Get Involved

Write for us

Interested in writing a guest post for the Birmingham Early Years Networks blog? Here’s what you need to know before you submit.

A space to connect, collaborate and communicate

The Birmingham Early Years Network (BEYN) is a platform for the Early Years Community to connect, collaborate and communicate to improve educational outcomes for young children in Birmingham. The website serves as a communication hub and source of information about activities and practices in the district and across the city, and welcomes contributions from the community.

 
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
— Philip Pullman

The Basics

We share news, events, updates, links, and articles to enrich Early Years practice across Birmingham.

We hope to be a centralised hub for high-quality professional development, and we want to use our blog as a platform to highlight best-practice and the phenomenal work being carried out across Birmingham.

With that in mind, successful guest contributions are interesting posts that teach our readers something new or share ideas from within the world of Early Years. We’re particularly interested in guest content exploring how the city’s Early Years Community is improving key outcomes for children under five.

For example:

  • We want to hear about those effective multi-agency partnerships being built to support young children and families across the ten districts;

  • We want to know about the challenges you’re facing, COVID-19 related and beyond, but we also want to celebrate the triumphs you’ve enjoyed too!

We welcome contributions from anyone working within the Early Years Community, as well as those working alongside the sector, e.g. social care, community groups, play schemes etc.

 

Submissions We Won’t Accept

Please take note of the following submissions that we DO NOT accept for the BEYN blog:

  • Articles that may be construed as a link-building scheme – e.g. a guest post created simply for the purpose of gaining a backlink to your own website

  • Promotional articles or anything which could be construed as blatant self-marketing

  • Anything that’s offensive or inaccurate

  • Anything that’s overly critical or could be construed as an attack on specific individuals or organisations – the BEYN blog is not the place to air personal grievances. Rational critique of policies or research methods, for example, are welcome, but not rants against individuals, organisations or companies

 

Guest Post Guidelines

Please visit www.birminghamearlyyearsnetworks.org/blog and note the general structure and layout of the BEYN blog.

Guest post submissions should adhere to the following guidelines:

  • Word count: minimum 500 words, maximum 1,500 words

  • Include a Title AND Subtitle, e.g. Title: COVID-19 Wellbeing Resources for Early Years; Subtitle: We’ve collated a selection of COVID-19 storybooks and resources which we think are rather good and might support young children's wellbeing at this time

  • Please provide at least two high-resolution images – landscape images are best but we can accept portrait images if that’s all you have. You must ensure you have the correct permissions to use these images and provide relevant credits where applicable

  • Please provide a headshot and short author bio (max 150 words) to be included in the footer of your post

  • Your article should reflect the writing style/tone of the BEYN blog, as a whole. Try to make your article engaging and conversational

  • Provide proper attribution and referencing for any research, data, quotations or outside content that you include in your article – please link to original sources where possible

  • No more than ONE link to your own website/work in the body of your post (you may also include ONE link to your own website/work in your bio)

  • Please check your post for spelling and grammatical errors BEFORE you submit it. You can use an app such as Grammarly to do this for free online: grammarly.com

How To Submit Your Post

Please email your submission to info@birminghamearlyyearsnetworks.org with the subject line: Guest post submission: [your name/organisation] and include the following:

  1. Your completed post as a Word Doc or Google Doc

  2. Image files (with attribution) in a separate folder – images must be a minimum of 500px wide

  3. Headshot and short author bio (you may include a maximum of one anchor text link to your own website/work in your bio)

  4. Please provide links to relevant social media where applicable, i.e. Twitter handle/ Facebook page for tagging in social media shares.

If your article meets editorial standards and aligns with our content strategy as outlined in ‘The Basics’, we will respond to let you know when your article will be published. This may take up to two weeks.

 
 

Terms & Conditions

  • Your guest post will be published on the BEYN blog and promoted through BEYN social channels (Twitter and Facebook) if accepted. Social posts will tag the blog author/organisation (where applicable)

  • Submissions must meet the BEYN blog quality standards in order to get published

  • All guest posts will be tagged as such and include the following disclaimer :*The following guest post represents the author’s personal view and does not necessarily represent the view of BEYN as a whole. Any issues or questions arising from the content of this post should, therefore, be directed to the author and not BEYN.

  • The BEYN blog team reserves the right to edit and adapt your guest post content as we see fit and update it in the future for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

  • BEYN reserves the right to include calls-to-action to BEYN content, including but not limited to other blog posts, events, email newsletters and social media pages