Submit a Story
Thank you for your interest in contributing to Conscious Company!
We rely on our community of forward-thinking, influential changemakers to help us co-create the content for Conscious Company. We always welcome your ideas for stories or businesses we should cover; events our audience might like; or articles you’d like to write. We’re especially looking for ideas that embody our audience’s passion for sustainability, social issues, and the power of business to positively impact the world today.Our digital content is organized each month with a heavy focus on the following themes.
Q1: PEOPLE
January: World-Changing Women
February: Racial Equity & Social Justice
March: Conscious Culture
Q2: PLANET
April: COVID-19 Response & Mental Health
May: Gender Equity
June: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Q3: PROFIT
July: Sustainability & Environmental Impact
August: Social Entrepreneurship
September: Innovation
Q4: PURPOSE
October: Impact Investing & Raising Capital
November: The Future of Work
December: Intentional Leadership
Your idea is most likely to be accepted if you’ve read and followed the guidelines below. Please understand that not all submissions can be accepted for publication.We publish original content that inspires and enables entrepreneurs, professionals, and business leaders to use business as a force for good. Feel free to submit a story well in advance of its corresponding monthly theme.
We cover many topics, including:
Personal Development
Practices and tools to help readers become more conscious and effective workers, leaders, and all-around humans.
- Leadership
- Self-care
- Education
- Professional Relationships
- Work-life integration
Sustainable Business
Success stories and smart strategies for companies of all sizes to implement in their journey toward becoming sustainable in all senses.
- Strategy and models
- Governance & ownership
- Marketing
- Measuring impact
- Finance & capital
- Legal corner
- Responsible sourcing
The New Economy
Cutting-edge ideas, examples, and best practices around how to work together to achieve maximum positive impact on a societal and global scale, beyond individual people or companies.
- Impact investing
- Social change
- Food & agriculture
- Energy & climate
- Technology & design
- Local economies
Workplace Culture
Stories, practices, and ideas for how to create a healthy, vibrant, high-functioning place to work.
- Healthy workplaces
- Developing talent
- Diversity & inclusion
- Recruiting & hiring
- HR innovations
- Stakeholder engagement
- Management
Social Entrepreneurship
Inspiring examples and actionable advice to help you create navigate the roller-coaster of mission-driven entrepreneurship.
- Getting started
- Funding
- Lessons from failure
- Scaling with values
- Success stories
We also accept content in a variety of formats:
- How-to articles
- In-depth interviews
- Thought leadership essays
- Infographic / fact sheet
- First-person POV stories
- News briefs
- Explainers / background articles
- Videos
- Photo galleries
- Reported features
- Best lists
- Reviews
- Case studies
- Research papers
Stories oriented at consumers (as opposed to business professionals).
- Examples: New Fall Line of Eco-Friendly Handbags Is Amazing or How to Reduce Your Family’s Food Waste
- This includes Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaign announcements for consumer products.
Business stories or interviews with experts that don’t have a specific conscious or sustainable angle/connection.
- Examples: How to Take Your Business Global or Increase Your Sales with this Simple Technique
Stories about nonprofits or philanthropy that aren’t using the tools of business or markets to achieve their mission.
- Examples: This Wealthy Businessman is Donating His Fortune to a Good Cause or This Grant- & Donation-Funded Nonprofit is Doing Amazing Work
Shameless self-promotion; make sure your story or pitch is really offering value to others.
We run some long articles, both online and in print. We’re proud of that. Yet most humans we know only have time for long articles every once in a while. Also, the internet wizards tell us that about 700 – 800 words is the ideal length for a web story.
Just like wonderful food can come in bite-size bits or sit-down mega portions, good stories can be all different lengths as well. If you’re unsure about how long yours should be, ask yourself, “What’s the shortest possible article that can achieve my goals or get across the main idea?”We strive to be accessible, inspiring, and readable to a general audience. Follow the tips below to stay within our guidelines!
- Please avoid using a lot of acronyms, abbreviations, or technical terms, and certainly define any that you do need to use.
- We like the way contractions can add a feeling of intimacy and casualness, so do not be afraid to say “don’t.”
- The use of the passive voice should be avoided whenever possible. If the phrase “by zombies” can be added to the end of your clause (by zombies), then the passive voice is being used (by zombies).
- Please, we beg you, don’t use the word “utilize” when “use” will do just fine. While you’re at it, take the time to look for other places where a simpler word might do.
- On the other hand their is such a thing as like, kinda too casual and spelling and gramar and punctuation and stuff like that really is pretty damn useful so maybe consider having a friend or whatever proofread your story if this isn’t your best talent.
- Beware the temptation to Capitalize words just because they seem Important.
We don’t pay for content from our contributor partners at this stage in our business. When you submit a story or pitch, you’re telling us you understand that you won’t get any direct financial benefit from participating in the Conscious Company community.
However, writing for us does offer a number of other benefits, including:
- Aligning yourself with and advancing our mission to accelerate the transition to a purpose-driven economy.
- Professional editing and feedback on your writing.
- Establishing yourself as a leading voice in the conscious business community.
- Exposure to potential clients or other important connections.
As a digital media business, we rely on people finding our content via search engines. That means we take search engine optimization (SEO) best practices very seriously, including asking our contributors to help us make sure that the version of their article on our site is the one search engines recognize as the original, authoritative one.
What does that mean in practice?
Please DO
- Share the link to your original Conscious Company article widely, via social media, your newsletter, etc.
- Wait at least 3 weeks after the article goes live on our site before excerpting it on another site, following the best practices below.
- Limit this type of excerpting to your personal or business site.
- Write a short custom intro, then use a blockquote to capture up to about 200 words from the original article.
- Include a link to the original article either before or after the blockquote.
Please DON’T
- Repost the full text of content you’ve written for us to another site.
Examples
Here are two examples that follow best practices that preserve and enhance the authority of the original post being referenced:
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