AWS Partner? Want to get your company featured on one of AWS’s most visible platforms—but not sure how to get past the review wall? The Amazon Partner Network (APN) Blog is one of the most widely read publications produced by AWS, bringing the stories of Partner businesses to a global audience of cloud professionals and decision-makers.
But to be featured on the blog, you need to know what AWS is looking for—and how to package your story for maximum impact.
At IOD, we’ve helped our many Amazon Partner Network clients successfully publish on the APN Blog.
In this post, we break down:
- What kind of content AWS accepts for the APN Blog
- Formatting and narrative guidelines to follow
- How to avoid common mistakes and costly rewrites
- How to align your messaging with AWS’s expectations while still maintaining your brand voice
By the end, you’ll have a clear roadmap for writing APN Blog content that performs, helping you gain visibility, build credibility, and strengthen your AWS partnership.
What Is the Amazon Partner Network (APN)?
The APN is a worldwide network of companies that partner alongside AWS to develop, strengthen, and promote their own technologies and services. This partnership benefits both AWS and the partner company. AWS gets a dedicated client, and the Partner receives support and access to exclusive resources from the world’s leading cloud service provider.
There are tiered AWS Partner levels with varying benefits and privileges. One of those benefits is being able to publish content via the APN Blog.
Those companies signed up for either the AWS Advanced Tier or the Premier Tier are able to publish to the APN Blog.
How Does the Amazon Partner Network Blog Benefit AWS and Partners?
Amazon allows its partners to publish to its content channels as part of AWS’s co-sell strategy: APN Blog posts are meant to show how AWS enables the Partner technology to benefit its clients. By providing access to resources like the APN Blog, the strategy is meant to highlight the synergy between AWS and the Partner’s technology in a way that benefits everyone involved. It’s a win-win.
What Amazon Partner Network Companies Need to Know About the APN Blog
So what is AWS looking for in APN Blog posts and what do you need to keep in mind?
- The APN Blog is a promotional tool, but you’re not there to promote: The APN Blog is a fantastic platform for marketing your company’s technology or service. But it’s not the place for promotional content. Your mission is mainly educational. How does your company and technology leverage AWS to help your business and your clients? Showcasing that is your goal.
- APN Blog posts are a genre: This is not the place for a rambling, opinionated, or off-the-cuff blog post. You’re presenting your technology or service in a structured article that uses clear, succinct language that shows results to back up what you’re saying. You’ll need to include a central problem that needs to be solved, how your solution addresses it, and the role AWS played in making that happen. That last part is non-negotiable: On the APN Blog, you’re not just promoting your solutions, you’re promoting AWS.
Meet AWS standards: Present your material professionally. This includes using proper grammar, ensuring technical accuracy, and adhering to the AWS style guidelines. Failing to do so can result in costly reworks and delays following AWS’s editorial review.
5 Challenges of Creating Amazon Partner Network (APN) Blog Content
1. Choosing the Right Topic for the APN Blog
The APN Blog editors aren’t looking for just any content. Some technical areas are higher priority than others. While these focus areas are subject to change, they’re directly influenced by the larger tech landscape and the product areas AWS is most interested in promoting at a given time.
Of course, blogs related to generative AI (including on new services such as Amazon Q and Amazon Nova) are in high demand on the APN Blog.
2. APN Blog Goalposts Can (and Do) Change
APN hasn’t always prioritized the same type of content. For example, in the process of producing a highly technical topic for a client to publish on the APN Blog, we later learned that the APN Blog had shifted priorities to focus on publishing higher-level thought leadership writing with a focus on business outcomes.
We continued our work with the post as planned and published it on the blog, but it was a little deflating to know it wasn’t exactly the material AWS preferred for the Blog. Had we known that sooner, we may have been able to make the appropriate changes.
The point is, you need to be able to pivot. You need the technical knowledge to explain how your technology works, but you also need to be able to communicate your message to an audience that isn’t made of experts. Are you ready to do both or to switch between the two?
3. APN Blog Success Depends on Engagement
As we’ve learned, APN Blog content page views serve as a kind of gatekeeping mechanism. Not all APN Blog content is automatically shared on AWS’s social media. Rather, your content needs to hit a certain threshold of views before they will do that.
This means you need to create engaging content that gets clicks. The quantity of posts your brand can publish on the APN Blog also depends on your past page views, so getting your page noticed is a must!
4. Lengthy APN Blog Review Timelines
Once you’ve submitted your blog post to AWS, the review process typically takes two to four weeks, but may extend six to eight weeks or longer. There can be multiple AWS stakeholders involved in the process of publishing to AWS channels. This may include:
- Partner marketing manager: Serves as main point of contact between AWS and the partner, guiding the content through AWS’s internal processes.
- APN Blog content editors: Checks that the content adheres to AWS editorial guidelines.
- SMEs: Ensure technical accuracy and compliance with AWS best practices.
- AWS legal and PR: May need to review customer references, claims that could be a liability, and need to ensure AWS’s competitive positioning.
In addition, you will need to factor in your own in-house review processes. Based on our experience, these in-house reviews are often longer than internally published content, since you need to ensure you’re adhering to the APN Blog’s strict guidelines. Thus, the review process can be lengthy even before AWS gets to see the material.
If the goals of the Partner’s review aren’t in line with the standards at AWS even for non-technical issues such as style and branding, it’s going to require additional revisions and review stages.
These delays can throw off messaging timing and cause you to miss key product release windows.
5. Sharing the Stage
This can be the hardest challenge for an organization that’s used to being in control of the content they create. Writing for the APN Blog means that, to some extent, you’re sharing the post with AWS. As partners, your blog post content needs to work both for your company and theirs.
That can be challenging for some team members to adjust to, especially since content creation isn’t your business’s primary area of expertise. That’s why it’s so important for APN Blogs to be created with the help of teams experienced in mutual marketing, working with high-profile clients, and a general familiarity with the ins and outs of the content creation process.
At IOD, we’ve worked with clients who were surprised when, during the review process at AWS, they learned that topic points they wanted to prioritize were not aligned with AWS goals. This is another example of why it’s so important to validate topics and key messages beforehand.
5 Tips for APN Content Creation
1. Follow APN Content Guidelines Closely
You will receive the APN content guidelines when you’re ready to start publishing on the APN Blog. Treat them seriously, and follow them carefully, as mistakes will add review rounds and slow down your approval process.
Take APN Blog guidelines into account from the ideation phase. Your content should align with what AWS will allow to publish in the network. If you’re planning on creating a topic or narrative that isn’t stylistically in line with the rest of the posts you see on the blog, you’re doing something wrong.
Make sure that you’re aware of all of the AWS-approved terminology that will be relevant to cover in your article. There are also specific terms that AWS prefers to avoid. We found out that a phrase as commonly used in the tech world as “platform” was on this list. The term “ecosystem” was also a no-no. Even a term as commonly referred to as “the cloud” can be problematic; it’s better to focus on “the AWS Cloud” instead.
2. Write for Clarity and Readability
Brevity and simplicity are key to communicating your message. The fancier you try to get, the more likely it is you’ll lose your readers. This is especially important for start-ups that are still building brand awareness and are eager to talk about what they do.
- Don’t be overly complex.
- Keep sentences punchy.
- Use plain language.
- Be upfront about what you’re talking about: AWS wants its blogs to introduce the topic your blog post will cover in the introductory paragraph.
Re language, some companies are very attached to in-house jargon, and that can be a problem for AWS. AWS may point out that your text isn’t their preferred language. And product marketing managers (PMMs) and members of the marketing team might not even be able to tell where or how those changes need to be made.
For this reason, you may want to consider working with a technical editor familiar with the APN content guidelines to help streamline the process.
And if you’re using ChatGPT, even with a subject-matter expert reviewing the content, you need to be extra careful. AWS is looking for authentic and original content; if your content is flagged as AI-generated, they will decline to publish it.
3. Involve SMEs from the Early Stages
The initial stages of your project can be critical to ensuring your articles will be accepted for publication on the APN Blog. Working with the SMEs during the ideation phase, through the outlining process, and draft stages will be key.
That said, in-house SMEs can only take it so far. Understanding AWS technologies to avoid technical inaccuracies and aligning with AWS’s preferred talking points are also essential.
Engaging AWS SMEs in the early stages can help prevent issues that may delay approvals down the road.
4. Plan for the Review Process from the Start
Determine your publishing schedule and plan ahead. AWS reviewers may not respond immediately, so structure in extra time.
Due to AWS’s stringent content guidelines, you’ll want to make sure everything is perfect before submitting to AWS. Even with a streamlined content operation in place, expect internal review time to take more time and effort than usual.
Avoid trying to time a release with the publication of your APN Blog post—you likely won’t have control over the timeline.
5. Work with APN Content Experts
Creating public-facing content may not be your core focus. Partnering with a team that understands AWS technologies, APN Blog expectations, and that knows how to tailor and communicate your message to both C-level and technical audiences can help you cut review times and streamline the entire process.
IOD is a content vendor with many years of experience serving Amazon Partner Network (APN) brands like Check Point, Wiz, and Zoho. We help tech leaders drive conversions with end-to-end tech content at scale: APN blogs, videos, interactive content, tutorials, buyer’s guides, cheat sheets, and more.
With deep hands-on experience in AWS technologies, IOD produces practitioner-led AWS content that aligns with APN Blog guidelines and drives results.
Looking to cut APN Blog review time and generate AWS content at scale? Let’s talk.
