts, and culture.

To Contribute:

Here's their "Submitting an Article to Forbes Opinion" page.

• Submit your completed article to opinion@forbes.com.
• The article can be any length.
• The piece must be original and exclusive to Forbes. They won't consider articles that have already been published either in print or online.
• They ask that you allow five business days (i.e. excluding weekends and holidays) for them to review your article. If you haven't heard from them after five business days, you can submit your article elsewhere.
• No follow-up emails.

Want to become a regular contributor to Forbes?

• To become a contributor, fill out this Google Form.
• It'll ask you for links to your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, the concept for your Forbes page (an overall theme and a few story ideas), why you're an expert on the topic, and links to samples of your work.

9) TechCrunch

TechCrunch is an online publication that covers the current and future state of technology, entrepreneurialism, and investment. Any of these topics are great for guest submissions -- they say they're "always willing to give every good piece a read, so no matter the topic, keep the words coming."

If you're looking for ideas, they explore a different, specific theme each month -- everything from health and religion to robotics and education. Here's the full list by month.

To Contribute:

Here's their "Got a Tip?" page.

• Send a tip, pitch, or full article by visiting their "Got a Tip?" page and filling out the form.
• The form asks for your name, headline, and the tip or pitch.

Want to become a regular contributor to TechCrunch?

• Submit your headline and article text by visiting their "Join the TechCrunch Network" page and filling out the form.
• Pro tip: They don't like when people put two spaces after a period.

10) Moz

The Moz blog publishes content from the SEO and online marketing industry's "top wizards, doctors, and other experts." They look for content with in-depth and actionable information.

What's a good fit? "Actionable, detailed content with references tends to do the best on YouMoz, and case studies or examples are particularly popular," they write. "Think about the readers of this post, and try to make it so this is something that the reader could take to their boss and say, 'Let's give this a try. Here's a post where this person tried it, they got good results, and they explain how to implement it.'"

For a much more detailed description of what they're looking for, read their "How to Guest Blog for Moz" post.

To Contribute:

Here's their "YouMoz Guidelines" page.

• Read all the information on the YouMoz Guidelines page. Then, scroll to the bottom, check the box to accept their terms, and press the "Submit a YouMoz Post" button. You'll have to log in or create a Moz account if you don't have one already. From there, you'll be taken to a form where you can submit your full article text.
• Must be original and exclusive to Moz. They won't consider content that's been published elsewhere.
• Article length is generally 1,000–3,000 words, but they don't have a minimum or maximum word count.
• Relevant links are encouraged, but affiliate links aren't allowed.
• It can take up to several weeks to review your post. They'll contact you at the email listed on your profile. You can check the status of your post at https://moz.com/posts/manage.
• They ask that you resize images to a maximum of 738 pixels wide. Observe any copyright or usage restrictions regarding images, obtain permission for use, and cite the source of your image.
• Send any questions to editor@moz.com.

11) Medium

Unlike the first ten media outlets in this post, Medium is a blogging platform where anyone can create an account and publish a blog post without having to submit it for approval. It was created so people could publish their thoughts, tips, and learnings and then share them with a built-in audience.

Through a combination of algorithmic and editorial curation, posts on Medium get spread around based on interest and engagement. You can learn more about posting on Medium here.

To Contribute:

• First, sign in to Medium or create an account. Once you're signed in, click "Write a Story" on the top righthand side of the homepage.
• Consult their Help Center page for writing for tips on titles, formatting, images, publishing, and more.
• If you want, you can request notes from other Medium users before you publish. Any collaborators or editors you invite to add notes can do so throughout the article, kind of like a collaborative document in Google Drive.
• Article length can be whatever you want, but some of the best advice on length, timing, etc. with Medium posts comes from Medium's data team. They've reported there's a direct correlation for how long people spend on their posts and how well the posts perform.
• You're free to repost content from your blog or website on Medium to expose it to a new audience.
• You can add any links you want back to your own website, or add any type of call-to-action you want, whether it's to a piece of long-form content, a subscribe page, or something else.

Want to contribute to HubSpot's blog? Check out our Guest Blogging Guidelines.