Become a Content Partner

Are you involved with a not for profit advocacy, industry group or university? Are you working on important campaigns or research and always challenged by getting the message out to a wider audience?

Green Pages offers content partnerships to legitimate environmental and social advocacy groups as well as educational institutions. Expert individuals are also welcome to become content partners, but must do so on behalf of an approved organisation.

Once approved, we provide you with your own unique login area where you can upload news stories that will appear on the GP homepage. Your organisation’s logo, tagline and url link will appear at the base of the story you post.

The story will be distributed throughout our website, appear on member’s notifications and go in our weekly member email. Over time, your news stories may also be distributed to other major media outlets through a central green news feed.

This service is provided by Green Pages free of charge to the environmental community and always will be.

Watch the Content Partner Tutorial Videos here to get started

There are a few rules to becoming an approved content partner:

1. Represent the best interest of environmental protection, human rights and sustainable development. Not for profit lobby groups with dubious or suspicious environmental agendas will not be permitted. For example organisations such as ‘Tobacco for a Sustainable Future’ or ‘Genetic Modification Foods to Help the Poor’ will not be permitted.

2. Private companies, public companies and sole traders are not permitted as content partners. If you own or work for a commercial company, the individual author may contribute on behalf of your most closely aligned industry association or advocacy group. For example a carbon offset business may contribute on behalf of the Clean Energy Council, a not for profit industry association.

3. Individuals are only allowed to contribute on behalf of an approved content partner. For example an expert ecologist may contribute an opinion article on behalf of the Ecological Society of Australia. The individual will be accredited as the author of the article and the content partner’s byline, logo and weblink will also be featured on the story.

Here is a list of the types of organisations who are well suited to becoming content partners:

Member based environmental advocacy organisations i.e. Greenpeace, WWF, Australian Conservation Foundation.

University Faculties involved in sustainability such as research labs and environmental departments.

Member Based Professional Industry Associations i.e. Environmental Engineering Society, Clean Energy Council, Green Building Council.

Local Community Groups and Committees i.e. Eltham Permaculture Group, Brisbane Catchment Management Committee, Margaret River Wildlife Carers Committee.

Government Environmental Departments i.e. EPA, Department of Environment and Heritage.

Not for Profit Certification or Rating Bodies i.e. Australian Certified Organic, Energy Efficiency Ratings, Forest Stewardship Council.

Your Application

You will need to send an email requesting to become a content partner directly to our CEO at [email protected] with the following information:

Name of the organisation
A sample news article or 200 to 600 words in length
Name and short bio of the main contributing author from the organisation
Logo
Short description of less than 50 words that will be used on all articles

Getting Started

Once you are approved your will be provided a unique username and password to be set up for a 6 months training period where our team will assist you to get the style, formatting and image selection to the highest possible standard before your stories are released live to the homepage. All approved stories will be approved to go live within 24 hours of posting. After this 6 month period you will be provided with access to release stories to the homepage at anytime without moderation from the GP team.

Watch the Content Partner Tutorial Videos here to get started

Copyright

The author retains ultimate copyright of the story. However when the story is posted on the Green Pages site, we reserve the right to distribute this story through our networks without notification or payment to the author. Our key aim is to distribute environmental news as far and wide as possible. The author may choose to approach other media sources with their story in pursuit of payment should the story be published. Exclusivity is not a requirement of Green Pages. Any story posted to Green Pages may have already been posted elsewhere.

Style Guide & Tips

Here are a few tips to guide you to create great articles that will grab the attention of the readers and fit well with the Green Pages style.

Article Style

We prefer fun, upbeat, positive, visionary and constructive articles that are aimed to inspire positive change, rather than negative articles focused on disaster. For example we would prefer an article that said ‘Sustainable plantations taking hold, forests saved’ As opposed to ’10 hectares decimated, potaroo dead, tragedy continues’.

Stories about innovation, new progress, technology and future forward models. We encourage articles that will interest experts, complex thinkers, advanced topics. There is no need to ‘dumb down’ or create ‘layman’ articles for the audience.

Expressive headlines are good. Such as ‘New’ ‘Word First’ ‘Striking’ ‘Amazing’ ‘Blown Away’ ‘Bombshell’ ‘Increadible’ ‘Jaw Dropping’ ‘Fascinating’. For example an article such as ‘PCP Levels in NSW Oysters‘ might be called ‘Alarming Toxic PCP in Fresh Oysters‘ – its more fun to read and will attract more readers.

Try starting articles with powerful, punchy first sentences that are very short. ‘Its here. Carbon trading is . . . .’ ‘I was blown away. For the last 15 years . . . ‘

We try to avoid negative phrasing such as ‘Stop’ ‘ Say No’ ‘Don’t’ ‘We need to Act Now’.

Articles written in first person are acceptable.

Swearing is ok in moderation and in an intelligent context, but not to be used in headlines.

Capital letters are only to be used to start sentences. Do not write anything in capital letters under any circumstances. Use italics if you would like to emphasis a word or sentence.

Use the larger heading size as little as possible and only when necessary.

The ‘news’ section is to be used only for ‘news’. Campaigns, actions, protests, petitions are to be filed in the ‘events ‘ section. A ‘Call to action’ for a campaign, petition etc are to be used as footer notes only. They are not to be used within articles or for the main heading of an article.

Moderate use of links to external sites within articles. Ensure the links are highly relevant for the reader, as the reader expects to link to another story within the green pages site, they may be displeased if taken to an irrelevant new page.

Data and References

Must be scientifically accurate and referenced. All facts and data must be referenced to a person’s quote, a scientific paper, formal study or linked to a web source. Stories with non referenced sources will be declined.

Images

Images are best at 450px wide x 250 px high.

Images are not mandatory, but are strongly reccommended. Readers gravitate to images before they read the headline.

Ensure images are of reasonable to good quality, and resolution is good. Take the time to find a great image. Colour is good, people’s faces are good, dark or greyish images do not come up so great. Be careful of generic ‘green’ or ‘eco friendly’ stock images – we have seen them all before and they are used by everyone and get very tired!

Beware of images that are copyright protected from image sources such as Gettys Images, AAP or Reuters. Any fines incurred from violation of copyright will be passed on to the content provider so be careful! It is your responsibility to ensure that you have copyright privileges to use the image.

It is common practice to provide professional photographers with a photo credit (their name next to the image) so please remember to do this. It is good manners.

Frequency of Submission

We suggest a maximum of one story per day. If your organisation’s story was the most recently posted, we recommend you wait a couple of days until some other organisations post so the topics can be more spread out. There is no minimum or maximum requirement for posting to be a content partner, but we request that you use your discretion and do not dominate the system with one type of news.

Minimal submission is ok too. If you feel that your organisation would like to be involved, but may only be able to provide a few stories per year, this is fine. You will not be removed for low levels of submission. However if we don’t hear from you for a few months we might send you a friendly reminder to take advantage of the system!