Brainhackers.com – Contributor Guidelines

Brain Hackers is committed to making brain science accessible to the masses. Our goal is to provide videos that will enlighten, entertain, educate, and provide readers with useful material to improve their every day lives.

GENERAL CONTENT GUIDELINES

*You can also download these guidelines HERE.

A BrainHackers.com post can be an ARTICLE or a VIDEO that is a Professional Opinion Piece or a Brain Hack.

 

Professional Opinion Piece

We want to know your opinion! Is the current education system flawed in a fixable way? Are smart phones replacing our brains?  Write in and tell us all about it!

We ask that all opinion pieces:

Ask us questions to help you find the right tone.

Brain Hacks

“Life Hacks” are a popular trend sweeping the Internet and the brain is no exception. A Brain Hack is any practical brain tip or technique that could improve our lives.

Do you have a trick to sleep better? How about a way to learn faster? Use your brain to lose weight?  These articles and videos are very practical.

Often these posts can be in the form of lists (Example: 10 Brain Hacks to Improve Study Skills this September) but it can also be a more detailed description of one technique or method.

ARTICLE GUIDELINES

TITLE

Short titles work best. Try to keep it fewer than 10 words but if you need more use a sub title.

LENGTH

Experts can be long winded and this is okay as long as the material is relevant. Data shows articles between 2,000 and 2,500 often give the best SEO and WIKI citation results. However, if you have a concentrated bit of wisdom, you can go shorter. The key is quality. We ask that posts be a minimum of 300 words.

PHOTOS

We will need a professional photo or headshot plus 2 or more photos to add to your article. Please send a high res copy of each picture via email, dropbox, or another file sharing system.

*See Photo Format.

BACK LINKS:

Please include a minimum of 2 back links. You can put this at the bottom of your article with a note on which word you are linking. If you think a back link is something on a bike chain, don’t worry. Just include a few links at the bottom of your article that give further reference to what you are saying. We will do the rest.

YOUR HEART:

Speak in your own voice. Don’t be afraid of being controversial. Often, it is the rebels that make the best discoveries. Be informative and above all, be helpful. People come to this site looking for advice.

FILE FORMAT

Send a word document (*.doc) of your completed article, as you would like it to appear (ex. bolded fonts, underlines, spacing, etc.) We will try and match this as closely as possible once it is approved.

PREVIOUS WORKS

Although we do prefer original content, it is okay to use an excerpt from your book or previous work. If you do this please let us know and include an introductory paragraph that summarizes the material.

*See SEO Strategy

SEO STRATEGY:

Please do not copy and paste any portion of this article from your own blog or webpage. If you are going to use previous work please write an original paragraph describing it and we will include a link to the article on Brain Hackers. This will help the article perform better.

Duplicate material (material that is copied and pasted from another site) interferes with internet search rankings. Google’s new Panda Update flags these articles as plagiarized and gives the sites an SEO penalty.

If you absolutely must use content that is a sample or excerpt of something else you have online, please tell us so we can add some code to our article to eliminate the Google Panda Update penalty.

PHOTO FORMAT:

Make photos to the following dimensions (approx.)
Thumbnails for Web pages 120 x 90
 

Images for Web Pages

 640 x 480
Publication (1/4 page) 1600 x 1200
Publication (1/2 page) 2400 x 1800
 

Publication (full page)

 3200 x 2400

Send in *.JPG format

VIDEO GUIDELINES:

YOUR CONTENT:

Get to the point. People decide whether they want to watch your video within seconds so jump right into the Brain hack content. If you have background information fill it in later after you have hooked the viewer.

ATTITUDE:

Be yourself!! SMILE!! Show emotion. Be excited about your subject!

THE POSE:

Turn your body slightly away from the camera. By turning slightly to the right or left you look better on camera. Your head can face the camera directly or you can create the illusion of talking to a reporter by looking just off screen.

THE CAMERA:

Most smart phones produced today have cameras that are more than capable of taking high quality video. If you have doubts on what camera to use, you can send us a test video.

THE AUDIO:

Please record audio separately with a dedicated recording device that is close to you. It can be a cell phone using a recording app. We will combine the audio and video later in our editing suite. Also avoid noise, wind, and echoing rooms.

THE LIGHTING

Make all videos as well-lit as possible without being washed out. It is usually better to lower the brightness on a video than to raise it. If a video is too dark, the camera will not pick up high quality images. If this happens we may ask you to reshoot the video.

Never make a video with light in the background (meaning light that shines from behind the camera.) This ruins the shot because it affects the camera’s color and brightness settings during filming and makes the rest of the image dark. All light should come from in front of the camera. Use multiple lights and light direction to minimize shadows.

FILE TRANSFER:

Send your video in *.MOV /*.MPG / or *.MP4 File formats.  Use a file sharing service like drop box to send the video.  Do not upload to YouTube as this will lower quality before editing.

 

** These are general guidelines but of course all rules have exceptions.  If you have a specific idea in mind that breaks any of these guidelines, please let us know. Sometimes unique tactics produce the best results.  Contact us at 866-949-6868 if you have any questions.

 

DOWNLOAD GUIDELINES HERE

ANY QUESTIONS?

Feel free to email us at:

submissions@brainhackers.com