Chalkbeat Sponsored Content
A premium opportunity to tell your organization’s story
Sponsored content article have the look and feel of a Chalkbeat article and allows you to tell your organization’s story in a long form, attractive format. Sponsored content is not an “ad” or a sales pitch — it’s an opportunity for storytelling to engage and inform Chalkbeat readers so they can connect with your brand. Check out this great video from The Branded Content Project that explains more.
What are the benefits?
Do you have resources to share with Chalkbeat readers? Maybe you can’t fit all that you want to say in a website banner ad. Sponsored content has many options, we can embed a video, include a link to download a white paper, design a call-to-action box, or add a sidebar. You can share the article in your network for added visibility.
What are the specifications?
We recommend having a look at some examples before getting started creating your assets. This will give you a sense of the complete package you’ll be putting together. There’s a lot we can do together!
There are three main elements to the sponsored content design: The article, the homepage referral, and the newsletter banner referrals.
The article itself
Chalkbeat’s sponsored content article layout.
Assets: • Article text, 300 to 600 words. We ask that the tone is informative and educational, as this is an opportunity for storytelling and is not suited for a sales pitch. We will edit to match our grammatical style and may request revisions if we feel the tone does not match Chalkbeat’s brand. • Suggested headline and sub-headline • A header image (min 1,000 px wide) • Up to two images for the article (min 1,000 px wide each) • Captions and photo credits for all photos • Any call out boxes, video embeds (YouTube URL), or other elements based on your package • The logo for the sticky bar at the top of the page, 200x33 px. This will appear on a white sticky bar so a white logo is not recommended. We ask that this only includes your organization’s name, no other products, promotions, etc. For example, the logo should state Smith School Products, not Great pencils by Smith School Products
The byline is “Our sponsor, Organization Name.” For example, “Our sponsor, Smith School Products.”
Homepage referral
The homepage referral for Hamilton Exhibits as seen in the river of Chalkbeat news stories.
Depending on your sponsorship level, your article will be promoted on one or all of our homepages in our “river” of news stories, as well as at the bottom of other various articles. The module that showcases your story includes an image (we use the best image from your article), your headline, and the text, “Sponsored by X,” where X is your logo.
Asset: • Your logo, 240x60 px. Transparent background is best. Logo should not be gray as it will appear on gray background.
Newsletter banner promotions
Depending on your sponsor level, we may place banners in various newsletters to promote your sponsored content.
Assets: • 300x250 banner, png or jpg • Banner drives to your sponsored content article on Chalkbeat (not your website). We provide the URL. • Call to action should drive to the sponsored content article, eg Learn more or Read the story.