This document is designed to serve as a high level creative brief for freelance writers and guest contributors to Cruise West Coast. While we have tried to express the essence of the site in the story ideas and concepts below, this is a guideline and we are open to ideas that fit the general tone and objective of the site even if it isn't explicitly outlined below.
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(form coming soon)
Article Index
I (James Hills) have been passionate about the social nature of cruising and the culture around cruising that makes it a truly unique vacation option compared to simply booking a hotel room and flying to some far off destination. Cruisers tend to be in groups, look forward to meeting new people on board, and inviting their friends to join them on their next voyage. With the exception of "roll call" groups, the industry lacks an online community where experienced cruisers can engage with each other, plan trips, share ideas, and inspire each other as well as share their expertise with people who are new to the cruising lifestyle.
In 2019, Heather and I created Cruise West Coast as a partnership that blended our passion for crusing as well as our talents related to travel writing. The site quickly became a valuable source of leads that have helped support her business as a travel advisor.
While this is a critical component that funds the site, it is not the only consideration. Content does not have to be focused on driving leads (but where it makes editorial sense, a nod to "ask your travel advisor" should be considered). There will be links on the site, in a tab towards the top of the article and at the footer so you should not make the article promotional. Interested parties will find a way to contact us if they are interested in booking a cruise. However, we look forward to sharing cruise reviews and editorial content with her client base and inspiring them to think about opportunities to book cruises.
Editorial integrity and helping to educate, inform, and entertain people from our target audience is paramount!
Let's take a deeper look at our Target Audience and Editorial Focus Areas ...
Target Audience:
Cruise West Coast (referred to in shorthand as CWC) targets a broad audience of people who live along the West Coast of the United States. This specifically includes the metro areas of San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, San Franciso Bay Area, Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, Boise, Reno, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, and Denver. The unifying attributes that we try to capture with our content include:
- Interest in cruising
- Driveable / short hop airline flights to embarkation ports
- Above average HHI
- An interest in Responsible Tourism topics such as sustainability, technology, cultural exploration, adventure seeking, passion for nature, and a general understanding that while cruising is a vacation, we need to do what we can to help preserve the destinations that we pay incredible amounts of money to visit. This can manifest itself in specific pieces about what a cruise line or destination is doing but it should also be a common thread that we weave throughout all of our editorial content. Again, this does not mean we have to preach or condem, rather it is our opportunity to elevate and promote cruise lines like Virgin Voyages and Holland America Line that are doing excellent work.
- Along the lines of Responsible Tourism, we also embrace a passion for diversity and target an audience that similarly loves to share a vacation experience with people who have a diverse perspective on life. We hope to manifest this with a balance of including topics related to LGBT, Black, Hispanic, Mexican, and Indigenous-heritage topics - but we aspire to do so in an inclusive way that avoids politics and pandering.
Editorial Focus Areas:
Within this pool of potential cruisers, we like to focus on the following niches:
New Cruiser Tips
Trying to attract new cruisers who might share the attributes above but never considered taking a cruise for whatever reason.
Group Cruisers
trying to attract people who are considering organizing a group cruise (for our purposes, we're including groups as everything from a multi-family cruise to affinity groups)
Cruise News and Current Events
I've placed this as a tertiary focus area only because most of the cruise news will be taken care of by reporting on press releases. However, if you have a unique angle idea on a current event or cruise news, then we are open to unique content.
Article Ideas:
The following are some article idea concepts that work well for CWC ...
Roundups
Roundups such as "Best Pizza At Sea", "Cocktails You Must As Your Cruise Bartender For", "Things To Do As A Family" etc. are all good. These can be general cruise vacation ideas but MUST have some angle connecting it to west coast cruise destinations.
Cruise Reviews and Previews
Reviews of complete ship/cruise experiences as well as specific posts focusing on an aspect of a cruise ship are possibilities here. For example, you might do an article overview of your experience on Holland America Line Zuiderdam To Alaska ... but we're also looking for excursion reviews, restaurant reviews etc. To clarify, we are not "critics" but we look forward to you sharing your experience. However, please avoid assigning a rating or being overly critical. Instead, look for the good stuff but do feel free to include things you didn't care for as well.
Guides
This is a wide section that would include port guides as well as help for cruisers who might have specific challenges such as cruising with an autistic child, a handicap, food allergy etc.
Port Guide Idea Examples
Things To Do Ketchican [With Children, As a Solo Cruiser, That Are Free, With Your Partner]
Editorials
If you have a particularly interesting perspective of expertise on a topic and want to share your thoughts, we're open to that as well. For instance, if you are passionate about supporting Indiginous cultures and local populations when you cruise, an editorial style post about why this is so important to you and how other people can incorporate this into their planing is great. This does not have to be specifically focused on west coast destinations but there should be a hook. For example, if there is a current discussion about a new port being built in the Caribbean but people are upset about it's impact on the environment ... that would make a great post as long as it can be connected to ports like La Paz and various towns in Alaska that faced similar situations.
Content Style Guidelines:
The following guidelines are meant to be just that, guidelines.
Personal Experience
We're paying freelancers to share their stories, experiences, and expertise. We are not looking for ghost writers. There may be exceptions such as "What To Do In" guide posts and roundup articles but even here, we look to have you share your personal expertise and include things that YOU have personally enjoyed even if it wouldn't nessisarily be on a big corporate site's "Top 10". Chances are if you enjoyed it ... someone else would too!
Article Length
We generally target a length of at least 800 words and up to 1,500. However, if it needs to be 2,000 then I don't want to cut good content out of the article. However, possibly this is a post that can be cut into two different pieces.
Photos and Images
We can and do use stock images, brand images, and AI generated images - however, it is essential that if you use images from a source other than yourself that you provide us with exact documentation so we can properly include the photo credit. If you are able to submit original photography, that is excellent and preferred. We do request a non-exclusive license that will allow us to use it on the CWC website, syndication to MSN or other online sources that link back to the original post, and social media sharing. Like with images from any other source, you will retain photo credit including in the article and the file name itself.
