Blog Guidelines

ILCA blog guidelines

Thank you for your interest in drafting a blog post for ILCA! Here’s our guidelines for submission. Please let us know if you have any questions, thoughts, or feedback.

General Content Guidelines

The ILCA blog exists for the purpose of furthering ILCA’s mission and goals. To learn more about ILCA, please see here. The blog is also a vehicle for engaging with the ILCA community.

Blog posts are welcomed that:

– Support ILCA’s mission and goals

– Describe and highlight evidence-based practices

– Support breastfeeding families with evidence-based information

– Support IBCLCs and other maternal child health care providers in their practice

– Describe and highlight ways to promote breastfeeding

– Keeps members of the breastfeeding community up-to-date on topics related to the childbearing year, women’s health, and infant well being

ILCA is open to a variety of topics that support ILCA’s mission and goals, including:

• High-quality research on breastfeeding support, advocacy or training
• Innovative models for breastfeeding support, education, and training
• Information and advocacy in support of the International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes
• Connections between breastfeeding and other areas, such as: birth, infant development, nutrition, perinatal mood disorders, and more
• Health disparities and health equity

ILCA’s target audiences:

• International Board Certified Lactation Consultants (IBCLCs)
• Other breastfeeding support professionals
• Members and leaders of breastfeeding volunteer support organizations
• Individuals considering entering the lactation field
• Medical professionals
• Breastfeeding families
• Other members of the community who take an interest in breastfeeding support.

Length and style:

Blog posts are generally most successful when they are about 500-800 words. Posts of longer length may be considered when the topic merits additional length. Longer topics may be better broken into two or three part series.

Other content guidelines:

Posts must be factually accurate and provide sources for facts referenced in the post. The source should be cited using the APA citation style.

Posts may express an opinion but must identify it as an opinion, not fact.

Posts should be written for an audience that is not necessarily familiar with lactation and infant/maternal health terminology and should be readable by consumers as well as professionals.

All posts should be grammatically sound and should follow the Associated Press Stylebook.

Submission requirements:

Every post must include:

1. Proposed title
2. Headshot of the author(s)
3. Author’s name, title, and credentials
4. Brief bio (2-3 sentences at most)
5. Link to website or email for the author
6. Image for the post (see the images section)

Images:

Each post needs to be submitted with at least one image.

Appropriate images must be:

1. Copyright free or with explicit permission from the image owner.
2. Include photo credits where appropriate.
3. At least 200 px x 200 px

Review Process

All posts are subject to edits for grammar, style, readability, and appropriate content. All posts will be reviewed by the editor of the blog and at least one member of the ILCA communications team. ILCA reserves the right to make edits for grammar, clarity, and consistency with the ILCA style guide and journalistic standards. All authors will receive a draft of the post before publication for review. Not all posts received will be approved for publication. If you are unsure of a blog topic, we encourage you to write a brief “pitch” of your proposed piece and submit it to the editor for review. Pitches can currently be submitted to media@ilca.org.

updated – 15 October 15