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Learning the Art of Guest Blogging

Learning the Art of Guest Blogging

I’ve just announced that I’m going to do two months of celebrating blogging and WordPress on Lorelle on WordPress in honor of the second anniversary of WordPress.com and my blog.

The idea is to create a two month “party” on the blog with a bunch of guest bloggers. In August, they will be blogging about blogging only, and I’ll add any WordPress-related news that might come up, and the whole month of September will be non-stop WordPress Tips.

However, I realized that while I have been a guest blogger on many blogs, I really know little or nothing about administrating guest bloggers. I know how to add users and authors to my blogs. Even dead ones. I know how to ask people for help, but there is a lot of learning that is going to be happening over the next two months as I coordinate all these bloggers, and continue to provide the information my readers come to read.

So while I’m researching and experiencing this last minute decision of mine, I’d love your tips and advice on how to handle guest bloggers.

In the interim, here are some articles I’ve found to help me, and hopefully you, learn more about the art of guest blogging, both from the blogging side and the administration side.

Darren Rowse of Problogger has written a lot about the benefits of guest blogging from a variety of perspectives. Some great must-reads include:

  • Why Guest Bloggers are Great for a Blog
  • How to Find a Guest Blogger for Your Blog
  • How to Get Guest Blogging Jobs
  • How to Be a Good Guest Blogger
  • 7 Things To Do With Your Blog When You Take A Vacation

Here are some other resources for learning more about the guest blogging process, from planning to have guest bloggers, finding them, how to guest blog, and the benefits for all on guest blogging.

  • Blog Me Famous: Five Guidelines to Guest Blogging – A great list of tips on how to prepare to be a guest blogger before you guest blogging. My favorite tip? Have content on your blog ready to impress visitors coming from the guest blog gig to check out your blog.
  • Lorelle: Promoting Your Wares to Bloggers – The key to getting good guest bloggers is asking them. I cover tips you may need to know if you want to approach a blogger to guest blog or ask them to guest blog on your blog when you don’t really have a personal relationship with them already.
  • Chris Garrett – How To Guest Blog Without Disaster – A bit tongue in cheek, this is a great perspective on the host blog about having guest bloggers. Two points I loved (and has me worried):

    * Getting the keys to someone else’s property can be dangerous, as any house-sitter could tell you.
    * What the guest says can reflect badly on the host, particularly as many people will not notice the author attribution.

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    He also offers some great tips to consider before looking for guest bloggers.

  • LexBlog: Marketing Your Blog – Guest Blogging for Lawyers – Explains to lawyers why guest blogging helps promote their blogs and their businesses, but overlooks the point that it improves and expands their reputation as well as helps the blogosphere in the process.
  • North x East: Why Guest Blogging is a Powerful Way to Gain Exposure for Your Blog – This takes a look at the benefits of why you should include guest blogging in your blog’s development and strategy. It gives you exposure, may increase readership, but mostly, it also helps other bloggers, who in turn, may help you.
  • Technospot: Seven things you can gain from guest blogging on your blog – Seven excellent tips for hosting guest blogging. I liked the new perspective an old subject gets when tackled by a new voice:

    Once said is never complete: There are always things that has been said. Lets say for an example how many times you have seen a post on “How to optimize adsense unit”, may be 20 or 50…Does every post say it all…If you have something to add, something which is not explained completely, something which needs to be corrected, always do it. Make a similar post, don’t copy but give something more.

  • Chris Garrett: Finding and Connecting With Bloggers and Targeting Blog Audiences – Chris tackles the issue of finding guest bloggers, but not just any guest bloggers for your blog. They need to be the “right” guest bloggers, so they will not just help you mix things up on your blog, but they will speak well for you and themselves, make you proud, but also understand that they are blogging to help you as much as themselves.
  • Mitch Kapor’s Weblog – An Actual Email: Can I Guest Your Blog? – While written in 2003, this is a great example of how not to ask to guest blog. The old hype email or letter is now a dead thing, folks. Get that hint, okay? :D
  • Matt Coddington guest blogging on John Chow’s blog with “John is Busy Slaying Pandas, I’m Filling In” – Explains some of the benefits of guest blogging on a popular blog.

As I read through these, I had a lot of questions that aren’t completely answered by these articles on guest blogging. From the many guest blog posts I found on the web, I had a lot of trouble finding good information on the art of guest blogging. I thought I would find more.

Tomorrow, and as the next two months proceed, I’ll cover some of the questions I came up with, and hopefully you and I can find some answers. ;-)

View Comments (8)
  • One of the things I like about guest blogging is that I get to read something “different” from a blog that I normally visit. It’s a fresh change, but if the guest blogger is no-good, that’s too bad..

  • I’ve been thinking about finding blogs to guest post on but don’t really know how to go about doing it. Maybe some of these places will be good resources for tips.

  • Pelf: That’s true. It’s a fresh change, but it is also a risk. It really removes the control from the host blogger’s hands. Good point.

    Michael: Hopefully, together we’ll learn more about how to guest blog and get guest blogging gigs, as well as how to help guest bloggers blog better.

  • Great post Lorelle!!

    I’m trying to make my way through Google 1st page for Mobile Monopoly Web Marketing strategies and I found you in the first page of my searching.
    I will be applying the tips asap.
    I was about to ask you for a list of possible people willing to the same you mention here but I think I found the answer

  • If you like to write, guest blogging is great for many reasons. It forces you to write higher quality content and it will brings more traffic and popularity to your site. Guest blogging is something every internet marketer should learn and do.

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