(I pay tribute to the Mental Nurse blogsite authors for most of the content of this guide (if you can’t swipe ideas off a blog where can you do it!)
First, a bit of practical info on how to submit a guest post. At this point in the evolution of NurseTalk NZ I will make it a KISS process (so admin has all the control!). So write your speel and email it to nurse@digitalis.co.nz with a brief word on who you are if you feel the need.
And so to the how to list…………
1. This might be a slightly obvious point, but posts should be about nursing issues, or topics that relate/link to this i.e., politics and nursing etc., as this is the topic of the blog. Otherwise why bother posting on a blogsite called NurseTalk?
2. Before submitting a guest post , consider whether the subject matter might be better suited to the comments section? Anecdotes, critiques, analyses and general rants would be suitable for a blog post.
3. If you’re a nurse or other clinician, it pays to post using a pseudonym to protect your own and your patients’ anonymity. Users and other members of the public are free to make their own decisions as to whether they wish to post under their own names or pseudonymously.
4. Nurses should be mindful of the NZ Nurses Code of Professional Conduct when making posts. The view of an article in a UK nurses journal seems to be that it’s not a breach of the Code to blog, so long as you don’t breach confidentiality or bring the nursing profession into disrepute. From experience I would add to that, think about how you will manage any negative feedback as well as the good stuff -so if you can’t hack bullets of contempt stay out of the firing range….
5. Any clinical anecdotes should be anonymised and semi-fictionalised to prevent breaches of confidentiality. This may be more difficult in NZ than you think so read over your content carefully again before you publish it!
6. Feel free to demolish other peoples’ ideas and arguments brutally and mercilessly, but focus your attack on the idea or issue rather than the person. In other words, try to frame it as “his argument is total crap” rather than “he is total crap”. Any posts designed purely to launch personal insults at somebody will not be accepted. Likewise posts containing libellous, racist, sexist or homophobic content. Extreme or repeated cases of this may lead to account deletion.
7. wtf i rly h8 txt spk lol. spk 1ngl1sh plz.
8. I also dislike multiple exclamation marks!!!!!! They’re just annoying!!!!!
9. I’ve no intention of being an apostrophe nazi, but please try to ensure a decent standard of grammar, spelling and punctuation. If you tend to have difficulty with this, I recommend first typing the post in a word processing programme (e.g.Microsoft Word, Open Office Word Processor), using the spelling/grammar checker on that, and then copying and pasting it across to the email or attaching it as a doc.
10. As for word length, aim for between 500 and 1000 words. This is a guideline, not a fixed rule, as sometimes it can be appropriate to go a bit under or over this. However, if your word count is under 500 words, consider whether you’ve discussed the topic in any kind of depth. If it’s over 1000 words, consider breaking it down into two or more posts. (This page for example has 568 words minus these ones in brackets!)
Happy blogging!