Who reads our blogs?
ICTD reaches a varied audience ranging from tax officials to media outlets and the general public. While they are all interested in tax, their level of expertise and knowledge differs. Our audience includes:
- Tax administrations
- Ministries of Finance
- Research institutions/think tanks
- Civil Society Organisations
- International organisations
- Bilateral aid donors
- Regional organisations
- Parliamentarians
- Journalists/the media
- General audience
Things to consider before putting pen to paper
- Think about why your blog idea is interesting and relevant: why is now a good time to be writing?
- Consider offering a different or new perspective/approach. People’s online attention span can be fickle and fragmented. Consider why people might read your piece over someone else’s.
- Think about why you are well placed to write this piece – what is the value of your perspective (the research you’ve done, personal experience, country expertise)?
Writing and formatting
These recommendations take into consideration best practices for SEO optimisation and AI optimisation.
Tone and credibility
As a global policy research network, our work strives to remain apolitical and rooted in evidence-based arguments. We will NOT publish blogs that are:
- Campaign or advocacy pieces
- Biased and opinion pieces with no evidence to back up ideas
- Personal and libellous – targeting individuals and attacking institutions (and not backed with evidence)
Language
Blogs are by nature informal and conversational, free from academic strictures such as the need for in-text referencing. It is common for bloggers to write in the first person (using “I”) – this personalisation helps readers feel like they are getting to know you as a person and is very much part of the appeal of following blogs (as opposed to articles and papers).
Try to use short and simple sentences and keep jargon to a necessary minimum. Do not assume your reader knows about your research or subject matter. Use clear, simple, and concise language to explain your points.
Length
We recommend a word count between 800-1,500 words. However, the ultimate focus should remain on keeping your audience engaged rather than on hitting that word count.
Title
A good and catchy title is important for sparking readers’ interest in your blog. However, we are not encouraging clickbait.
Recommended title structures include:
Google only shows the first 70 characters (including spaces) before cutting the title off, so aim for it to be shorter but include relevant key words.
Paragraphs
The focus here is to enhance readability:
- Information structure: If you are unsure how to format the content within your blog, you can follow the example of the journalistic ‘inverted pyramid’ which includes the most important information at the beginning of the blog, with details and less important information following afterward.
- Front-load: People read on screens in an F-pattern so always make sure that first few words of each paragraph, subheads and bulleted lists are interesting and not repetitive.
- Scannability: Break up long paragraphs and keep sentences short. Consider using bullet points or a numbered list if there is a sequence. The extra white space that this creates helps readability, and bullet points are easy for the reader to take in at a glance.
- Call to action: Be clear about what you want readers to do after reading your blog.
Subheadings
Subheads are important for scannability and signposting readers. We recommend subheads for each new section or idea in the blog.
Use descriptive headings that summarise the key idea of your paragraph and include relevant key words.
Links and citations
Please back up key information, statistics, references to studies and reports with hyperlinks to credible news sources, other ICTD blogs and papers, relevant studies, and journal articles. Please note that we cannot include footnote citations in the blog or named references.
AI policy
ICTD follows the IDS Opinions guidelines on the usage of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in blog drafting.
The use of AI to come up with the idea for a blog or to write the blog in full is not permitted. Using AI to make minor edits is permitted, as long as the final draft is clearly your original content and tone of voice.
ICTD team reserve the right to return a blog submission to the author with suggestions for substantial edits if they suspect that it has been wholly written by generative AI.
Other AI tools, for example for grammar and spelling checks, like Grammarly, are fine to use.
For authors who prefer to write in their own language, AI can be used to translate the draft into English, as long as the original draft was written by the author (and not generative AI).
In cases where there is a need to publish a blog in another language (in addition to an English version) AI tools for language translation should be used with caution and always checked and approved by someone who is fluent in the language before publication.
Other elements of a blog:
Photos
Our blogs should include one main picture related to the subject area. Authors are encouraged to send this, however, the ICTD Communications team can also be asked to search for one.
If you are sending us a picture, please ensure that you hold the appropriate copyright for the image or it holds a “CC-By” / creative commons license. If you are using Google image search, you can filter by CC licenses only to help with this. There are also a number of websites sharing free images (e.g. Freepik, Flickr, Rawpixel). Please also send us a link to the original image if you got it off the internet.
You can also embed other images (e.g. simple graphs, infographics, illustrations) throughout the body of text to help break it up.
Photo consent guidelines:
- We will never deliberately manipulate original content to distort its accuracy such as by cropping, changing colour hues or adding material that was not originally there. Additions will be used to add explanation and context to depict reality.
- When we use imagery from a stock library that features an individual in close up, we will ensure the photographer has followed ethical guidelines and that the correct captions are used.
- We will aim to only use content where people are individually recognisable where we have their full, free and informed consent.
- We will be sensitive to how we portray and represent contributors, societies and environments with dignity in our content.
- Where we cannot secure informed consent from everyone recognisable in a group photo or video, then we will aim to produce the content as much as possible so as to avoid revealing individual identities. For example, when taking a photo of a market where groups of people are gathered around stalls, the producer should try as far as possible to avoid taking an image in which anyone is looking directly at their camera.
- We will seek to avoid stereotypes in how we tell stories within the content we create (e.g. ‘Western aid worker tends helpless victim’).
Author biographies
Our blog posts also feature a short author biography with a photo and external links to your pages.
Please send us a 50-100-word description about yourself and a photo. Let us know if you have a LinkedIn, Bluesky, and/or Google Scholar account, or a website that you would like us to link to as well.
Production, Publishing and Promotions
Editing and publishing
It should be noted that there is no guarantee your blog will be published. ICTD retains discretion over determining whether your blog post will be published onto our website.
Draft blogs are first reviewed but one of our researchers to assess the credibility of the arguments and claims make.
Our Communications team then takes the lead to suggest edits and optimum reformatting for your piece. This could include both substantive suggestions such as changes to blog content and structure, as well as corrections to grammar and spelling. All of our edits aim to increase the likelihood of your blog being read and shared.
We will email you our feedback and ask for your approval before publishing the final version to our website.
Promotion
All our blogs are promoted via our social media channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Bluesky) and our monthly newsletter.
We encourage you to share blog posts through your own networks – via email, social media (mention @ICTDTax) and other channels, and to monitor online comments and engage appropriately.
