Submission Guidelines for The MOPS Blog and Additional MOPS Social Media Platforms

By submitting to us, you are giving us permission to edit your submission to meet the tone and needs of The MOPS Blog and/or our other social media platforms. By this, we mean we may change things based on length, to be grammatically consistent, follow APA style or change the language to vocabulary we use regularly.

Your submission indicates that you are giving us permission to post your content on our blog and/or our other social media platforms without compensation, but we will include a byline with up to three hyperlinks.

We do not require exclusivity. We just ask that if you do post your submitted content that you wait until the day we post and include the following copy: “Originally posted on The MOPS Blog and include the permalink.

Most importantly, we want you to know we value you, your story, your voice. It’s an honor for us to be able to be a collection of inspiring mamas, and we’re truly honored that you want to add your voice!

Who Are We?

The MOPS Blog and our social media platforms embody a movement of women raising the world together. We celebrate the uniqueness of every woman’s journey.

In every way we connect our community—through our quarterly digital or print offerings, blog and social media outlets—we seek to inspire each mom as a whole woman knowing she is a past, present and future, a set of hopes and fears uniquely hers, a sister, daughter and friend, as well as a nurturer of little people.

We strive to make sure every mom knows she’s welcome here, knowing the thing connecting us is the desire to be the best moms possible.

As the group of women collectively raising the next generation of the world, we want to be a part of honest conversation, a chorus of voices seeking each other as we walk boldly toward hard questions, finding restoration and seeking hope.

The MOPS Blog lives under the wings of MOPS International, an organization creating communities of moms because moms are world influencers.

Our Voice

Being “relevant” is not the aim, however it is a byproduct of knowing our audience well enough to speak their language and draw them in. We use the voice of a kindred spirit or girlfriend—conversational, inclusive, light-hearted, transparent, honest, encouraging and welcoming.

Biblical principles are implied but not explicit, and often more topical than philosophical in nature. The Gospel is present, but church jargon is not.

We aim to provide an entry point for any and all moms to join the MOPS community. This allows moms to move at their own pace in their faith journey.

 

What qualities guide our material?

Honesty

In everything we publish, we seek to inspire moms. We want to be willing to say, “This is the way things really are,” “These are my honest questions,” “Here are the things in my life that seem bigger than me,” knowing it is in the vulnerable conversations that we can make the most progress toward restoring the future for the next generation.

Welcoming

We are a community of moms from every corner of the country, and more than sixty eight countries. Our community spans every socioeconomic, marital status, origin of mothering, race, religious, denominational, age and lifestyle spectrum because we believe we mother best when we mother together. 

Every woman’s story is valuable, and we seek to make The MOPS Blog a safe place by acknowledging that one’s choice doesn’t change the value or validity of another.

Family Provides Roots

Every act of mothering is significant because family is where children build the foundation for their futures. In every way possible we seek to provide practical resources for moms, and a safe place to fail because we know from experience motherhood includes both triumphs and failures, and both are required for moms to expand to their potential. 

We believe all of it is worth it because each child is a gift. 

There Is a Woman Inside the Mother

Before motherhood, each woman was uniquely created with a past, present and future story, passions and gifts given to her to give the world, and a personality all her own. When she became a mother, this added to the shape of her story, coloring it with new extensions of herself. In everything we write, we aim to nurture the woman who still exists inside the mother.

There Is Hope in the Story

Every sojourn involves struggle, setback and tragedy because this is the plight of life on earth. We believe hope and redemption exist in the midst of every epic, and we seek to find them at every opportunity.

 

Types of published material

Calls for Submissions

We will post calls for submissions on our blog in the “Spotlight” section. We will do a call for submissions when something specific is needed, but we always welcome submission based on the following “types of material needed” below.

 

Regular Types of Material Needed for The MOPS Blog:

  • Recipes (with step-by-step photos)
  • Practical home ideas
  • DIY (with photos)
  • Play ideas
  • Videos (no more than 30 sec.) – musings, nuggets of truth
  • Artwork, photos (along with a caption or short explanation)
  • Highs and lows of motherhood
  • Original pieces or previously published/posted articles that you want to share
  • And, of course, stories about parenting, mothering and woman-related issues.
  • We’re always up for a good tear-jerker or something to get us laughing.

What Are We Not Publishing?

We do not publish fiction, individual reviews on divisive issues (including doctrinal or political issues), Bible studies, book or product reviews.

Readability and SEO Guidelines for blog articles

Please keep these guidelines in mind as you write your article.

  1. Titles need to be between 30 to 36 characters.  
  2. Article length – Minimum of 300 words.
  3. Sentence length should be less than 20 words. 
  4. Transition words should be included in the article and no more than 2 run-on sentences should exist. 
  5. If it’s applicable, have subheadings within the body of your article every 300-500 words. 
  6. Keyphrase: It is recommended to have the keyphrase be found at a minimum of 2 times throughout your article. The more the keyphrase shows up the better SEO.
    The article title should include a keyphrase and the keyphrase should appear in the first paragraph of the blog post. For best results, place the key phrase at the beginning of the first paragraph in your article.
    Example: Title: 10 Ways to Help a New Mom Feel Less Lonely 
    First paragraph: The pregnancy announcement. The gender reveal. The baby shower. These are amazing things we do to celebrate and prepare for the arrival of a new baby. Surrounded by family and friends, expectant moms open gifts and eat cake and revel in all the attention and love. But then the baby comes, and new moms can often find themselves feeling lonely and isolated. Family and friends want to help, but they don’t want to impose. Moms want to know they haven’t been forgotten. They don’t know how to vocalize that. We hope these ideas will help a new mom feel less lonely.
  7. Include outbound links (author links). 

How to submit

To add your voice to the conversation, send your submission to content@MOPS.org. (Previously published materials may be used for The MOPS Blog.)

Submission Process

All articles, images and videos are received on speculation. Regretfully, we are unable to respond to all submissions when they are received. However, if your article, image or video is selected for publishing, we will email you a submission agreement and the date we will be publishing.

Please submit a complete article in an attached Word document or in the body of the email. Please include an article title, author’s name, email address, social handle to be used if article is published, MOPS group affiliation if pertinent, and a two sentence bio including up to three links.

Thank you for offering your words and your work to our community!