Publish your post on the Windy.app blog — attract a new audience to your outdoor project

Windy.app is excited to announce that we are looking for experts in the outdoor community and inviting you to share your expertise in the app's media resources. Below you will get answers to the most important questions about how best to do it.

Why publish on the Windy.app blog?

Windy.app is a great information resource about wind and water sports where you can share your story and expertise and help other people in their outdoor activities and travels. In this way, you can also find a new audience that is related to you and tell it about your creative and life project, business of any size, or any good initiative in the outdoor industry.

More than 100,000 people from all over the world visit our website and blog every day and find it online. We also have a popular newsletter about meteorology in textbook format and social media with more than 50,000 subscribers in total. We will share your publication on all our main media channels.

The post will of course include your author's profile and provide links to your own website, blog, social media, newsletter, and so on.

Who can post on the blog?

Anyone from any city or country in the world, if you consider yourself an expert in any sport, outdoor activties, meteorology and different weather phenomena, and other related areas. You are also invited to become a сontributor if you are a lifeguard, a coach, a researcher, a scientist, or other professional.

In what language should I write?

For now, it should be in English. Perhaps later we will add the option to publish posts in other languages.

Jakob Owens / Unsplash

What can I publish on the Windy.app blog?

Two things are important here: theme and genre/format. Broadly speaking, you can publish a guest post on any topic and in any format. But here are a few simple guidelines:

First, to navigate the topic, look at what we already have blog posts about and write about something similar, but better yet, what you're missing from the blog. For example, we don't have any fishing posts yet and we really need fishing experts. In other words, a new and interesting blog topic is a great chance to get published.
Another general rule: we write more about summer sports in summer, skiing in winter, and so on — it's very obvious, right. When choosing a topic, follow the simple logic of what you yourself would like to read about, for example, this December. But nevertheless the best topic is the one that people are interested in all year long.
So it's also very helpful to check how popular your topic or how many people are looking for similar information on Google Search or Google Trends. Use other tools if you are familiar with them. A good topic is a good match between what you are interested in and the popularity of that query on the Internet. Then your article hits the search engine and you'll get readers not only from Windy.app's blog but also from the organic rearch.

Second, choose a publication format. We have six basic formats:

Guide

Collect all important information about some place, a question, or anything. If you write about places, answer five basic sub-questions in your guide: what is this place and why go there, what sport(s) to do there, when it's best to go, how to get there, and where to live.

The beginner's guide to types and purposes of yachting boats

The complete guide to windsports and the wind speed required to practice them

Everything you want to know about surfing Olympics debut in Japan, 2021

How-to

Give simple practical instruction "how to do something", "where to find it", and so on. Here it is also important to understand the topic before writing about it, specify what is the benefits for a reader, and explain as clearly as possible in steps how to actually do this thing.

How to choose the right wetsuit

How to read Wind Chill Chart to stay comfortable outdoors

How to read a live weather radar map

List

Make a selection of spots with a brief description and some recommendations containing useful practical information. Here you have to combine one sport and one place: city, country, part of the world, the whole world. You can also choose some season. Another topic of the list could be an event or a series of events. We only accept posts about annual events, i.e., those that take place more than once.

The list of kitesurfing spots where you can kite all year round

The list of great all-inclusive dive resorts all over the world

The list of most important surf events during the year in 2019

Advice and tips

Share your experience on any one or a group of related topics in the format of specific advice or small tips. In this format, as in all others, it is also important to make a brief introduction and conclusion. The advice differs from the "how-to" instructions in the more general description of the topic. Nevertheless it should contain a lot of detail, too. Advice motivates to start doing some sport or to start traveling.

Tips for surfers from Russian top sportsman Seva Shulgin

How to enjoy hiking in the rain

How to avoid seasickness during a sail trip

Your personal story

Tell about your unique, interesting, and useful experience in a format of a personal life story. For example, it could be an amazing story of your kite season, mountain climbing to the highest peak in your region or sailing around the world, etc. Answer the three main questions: why it happened, how it happened, what you have learned from this story about yourself, your favorite sport and the world in general, and so on.

Meet Alkin, Windy.app ambassador in Istanbul, Turkey

Meet Martin Manrique from Bahamas, the founder of "Make them sailors" project

Meet Taiwanese yacht instructor Rekzen and his safety tips

Interview

Find another interesting person and ask him/her questions. Please ask them only interesting personal questions, not the usual "where it all started" — it is the worst question. A good question begins with "why" or "how". The number of questions is from 5 to 20. A person must also answer them fully enough: not too short, but not too long. A very important thing in an interview is rhythm.

Interview with American professional skier Noah Wallace

Interview with German kitesurfer Linus Erdmann

Interview with Russian snowboarder Sergey Turikov

Other formats and themes

Create and write in your own format other than the ones you see above or in a mix of formats. We welcome your creativity very much.

Subscribe to Windy.app Meteorological Textbook

How Windy.app helps its users

Find out which weather models Windy.app users choose the most

Brad Neathery / Unsplash

How big should the post be?

The size of the text is not the most important thing but we usually publish posts between 7,000 and 8,000 characters or 1,500 and 2,000 words. There is no further size limit. To find out the number, go to Tools — Word Count in Google Docs. We also work in this program so use it for writing a post, then send a link to the doc and share the editing rights to it.

How do I actually publish a guest blog post?

Important: Before writing a blog post, suggest it to editor, Ivan, to coordinate the publication — we don't usually accept pre-made posts. However, if you already have a lot of experience in writing with modern formats and are confident in the high quality of your story, you can contact us also.

Send it to [email protected] with "Guest post: subject, author" in the subject line. In your letter, please include the following information:

First and last name
Where are you from
What do you do for work or hobbies
What are your sport(s)
Why you are an expert in a certain area or subject (briefly describe your experience and the main accomplishments)
The subject of the article again
Structure of the article: use from 3 to 5–7 subsections
A link to your media

We will only reply to those whose experience and topics seem interesting and discuss the publication in more detail. We don't have a big editorial board so it's not very fast, but we will try to publish your post within 2–3 weeks of the first letter you write.

Also, before writing to Windy.app check the list of things we don't publish:

1. Reprint posts from other blogs, which means we only publish unique texts. But if you have a very interesting post, you can still offer it for reprinting.

2. Promotional guest posts from people and brands written in 10 minutes in popular formats with numbers: "10 reasons to go to Bali" and the like or very simple and obvious advice like "Go outdoors, be happy". If you represent a closely related company, let's come up with something more interesting together. Contact the editor the same way to suggest a post.

3. Posts just about travel and tourism. Windy.app is an app with the weather forecast for wind and water sports and outdoor activities.

Can I post photos, videos, or audio?

Yes, for sure. We are also very happy with these formats, but they have to be accompanied by text in which you tell about the idea of the photo reportage, video, or audio. The minimum length is 500 to 1,000 words.

We look forward to meeting and cooperating with you!

Text: Ivan Kuznetsov, an outdoor journalist, editor and writer from the Dolomites, Italy, and Karelia, Finland, with 10 years of professional experience. His favorite sports are hiking, cycling and sauna. Read his other articles

Cover photo: Chris Fuller / Unsplash