We strive to establish a smooth, self-service contribution process for Community members to submit best practices, blogs, and other published content to the Anaplan Community. The process allows members to draft and submit content to the Community team for review. The team will either accept, decline, edit, and/or return content to the original contributor. Once live, authors will receive recognition for the post, have the post promoted, and will be subscribed to the post for future updates and discussions.
With every piece of content we publish, we aim to:
To achieve these goals, we follow the five C's of content writing:
Clear: We write in a way that is easy to understand, logically moving from one idea to the next.
Concise: We write efficiently, cutting unnecessary words, eliminating redundancies and staying on point.
Compelling: We strive to write content that truly serves and engages our readers.
Complete: We arrange our ideas thoughtfully, fact-check our information and maintain grammatical consistency.
Considerate: We adjust our tone for our audience, understanding that they are intelligent but have varying levels of Connected Planning experience.
The Anaplan Community covers a wide range of topics, including planning strategy, Connected Planning thought leadership, Anaplan usage tips and tricks, model building thought leadership, model building usage, and Connected Planning use cases. We publish articles of differing lengths, infographics, and videos, and are always open to other types of media that would help to share or illustrate an idea.
Interested in contributing an article or blog post to the Anaplan Community? Here are four qualities we look for when evaluating prospective topics and articles:
1. Expertise: The topic needs to be specific and have a clear message.
2. Evidence: The topic needs to be supported by evidence, such as references to research or a presentation of relevant examples or data.
3. Originality: We want our contributors to bring their unique personal perspective.
4. Usefulness: Readers come to Community to learn about Connected Planning, strengthen their model building skills, and learn tactics to improve their models. With every article or blog post, we want to ensure readers will be able to apply the information to a real-life situation.
When we write for the Anaplan Community, we consider our voice and tone. Our voice is the way we act and our tone is the way we express our thoughts. While our voice is generally consistent and slow to change, our tone will change based on context.
Voice
When we write for Anaplan’s Community, we strive to keep a consistent voice. We think of our voice as representing our company’s character. When we create content, we are:
Tone
The overall tone of the Anaplan Community is informal. This means our writing is conversational, but still conveys our expertise. We use an active voice, write in the first person, and avoid slang and jargon. Additionally, we consider our audience. Are we writing for experienced Anaplanners or someone new to Connected Planning? Our tone represents our attitude about what we are writing about, allowing readers to get a better sense of the writer’s personal experience.
We write the way we build models and dashboards: with a customer-first perspective. We are compassionate, inclusive, and respectful. We are aware of the impact our writing has on our readers and strive to represent the Anaplan Community as a productive and safe place.
When we write, we follow these people-first guidelines:
Age
We do not reference a person’s age unless it’s relevant to the topic. If it's relevant, we include the person’s specific age, offset by commas. Example: Nancy, 14, already graduated from college. We do not use age-related descriptors such as "young" or "elderly."
Disability
We avoid disability-related idioms like “falling on deaf ears.” We don’t use the words “suffer,” “victim,” or “handicapped.” “Handicapped parking” is acceptable.
Gender and Sexuality
Words to Avoid
Anaplan is an international company, so we are keenly aware of how different cultures define common words. We avoid words with negative connotations, slurs, and words used to identify groups of people based on race, religion, culture, etc. When in doubt, we avoid the word or phrase and select a more appropriate way to communicate our message as we would in a professional business setting.
Sticking to a consistent set of grammatical guidelines helps the Anaplan Community provide the most accurate and useful content for our readers. We use the fundamentals of AP Style, with some exceptions, for consistency on grammar, spelling, punctuation, language, and usage. (Limited free content can be found here.)
Additional Style References
Exceptions to AP Style
We diverge from AP Style in the following ways:
Grammar Guidelines
Abbreviations and Acronyms: We spell out the first mention of an abbreviation or acronym if there is a chance our readers won’t recognize the term, using the short version for all following references. If the abbreviation isn’t related to the full version, specify in parentheses. If the abbreviation or acronym is well known, like HTML, feel free to use it without spelling it out.
Absolutes and Superlatives: Avoid using adjectives we can't prove, such as best, only, fastest, unique, impossible, and always.
Active Voice: We write in active voice wherever possible. In active voice, the subject acts. In passive voice, the subject has the action done to them. Look for words like "was" and "by" as signs of passive voice.
American English: We use American English spelling, grammar, and punctuation rules in all English-language materials unless a piece is written by an EMEA/APAC resident for an all-EMEA/APAC audience. In that case, UK English rules apply; see the UK English section below.
UK English
When a piece is written in English by an EMEA/APAC resident for an EMEA/APAC audience, UK English spelling, grammar, and punctuation can apply. Here are some specifics:
Bold and Italics
Use italics for:
Use bold type for:
Calls to Action: Within every article or blog post, we like to inspire reader participation. This can be anything from a simple question you’d like them to answer in the comments, to a few steps they can take to apply the information shared in your post.
Contractions: Contractions support our conversational tone, so we think they're great, and we use them as we see fit.
Capitalization: Capitalize sparingly. When in doubt, do not capitalize.
Lists
Punctuation
Numbers
Use numerals in the following situations:
Use ordinals for street names (42nd Street), but do not use superscripts for ordinals. Example: 20th, not 20th
Use a hyphen when writing out a number that includes two words. Example: Seventy-one.
Use a comma between every three digits of long numbers, counting from the right, and a period for the decimal point. This rule does not apply to years.
Dates and Times
Decimals and Fractions
Anaplan Specific
The company is Anaplan, not Anaplan Inc.
The technology is the Anaplan platform or Anaplan's platform. Do not capitalize the word platform.
When referring to Anaplan leaders, we use their appropriate titles:
Name | Position |
Frank Calderoni | President and CEO |
Michael Gould | Founder |
Marilyn Miller | Chief People Officer |
Simon Tucker | Chief Planning Officer |
Christophe Bodin | Chief Customer Officer |
Ana Pinczuk | Chief Transformational Officer |
David Morton | Chief Financial Officer |
YY Lee | Chief Strategy Officer |
Sampath Gomatam | Vice President, Product Management |
Jack Whyte | Global Vice President of Engineering |
SEO Considerations
We are proud of what we write. That's why we want our readers to be able to easily find it within our Community and on the internet. This is where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. In basic terms, search engines crawl what we write to figure out what the content is all about.
SEO has changed (and will continue to change). Search algorithms now focus on the experience of the reader instead of how many times a keyword comes up in a piece of content. There are still key actions we can take to help articles rank higher in the search engine results and improve the reader experience:
We follow these basic SEO guidelines:
Attaching Files: Use the included attachment function to include files with an article. Do not use links to external sites like Box. Authors are responsible for maintaining their attachments.
Titles: Article titles need to be less than 60 characters and written in title case. Exclude any punctuation from the title unless it is a question.
Headings: Headings and subheadings organize content for readers.
Hyperlinks: Provide a hyperlink using article or website titles when referencing them in your article (e.g. PLANS - This Is How We Model).
Images: Images should be used to add helpful, interesting content to written pieces. Provide captions for images used in blogs, white papers, and data sheets—but not for banners. Captions should encourage the reader to look at the image and help the reader see what's important. Example: The three tabs in the user interface—dogs, cats, and mice—each provide information tailored to a specific audience.
How to Link Related Articles: Use a line break (<hr />) before and after a "Read More" section. Use the text "More from X:" or "More about X:" to label the section, and then list 3 to 4 bullet points with links. Make sure the link opens into a new page. Example:
More about Strategic Planning
Technical Considerations
A variety of people contribute Community blog posts—not just those on the Community team or at Anaplan. We strive to have a robust pool of experts. The person most familiar with the subject is in the best position to convey it, and the writers on the Community team can help with brainstorming and editing as needed.
Types of Blog Content
We publish blog posts that educate on Connected Planning and help Community members level up their Anaplan and Connected Planning skills. We aim to showcase to the broader planning community that there is a new way (and a new space) to practice planning.
We update the Community blog frequently. We generally publish:
The majority of the Community's platform-focused content appears in our Best Practices Knowledge Base. Please note, all Anaplan technical documentation lives in Anapedia and is created by Anaplan's technical content team.
Types of Platform Content
Platform content articles vary in the target audience, goal, and tone. Different types of Anaplan Community platform content serve different purposes and readers.
Have questions? Contact community@anaplan.com with any questions.
Groups Program Manager for Anaplan