WAVE BLOG CONTRIBUTOR

Please review this guide for information about Ripple Foundation and details on preparing and sending your blog entry.

Welcome

The best insights often come from our peers. Wave Blog allows you to share your experiences and thoughts on topics relevant to your friends and other students. Before you begin writing, read some of the existing blog posts. These blog entries will give you a good idea of how to write for the Wave Blog.

Wave Blog categories:

We are looking for blog entries in the following categories:

  • Books & Movies: Book and Movie reviews or recommendations
  • Creative Writing: Blog posts that have to do with creative writing, whether it’s tips or inspirational
  • Flashback: An experience or personal life event that made an impact on you
  • Fresh: A new and different perspective when looking at any given topic
  • View: Reflections on your own personal points of view, opinions, and experiences
Volunteer Hours:

You can earn up to 5 hours per blog entry – this includes the writing deadline and any required revisions while working with our team to finalize your piece.

To collect your hours, be sure to ask you school counsellor or teacher for instructions and the required form(s). When you have your form, be sure to fill it out before sending to us to verify and sign.

Additional Opportunities:

If you are interested in earning more volunteer hours, you can volunteer as an Assistant Writing Workshop Facilitator.

Express Inspire Connect – An annual virtual youth-led conference for grades 8-12, seeking young leaders to organize or speak at this event. Join passionate young leaders across Canada to tackle contemporary issues and empower each other through engaging discussions and transformative collaborations. If you’re interested in taking part, email [email protected] and let your voice be heard in this powerful youth-driven experience.

Prepare Your Submission

When preparing your blog entry, please follow these guidelines. Much of the formatting requirements are included in the WaveBlog DOCX template. An example can be seen here.

  • 0Submit your blog entry in an MS Word (.docx) formatted file using WaveBlog. dot template. Download template.
    • Use the following file-naming convention: BlogEntryTitle_v1.dotx, where v1 indicates the version number of the file.
    • All subsequently edited submissions should end in v2, v3, etc., to show the latest version of your blog entry.
  • Include a title at the top of your blog entry.
  • Use the styles available in the template and do not modify them.
  • Word count should be 800 – 1,000.
  • At the end/bottom of your blog entry, include one (1) paragraph about yourself.
  • Required: Include a photo of yourself to accompany your submission – JPEG format with a minimum resolution 800 x 800 pixels.
  • Important: Take the time to re-read and check your work.
How to Submit Your Blog Entry?

Email your blog entry submission to [email protected] and include your MS Word document and profile picture attached.

Find Your Blog Entry on Social Media

Your blog entry will be shared on these social media platforms. We encourage you to follow us and help you become our influencer by helping us promote our blog.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The internet is flooded with millions of articles on a daily basis. For search engines like Google and Bing, having your article rise to the top of an internet search is next to impossible given the thousands of online articles that appear in search results. However, you can optimize your story by checking all of the boxes that these search engines are looking for. Use these tips and tricks to help increase the changes that your article will “rank,” or show up within the first few results when readers search for your topic!

When writing your article, keep in mind these SEO factors.

Keyphrase

Is there a phrase that your story can’t live without? Identify it because it is likely your keyphrase.

  • For example, the keyphrase for a story with the headline NASA Completes Mars Landing would be “NASA Mars landing.” This is the phrase that you want your story to “rank” for, so its placement within your blog article is important. Your keyphrase must appear in both your headline and your first paragraph, and the earlier the better.
  • A good keyphrase density is also important. Keyphrase density is simply how many times your keyphrase appears in your text. According to most SEO experts, a good keyphrase density is 1-2%, meaning that your keyphrase should appear once or twice every 100 words.
  • An easy way to calculate the keyphrase density is by using the Find feature in your word processor (usually Ctrl + F on Windows, Command + F on Mac) to locate your keyphrase within your text. Add up how many times it appears and then divide that number by the total word count. If the quotient is 0.01 or higher, you’re on the right track!

Internal and Outbound Links

Adding internal and/or outbound links is another way you can boost SEO scores.

For a post on the Wave Blog, an internal link would be a link embedded in your story to another story on the Wave Blog.

An outbound link is a link within your story to any article outside of the Ripple Foundation. For example, you’re writing about mental health and you include a statistic. For reference information, include where you got that statistic from in your post via an outbound link. Along with helping out with SEO, an outbound link reference will also improve your credibility!

To add either an internal or outbound link in Microsoft Word:

  • Highlight the text you want to embed the link.
  • Right-click it and select Link.
  • In the dialogue, select the web page option and paste the URL of the article you want to link to.

If you have any questions, please reach out to [email protected], who manages our Wave Blog’s SEO. You can also look through Yoast’s blog posts that explain the concepts touched on above in greater detail. Happy optimizing!