What is TR Pro Perspectives?
Perspectives is the new home for premium contributed content on TechRadar Pro, where we will showcase analysis and opinion from the technology industry’s best and brightest minds.
If you’d like to be featured in TechRadar Pro Perspectives, here’s what we’re looking for.
Perspectives submission guidelines
- We ask for all our content to be around 800-1,000 words in length, and have a clear business technology focus — anything from security to cloud to SaaS to digital transformation; check out our news page for a quick overview of the subjects we cover on a day-to-day basis
- The articles will need to be unique and exclusive to us — the copyright of the article will be the author’s, which means that they can republish it elsewhere but must link to TechRadar Pro as the source
- It’s unfortunate we even have to say it — but absolutely no AI is to be used in drafting any submissions. If your piece is found to be featuring AI-generated content, it will be instantly rejected, and frequent rule breakers will be blacklisted
- All pieces must be non-promotional — meaning companies are not allowed to mention their own names or products within the piece (including the title), other than in the author’s bio
- And on that note, we require a detailed biography of the author — around 50-100 words is ideal — and a headshot photo
How do I submit?
If your piece fits all these guidelines, you can head to our online submission form, where your piece can be uploaded.
We cannot stress this enough, your piece will need to be approved first, then you can submit to the form. Please contact the team to pitch your article for approval.
Failure to do so will see your piece go unpublished and serial rule breakers will be blacklisted.
Top tips to improve your submission
Bring something new to the discourse
This is TR Pro Perspectives — so we want to hear new and fresh ideas, thoughts and opinions driving every submission.
Don’t try and use this as a place to parrot your company’s latest survey results, or tell us something everyone already knows (did you know AI is transforming business processes?)
If the discussion is still something the audience has read a million times before, it’s not for us — this is your chance to stand out from the crowd.
Avoid tenuous links to a buzzword
Lots of articles written about unglamorous topics try too hard to use SEO-friendly buzzwords as a gateway to the main topic — which can work, but only if there’s a clear and direct link between the ‘buzzword’ and the meat of the article.
Too often we see themes such as digital transformation, digital natives and AI-ready crowbarred into headlines and introductions despite being largely irrelevant to the thrust of the piece. Unglamorous topics are useful to many readers and don’t necessarily need to be sexed up.
Cut the fluff
A 1-2 paragraph introduction may entertain wider themes before getting stuck into the heart of the article, but make sure it isn’t full of fluff, cliches and platitudes before properly beginning.
Classic offences are tired references to obvious examples — but features are better when they tackle the specifics of the themes from the off. Generic and obvious opening statements about ‘changing landscapes’ and the like can usually be cut — get to the chase!
Don’t overdo rhetorical questions
We know these are opinion and analysis-led pieces, so one or two rhetorical questions are of course fine, but many authors over-use this technique, with the end result sounding quite patronizing.
Being bombarded with questions such as, ‘Is that really right for your business?”, ‘Have you considered the importance of that data?’, ‘Are you planning for these changes?’ can turn readers off, as our audience is likely to be well-acquainted with the issues being covered — and wants to know the authors’ insight and thoughts.
Narrow the focus
Broader overviews tend to fall into the trap of adding noise to discussion rather than furthering it, and Perspectives articles are generally far stronger when they have a very specific focus.
Most company representatives writing the articles will have a niche area of expertise which should be capitalised on, not downplayed to give the article broader appeal.
With so much analysis and discussion available online, new pieces need to hone in on very particular areas to differentiate from the pack and remain valuable to readers.
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