I receive a lot of great info about a variety of topics from readers – tidbits and sometimes more elaborate – usually not quite enough to qualify as a Guest Feature on Greenroofs.com,  but certainly enough to pique our interest for a blog post.   Of course I don’t have unlimited time at my disposal to further research all of these newsworthy items, nor do our Contributing Editors, so we’ve decided to open up our Sky Gardens Blog to Guest Posts.  

Talking about our Contributing Editors, as it is I’m the one blogging the most anyway – they all have their real careers and companies to run, after all, so I think this will open up our piece of the blogosphere a bit – new blood and all that.

So how does it work and what are we looking for?   Posts will come through me, and I’ll determine if the topic is pertinent, appropriate, and in-line with  the tone  of “Sky Gardens ~ where cool green meets lofty blue.”   So what’s that, again?   From my bio in About Us:

“Cool green?”   Cool green architecture, cool green people, cool green environments, etc., you get the picture. “Lofty blue?”   As in sky high spaces, places, ideals, and ideas.  

Ask yourself, Will the greenroof community be eager to read this?   Is it  environmentally interesting, important, funny, or thought provoking?   Good examples are projects with greenroofs or green walls you visited or  articles/videos you came across, people and organizations who are working in the sustainable design field, commentary on green case studies, examples of best practices, links to industry news,  or media happenings in general.   No press releases, infomercials or advertorials, please!   If you want to advertise your product or service, great – we keep that separate, just visit Advertise with Us.   Also  see  our Submissions page for more.   If accepted, the author’s name will be followed by a comma and Guest Post, as in Jane Doe, Guest Post  to differentiate you from the Team at Greenroofs.com.

Guidelines are simple, please:

Informal and opinionated is fine, but no  nastiness or preaching will be tolerated.   Be clear and concise, edit and spellcheck your work – don’t make  us ask for clarifications!   If English is not your native tongue, that’s different and we’ll be more tolerant, so please state that.     But we will still not  publish poorly written work.

Include relevant references and websites; if you are lifting someone else’s work, put it in quotes and give the source.   When referencing an article or other post, it’s not considered polite to paste the entire story (not to mention legal in terms of copyright issues).   Most blogs post a summary or the first paragraph (40 words), then include a link to the rest of the story.   But I really don’t want copied articles that are just being regurgitated over the Internet – be creative and summarize in your own words!

Length:   About 250 words would be max.   Sometimes less is more, but it’s only a guideline.

Send great and  awesome photos, graphics and images, people!   How many?   At least two, more is better.   No one wants to read a bunch of words  going on and on about  some vague architectural philosophy  pertaining to  culture and the evolution/decline of man without some interesting photos to break it up.   Again, state the source and if the photo is copyrighted, get permission and  include the name of the photographer.

Send your posts to:   submissions@greenroofs.com

Format:   Word, TXT, or RTF; Photos:   JPG or GIF, no larger than 490 x 342 pixels

Here’s a new opportunity for Greenroofs.com to continue our onward and upward expansion into the greenroof world, as well as your opportunity to share your views with our readership.   So for those of you who want to be bloggers, here’s your chance!

As always, we welcome your ideas and comments ~ Linda V.