This document is created for blog content authors to guide them in formatting their submissions in such a way that proofreaders will have no comments. The marketing.link blog is a collection of useful materials for businesspeople and marketers. We write about everything related to marketing and online promotion.
- Text Formatting
- Structure of the aticles
- Prohibited techniques
- Authorship
- Checklist for preparing the article
Why Editorial Policy is Necessary
- Helps employees and remote authors write quality texts.
- Sets standards for formatting, structure, spelling, and punctuation.
- Ensures all texts by different authors are uniform in style and structure.
- Eliminates variations in writing and authorial style of employees that could negatively impact the company’s image.
- Educates new employees about the rules.
Benefits of the Aticles
Before writing anything, it’s important to determine what we’re writing, for whom, and why.
- The purpose of the text (Why? What should the reader understand after reading the text?).
- The audience (For whom?).
- The task (What exactly to write? How does this word, sentence, or paragraph contribute to achieving the goal?).
The goal of any text should be formulated from the perspective of its utility. It’s better not to write at all than to write “just to tick a box”.
| No | Yes |
|---|---|
| Write about new Google Ads rules so clients won’t complain they weren’t warned. | Help prepare for changes: — Enter company details and contact information in advance. — Attach product certificates. Suggest alternatives: — advise what to do if necessary documents are missing, what to do if the account is blocked. |
| Write aticles just to meet the content plan quota. | — |
| Write something because nothing has been written for a long time. | — |
| Write something to get a backlink. | — |
Types of Content in the Blog
- Case studies
- Articles
- Manuals.
Text Formatting
This section will cover complex examples, modality, abbreviations, symbols, and difficult cases.
Company Name
The company name marketing.link is written in Latin letters. The name is not enclosed in quotes.
| No | Yes |
|---|---|
| MARKETING.LINK | marketing.link Marketing Link |
Ellipsis
If you remove unnecessary phrases from a quote, use an ellipsis. At the end of thoughtful or unfinished sentences, do not use it.
Exclamation Mark
If you feel the urge to use an exclamation mark—think twice. The blog’s content is written in a calm tone. Too many exclamation marks create the impression of a hysterical interlocutor.
Dash
The dash should be marked with the symbol —, not with a hyphen -. Be careful with symbols that have a similar appearance:
The em dash (—) is used without spaces around it. For example: “She won the game—despite being injured.”
Quotation Marks
In English, there are no guillemets (angle quotes), so use inch marks for quotations. Other languages (German, French, Swedish, etc.) have their own rules—please refer to them.
Rules
| No | Yes |
|---|---|
| Pet Supermarket Rabbit Pet Supermarket «Rabbit» Pet Supermarket „Rabbit“ | Pet Supermarket “Rabbit” |
In English, it’s standard to use double quotation marks (” “) for quoting speech, titles, or other quoted material. Unlike some other languages that may use guillemets (« ») or other forms of quotation marks, English primarily uses the inch mark style. Note, in American English, periods and commas go inside quotation marks, regardless of logic.
Currency Units and Symbols
Use the symbols $, € consistently: if all currency denominations in the content are written with symbols, continue using symbols throughout; if spelled out, do so consistently from start to finish. Write the $ sign before the number without a space, e.g., $100. For others, write after the numbers, e.g., 100€.
Do not separate the % sign from the number, for example, 100%.
You, Your
In articles, “you,” “your,” “to you” are written in lowercase if they appear in the middle of a sentence.
Numbers
Write as follows: from one to nine in words; from 10 and beyond in numerals. Exceptions are numbers in titles, e.g., “5 Simple and Effective Ways to Set Up Google Ads”; and ranges, e.g., from 3 to 5 years.
For easier readability of large numbers (from 1,000 and more), use a commas: 5,787; 59,000; 860,000. From one million upwards, write the number and abbreviate “million,” “billion” without a period.
Use ordinal numbers with suffixes (11th floor, 25th flight) with a hyphen.
Use Roman numerals for centuries, for example, the 20th century, 16th–20th centuries.
Suffixes for Ordinal Numbers
Suffixes for Ordinal Numbers Numerals with suffixes are always written with a hyphen. Suffixes can only be added to ordinal numbers, not cardinal numbers. Cardinal numbers “two,” “three,” “four” are represented as 2, 3, 4.
How to check: cardinal answers the questions: “how many?”; ordinal: “which?”
Time and Dates
Write all dates in the following format:
- 25th April, Monday
- 11/29/2024
- 26th November 2024
- November, 26, 2024
Display times using a colon to separate hours from minutes, or spell them out completely:
- 12:00 PM.
- 12 hours 15 minutes.
Abbreviations
Place a space between the value and the abbreviation:
| With a dot | Without a dot |
|---|---|
| Years, year — yr. | Tons — t |
| Pieces — pcs. | Grams — g |
| Cubic meter — cu. m | Kilograms — kg |
| Square meter — sq. m | Billions — bln |
| Pounds — lbs. | Million — mln |
| Feet — ft. | Meter — m |
| Miles — mi. | Thousand — k |
Lists
Utilize both numbered and bulleted lists. When a list follows a heading, the use of a colon after the heading is standard.
Bulleted List
Start each item with a capital letter, especially if it follows directly after a heading or if each item is a complete sentence. For simple list items that do not form complete sentences and follow a colon, starting with a lowercase letter is acceptable. Typically, if the list items are complete sentences, each item ends with a period.
| Simple List with Semicolons | Simple List with Commas | Capitalized and Ending with a Period |
|---|---|---|
| This information helps to improve: • Advertising, websites, or sales scripts. The Quality Control department hears who is genuinely interested in the product and what matters to these people. • Business processes within the company. The Quality Control department is aware of all complaints and customer wishes. • The motivation system for sales managers. It helps when managers “dump” difficult customers. | On the table are three markers: • Red, • Yellow, • Green. | This information helps to improve: • Advertising, websites, or sales scripts. The Quality Control department hears who is genuinely interested in the product and what matters to these people. • Business processes within the company. The Quality Control department is aware of all complaints and customer wishes. • The motivation system for sales managers. It helps when managers “dump” difficult customers. |
Numbered List
List items start with a capital letter, and each is followed by a period. Use a numbered list only when you need to enumerate actions sequentially.
For cases, it’s preferable that the first 500 characters, or 1-2 paragraphs, be plain text without any list. It’s best to avoid nested lists — e.g., a, b, inside 1, 2, 3 — as nested lists can narrow the text column, making the webpage look cluttered. Ideally, there should be lists of only one level.
Non-breaking Space
In HTML, you can insert non-breaking spaces ( ) to prevent currency symbols and abbreviations without numbers next to them from wrapping to a new line.
Modality
Avoid modality (combinations with the verbs “can,” “must,” “need to,” “seem,” “to be”).
No: “You must upload a photo.” Yes: “Upload a photo.”
No: “You can check.” Yes: “Check.”
Links
Format all links so that they open in the same window. Avoid placing links in the first paragraph to prevent taking the reader away from the content prematurely.
| No | Yes |
|---|---|
| Telegram is available for smartphones and computers: web.telegram.org. | Telegram is available for smartphones and computers. |
Do not overuse hyperlinks or redirect the reader to other resources unnecessarily. Links can be appropriately placed in:
- Reviews and compilations of services, products, goods.
- Instances where a link to an external website solves the reader’s issue in a specific text. For example, an article on calculating ROAS includes a link to a calculator.
- Cases where it’s necessary to cite a source or confirm a fact (links to research, statistics, legislation).
References to blog materials should be made by pointing to relevant articles. Links to client websites (in case studies) should be placed unless otherwise specified, such as by an NDA.
Regardless of the link type, its text must clearly indicate where the reader will be directed. Formulations like “click here,” “read here,” or “something via the link” are prohibited.
Downloadable Files
Occasionally, but sometimes necessary, content may require attaching a download link for a file.
For filenames intended for download from the website, use only Latin letters (transliteration), numbers, underscores, hyphens, and periods.
On the website, specify the file type, name, and size below the file’s title.
| No | Yes |
|---|---|
| Download image | Schema_drive.jpg, 782 KB |
| Download document | Survival_guide.doc, 254 KB |
Content Structure
To write compelling text, it’s not enough to remove stop words and place the main point at the beginning. Text is difficult to read if it lacks structure: everything dumped into one paragraph or multiple ideas crammed into a single paragraph can cause the reader to lose the sense and not want to continue reading.
Choosing a Topic and Researching Information
To create a good structure, each subheading, paragraph, and sentence must serve the purpose. The goal is to make the text easy to perceive. The reader should not feel confused or fatigued.
All content is built on the inverted pyramid principle: present the essential information in the first part, then provide details, and always write a summary or conclusion.
Nesting
For example, if you are writing about Google AMP, the structure (pay attention to the nesting) should be as follows:
- H1 Benefits of AMP Pages
- H2 What is Google AMP?
- H2 Who Needs AMP
- H2 Benefits of Google AMP
- H2 Drawbacks of Google AMP
- H2 How to Properly Implement AMP
- H3 For WordPress
- H3 For Magento
- H3 For OpenCart
- H3 For PrestaShop
- H2 Key Points
- Conclusions
The structure (plan for the upcoming article) needs to be approved by the editor in Google Docs. This will help avoid major text changes after edits and prevent misunderstandings.
Content Length
For case studies and manuals, the length should be no less than 5,000 characters; for articles, 7,000-40,000 characters (it all depends on the competition: open the first 7-10 results in the search and check how much competitors have written on the topic; if it’s 7,000 characters, then your content cannot be less).
Headline
The headline should be clear, understandable, and include keywords for search engines. Ideally, it should contain numbers. We do not provide false information in headlines or promise magic solutions.
Periods are not used in headlines except for two sentences. In that case, place a period after the first sentence but not after the second. Do not use question marks in headlines.
The headline cannot end with a colon, even if followed by a list.
Introduction
Read chapter 10 of David Randall’s “The Universal Journalist” on how to write a lead (introduction, subheading): “The lead must be clear and understandable. Upon reading it, the reader should ask themselves only one question: Do I want to read this article? The answer will almost certainly be ‘no’ if the lead is ambiguous. It’s also important that it isn’t overloaded with unnecessary information, namely: superfluous details, precise titles—basically, anything that can wait until the second paragraph or even later.”
We have summarized Randall’s book on the most successful leads.
Successful Leads
- Narrative — Used for chronological presentation, especially when the process is more important than the event.
- Anecdote — Illustrates the main theme of the article through an episode or story.
- Suspended Jump — The climax at the end, after several paragraphs of exposition.
- In a Nutshell — Concentrates the essence in one powerful sentence. Requires talent and experience.
- Overview Lead — Suitable for complex events, highlights the main points.
- Explanatory Lead — Introduces the topic or character, like a “poster” for the article.
- Shocking Lead-Puzzle — Starts with an eccentric phrase to attract attention.
- Imagine — Engages, immerses the reader in the context, making them a co-participant in events.
- Detail — Focuses on a minor, but intriguing detail, stimulating interest in further reading.
Unsuccessful Leads
- Question — A risky method of beginning, may cause premature answers from readers and loss of interest in the article. Better to avoid direct and predictable questions.
- Joke — A popular, but not always successful way to engage the reader through humor. It’s important for the joke to be appropriate and make the reader want to continue, without feeling second-hand embarrassment.
- Philosophical Lead — Often attempted, but rarely successful. Includes profound, but often trite, statements.
- False Premise — A statement intended to be refuted in the body of the article. Requires careful use.
- Historical Lead — Begins with a historical fact or reference, needs to be interesting enough to capture the reader’s attention.
- Puzzle — An ineffective lead because you immediately start playing a cat-and-mouse game with the reader. Save this technique for another part of the article, but not for the lead.
Key Thoughts and Quotes
Key thoughts are the most important and interesting theses in the text. They help retain the reader’s attention by highlighting the text, conveying crucial points. They should be highlighted. You can look at quality articles with successful designs of insets and quotes. A key thought should be concise—up to five lines.
Rhetorical Questions and Self-talk
Do not use rhetorical questions in headlines. In the text, use them sparingly without a question mark. Besides rhetorical questions, we do not talk to ourselves in the text. Try to avoid phrases like “Yes, it’s more expensive” or “No, it’s not that scary.” It’s like you’re talking to yourself, which is dull.
Conclusions
Help the reader remember the main point by using a conclusion. This can be a single concluding paragraph (summary) or a whole section with a subheading, for example: “Summary,” “Conclusion,” “What to Remember,” “Check-list.”
Authors
Finally, list all the people who participated in the release of the material. If someone took action in preparation/writing up to the moment of publication, they are mentioned in the team. List all the experts who helped with advice, editing, or approval of the article.
Illustrations
Use illustrations, GIFs, or videos when necessary to explain, illustrate a process, show characters, demonstrate, or emphasize emotions.
If an illustration, GIF, or video does not perform any function, remove it.
The width of images should be no less than 740 pixels. The exception is mobile screenshots. Group mobile screenshots in pairs so they look nice on the page or integrate them into the text. A lone mobile screenshot creates emptiness around itself.
Within one article, desktop screenshots should be uniform: the same height, with or without shadows—all the same. If you’re taking a screenshot of a website or service, open it in “Incognito” mode without any other tabs open.
Personal data in all screenshots should be covered with a black bar 
or blurred 
. If the data is fictional for an example, it does not need to be covered.
Personal data include names, surnames, logins, phone numbers, accounts, card numbers. If a screenshot for a case contains private client information that we do not disclose within the case (income, click cost, budget, etc.—things not related to the specific case)—it must also be covered or blurred.
The main image for the material should be in formats: blog-preview, blog-cover, for Instagram, for Facebook, for newsletters. This should be clarified with the chief editor.
Make captions for illustrations. Do not place a period at the end of the caption.
For GIFs and videos that are self-explanatory, do not add captions.
Prohibited Techniques
- Do not start sentences with the conjunctions “because” or “as.”
- Avoid using gerunds or nominalizations:
- “He is on vacation” instead of “He is being on vacation.”
- “We sent letters to clients” instead of “We have made a mailing of letters to clients.”
- Simplify complex constructions. A period is the best punctuation mark. Too many commas in a sentence indicate a complex structure. Break up or simplify such sentences.
- “Initially, create lead forms with a minimal number of questions” instead of “At the initial stage, lead forms are created with a minimal number of questions.”
- Eliminate bureaucratese. Signs of a bureaucratic style include passive voice, bureaucratese, and nominalizations. Replace all with simple and human language.
Authorship
Every article must have an author, whether it’s a partner agency’s piece or not. A specific individual as the author must be identified. Include information about the author: name, work experience, key skills and achievements, a clear photo, and a link to a fully completed LinkedIn profile.
Case Studies
This section is primarily for Marketing Link employees.
We publish case studies on the blog, including photos of the authors and comments from experts involved not only in the project itself but also in the creation of the case study.
Case studies are published after approval from the manager, as not all clients want their commercial information to become public knowledge, including to their competitors.
Sometimes, if a case is truly exceptional, we may publish it without mentioning the site’s name, only specifying the industry. This should also be clarified with the editorial team.
All screenshots also need to be approved, as some information may need to be redacted.
Occasionally, we write about “anti-cases” when mistakes are made by us or the client. It’s not a good tradition, but mistakes, especially those documented and reflected upon, help us grow.
Case Studies with Limited Information
- Reducing of the cost of an application in Google Ads by 7.8 times
- Reduced the application cost by 35% and the click cost by 24%
- How to set up Google Ads for a sex shop — anonymous case study
Exemplary Cases
- Google Ads case study: how to improve conversion from 7% to 16%
- Google Ads case study: how to scale your delivery business
Content Checklist
- Choose a topic. If it’s a case study or manual, select specialists and experts. Conduct interviews. If writing an article, see what competitors have written: analyze the structure, decide on the length. Rely on choosing reliable sources, we have a special article for marketers on “Information Sources: How to Check and Trust Them” and how to select them.
- Write the structure of the material. Agree with the chief editor. Make a detailed plan (with subpoints) for the text part and a plan for screenshots and illustrations, based on what competitors and reference services offer.
- Plan points are questions for an interview with an expert if your material is based on an interview. Not all plan points may be useful in your work, as technologies change. Some points will be added, some will disappear. Let others do the work first, then proceed to work on it yourself; this means first inviting comments and working on the material in parallel.
- Invent a lead and a headline.
- Select illustrations, screenshots, GIFs.
- Proofread it yourself, check.
- Send it to a proofreader/editor for proofreading.
- Arrange the conclusion section and specify the roles of the material’s authors.
Remember: good texts are hard work.