Raise your campaign profile and help other campaigners by publishing your original campaign training articles on Silent Reef.

To have your article considered for publication it must be an original work that helps our readers run effective environment campaigns.

You don’t have to be a campaigner to write for Silent Reef.
We love to hear from lawyers, accountants, designers, SEOs and anyone else with useful information to share.

The following guidelines help you get your article published on Silent Reef:

Choosing your subject

See Publish Your Original Campaign Training Articles on Silent Reef for guidance on choosing a subject for your article.

Submitting a pitch

We cannot publish every article we receive, so to avoid disappointment check your article idea with us before writing.

Use our contact form to send a short pitch including:

  • An article title (we may edit to improve user engagement and SEO)
  • A brief outline of your subject and main argument
  • A short biography including your relevant experience with links to your organisation website, LinkedIn page or other published works (we don’t mind if you have limited campaign experience, we just need to verify who you are)

We will review your pitch and possibly make suggestions to make your article more relevant to our readers. We are very fussy about what gets published on Silent Reef, so this stage may take a while to complete. Just remember we both want the same thing – for you to publish an awesome article.

Writing your article

Writing blog posts that rank in search engines and engage readers is both art and science. The following points put you on the right path, but we may edit your article to improve its performance.

Write like a trainer – Silent Reef helps new and experienced campaigners run effective environment campaigns. To write for Silent Reef you must have the same aim.

One way to meet this aim is to write like a trainer rather than a reporter.

Let’s see what this means with an example. Following are two ways to write about a protest rally that you organised:

1,000 people attend Stop The Blob rally
Last Saturday My Campaign organised a protest outside the head office of Disaster Industries to demand…

10 things I learned organising my first rally
As a new campaigner I was nervous when asked to organise a rally but now that it’s over I’d like to share the important lessons I learned…

The first article is written as a reporter writing a news story. As it doesn’t help our readers organise their own rallies we would not publish this article.

The second article is written as a trainer demonstrating how to do something. As it helps our readers organise their own rallies we would publish this article.

Be global – People from all around the world read Silent Reef so your article needs to be relevant no matter where a reader is located. For example, you are not writing to help someone run a rally in your town or country, you are writing to help someone run a rally anywhere in the world.

Be original – We only publish original articles. We do not publish previously published articles. It is OK to rehash old ideas provided you use your own words and add something new, but it’s not OK to plagiarise other people’s work. Remember, your article will be published under your name, so it’s your reputation at stake.

Answer questions – Silent Reef doesn’t publish good articles of general interest to our readers. We publish great articles that really help our readers.

Your article should give readers everything they need to implement your ideas. Think what questions readers may ask about your subject and provide the answers.

Length – Your article should be long enough to tell readers about your subject and not one word more.

Typical Silent Reef articles are 800 to 2,000 words, but we consider articles of any length.

For complex subjects consider writing a series of articles. Be sure to submit a pitch first.

Style – Before you start writing read some articles on our blog to familiarise yourself with our writing style. Notice our articles:

  • Are lively and chatty (like a conversation with a friend)
  • Are concise (use few words to say a lot)
  • Use short sentences and short paragraphs
  • Use bullet lists, subheads and quotes to break up text and highlight important information
  • Do not use technical jargon

Using a similar style will make your article more readable and therefore more likely to be published and more likely to be read when published.

Of course, you are welcome to hit us with a radical new writing style. Just remember that many of our readers do not speak English as their first language.

Grammar, punctuation and language – We care about helping our readers. We do not care about your grammar and punctuation.

So although you should submit your best writing, you will not miss out on being published if your grammar and punctuation are “unconventional”. We will tidy up your article provided you have something useful to tell our readers.

English not your first language? Do not hesitate to submit an article. We will fix your language provided you have useful information to share.

Images and videos – If possible provide a picture or graphic as your article’s featured image.

The best images tell the story of your article, for example, if you are writing about stakeholder research you could use a picture of campaigners holding a clipboard while surveying community members.

We prefer to use pictures taken from actual campaign activities, so here’s a chance to get your pictures published as well as your writing. We will use stock images when nothing else is available, or we may be able to provide a suitable image.

See the Silent Reef blog for image examples. We will add the text.

Also supply images and videos needed to illustrate your article (if any) and indicate where in the text they should appear.

Important – By supplying images and videos you confirm that you have copyright permission for Silent Reef to use them.

Links – Internal and external links are an important feature of writing blog articles, especially for SEO purposes.

Internal links go to other Silent Reef content. If you want, you can make internal link suggestions, for example, if you are writing about some aspect of campaign planning you could include a link to our How to Plan a Campaign: A Step-By-Step Guide. We will add additional relevant internal links.

External links go to other websites. Your article should be fully self-contained, meaning it should provide all the information needed to answer the question or promise raised by the article title.

However, we will include links to reputable external websites when they provide value to readers, such as links to informative examples or to information that cannot be replicated.

One of the great benefits of writing for Silent Reef is your article will contain a link to your organisation’s website, giving you a SEO valuable backlink.

Edit (and edit again) – Take time writing your article. It represents you as a professional person. You may want to link to your article in a job application or as a sample of your work.

Once you have finished writing give your article a good edit to remove superfluous words and check you are saying exactly what you mean to say. At this stage it is a good idea to ask a friend to read your article and provide comments.

Finally, set your article aside for a few days and then give it a final edit. You will be surprised how much you can improve your writing after a short break.

Author profile – Provide a short profile of yourself and your campaign or other organisation for the ‘About the Author’ box at the end of your article. This is where you can get some promotion for your organisation, for example:

Jane is Campaign Manager at Save Our Turtles working to protect endangered sea turtles on the (place) in (country).

Include a profile picture and a link to your website.

Submitting your article

When everything is ready send your article to us for review. Please note we:

  • May edit your article and add links to other Silent Reef content
  • May check edits with you before publishing (at our discretion)
  • Reserve the right not to publish your article

We are super-focussed on providing our readers with excellent information. Because of this we may ask you to complete several edits. Do not be concerned by this and rest assured we are equally strict with our staff writers.

Promoting your article

Congratulations – you are a published author! You are getting your name out there and helping other campaigners.

But getting published on Silent Reef is just the start. Now is the time to engage and share.

Engage by thoughtfully answering your reader’s comments and questions on your article. This is your time in the spotlight, so make the most of it.

Share by telling the world – especially your campaign supporters – that your article is on Silent Reef. Add a link to your article on your campaign website and e-newsletter. Share your article on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites.

We will also share your article on Silent Reef’s social media sites.

Getting published on Silent Reef raises your profile as an environment campaigner. Make the most of your achievement by ensuring lots of people read your article.

Important – Do not republish your article!

Google penalises duplicate content, so republishing your article (or something very similar) on other websites will result in less people seeing it. The best way to have more people read your work is to place links to your article on Silent Reef from your organisation’s website, other websites and social media.

Your next steps are to choose your article subject and send us your short article pitch. We look forward to hearing from you!