Content Sharing Guidelines:

If you'd like to share content that you’ve found on the CFBN website, here are a few guidelines which cover how we’d like you to share our content: 

• Feel free to share links to any of our content. If you’re sharing on social media you’ll catch our eye if you mention @chgofood on Twitter. We can also be found on LinkedIn and Facebook. 
• Feel free to republish any images or videos created by Business West. But please respect our attribution policy. 
• Feel free to reference or quote up to 50 words of any of our content. But please respect our attribution policy. 

Content attribution policy 

• Attribute Chicagoland Food & Beverage Network as the source. 
• Link to the original Chicagoland Food & Beverage Network source you're referencing. 
• For references to a CFBN blog article, link to the URL of the specific blog article you're referencing.

Content Submission Guidelines (News Blog, Newsletter, Social Media):

Please read and adhere to our guidelines on submitting an article, opinion piece, or related news items to ensure your post is successfully approved and published.

The purpose of the News blog is to enable the sharing of valuable expertise and knowledge with a large business community across the region through original, high quality content that aims to educate, inspire and inform.  Successful submissions are detailed and valuable posts that help our visitors learn something new about business, while also helping contributors to raise their profile. 

All submissions will be approved and/or edited by the CFBN team before going live.

Submissions must: 

• Be well-written, from 400 to 2000+ words 
• Must be relevant to the food and beverage industry in Chicagoland
• Be detailed content that provide actionable advice 
• Include links to statistical resources referred to and any other source referenced in the content 
• Reference links in a post are non-promotional, and relevant to the post 
• Include 1 or 2 sentence ‘About the author’ bio with a headshot (please update your 'profile' in your online account) 
• Consider your topic and in particular your title - ensure your article is relevant and of value to our business audience and it includes relevant SEO keywords and phrases so your article is optimized for search (ie can be found through search engines)

What we won't approve

• Blogs considered as a link-building scheme 
  
• Thin or irrelevant content providing little value to a food and beverage professional reader
• Content which is all about advertising your business services (Our blog is not a sales channel, and overtly sales focused and advertorial style content will not be accepted) 
• Plagiarized, misleading or inaccurate content 
• Defamatory, abusive, offensive or excessively negative content 

Featured images

• Images should best represent your blog and business, and should be legally owned or licensed for your use
• File size should not exceed 1GB
  
• Image format should be either jpeg or png

Featured images: what we won’t approve

• Images downloaded from the internet – these belong to someone else and using them without permission could result in legal action
• Images which are not representative of blog content or business
  
• Images that are not of good quality
• Image is too small or too large
• Images that may cause offense

CFBN reserves the right to reject contributions at our discretion. Editors reserve the right to edit, adapt, update, and republish contributions at their discretion. Calls-to-action to CFBN content may be added to published submissions. Contributed posts may be removed from the blog at Editors discretion. 

Content ownership

• By contributing content to our website you are granting us a license to this content. CFBN retains the right to decline or take a post down; and may need to edit a post where appropriate. 

About the editing process 

• All submissions will be reviewed but may not be published subject to above guidelines. Our blog is not a sales channel, therefore sales focused and advertorial style content will not be accepted. 
• We retain the right to decline or take a post down, edit a post where appropriate and include links to our own services or content when relevant. 

How to submit a post

• If you would like to submit a post, article, opinion piece, or relevant industry news item for publication on the News  blog, inclusion in the newsletter "Industry News" section, or submission for social content - please submit your item via email, and note where you are interested in having it published.