If you’ve ever tried guest blogging then you know that it’s not always as easy as some people want you to believe it is.
For instance, there’s an awful lot of articles online talking about the importance of guest blogging and the benefits it can bring, which is all fine.
However, there’s lot less info on how to actually deal with guest blogging on the networking side (how to handle the common scenarios you can encounter when contacting people and sending your articles).
Basically, the idea of guest blogging itself is quite simple. You find a blog, send an article, and get published, but the practice shows that things often get a bit more complicated. Here’s how to deal with this.
Finding quality and relevant blogs where you can guest post is something you can surely do on your own, so I’m not going to talk about it here. What I am going to focus on is what happens after you decide to target a given blog.
In the last couple of years, guest posting on other people’s blogs has become a solid marketing technique. At first, the idea of letting some stranger post their content on your blog seemed ludicrous. However, many bloggers realized the benefits of more fresh unique content, and the wheel has been rolling ever since. I have personally guest posted on many different blogs, and I have noticed that guest posting is sometimes clumped together with article marketing as if they are “basically the same thing.” They are NOT the same thing. There are many differences, and that is what I want to explore. Let’s start with the similarities of the two: read more
As most of you already know, guest blogging is one of the coolest and most valuable ways of marketing your business and promoting your blog. But the thing about guest blogging is that it gets to be a much more effective promotional tool the better and better you get at it. Once you’ve been practicing guest blogging for awhile, you’ll be able to approach more highly-ranked blogs, in the PR-6 plus range. Getting published on such blogs will astronomically increase your own traffic and page ranking, so once you feel comfortable enough with your writing skills and niche expertise, it definitely pays to go for the big dogs. Here are a few tips for snagging a guest post spot on higher-quality blogs.
1. Always pitch a thoroughly-researched idea in your initial email. This is one of the most important parts of getting your foot in the door with a highly-ranked blog. This is so because a PR6 + blogger probably has no problems getting content up as some of the lower-ranked blogs do. As such, the blog you are aiming for doesn’t “need” you to drum up content, so you will have to prove your worth by doing tons of research and carefully delineating an idea that will appeal to the blog’s audience. read more
Guest bloggers can be a godsend to your site. Not only can they take the burden off of writing the content for your site, but they are also a powerful way to attract inbound links to your site as your guests link to their posts from their sites.
However, attracting guest bloggers can be very difficult. Since virtually every site would love a little help and there are only so many with the time and interest to provide free content, the market for guest bloggers can be a competitive one, especially for high-quality bloggers.
So how can you attract guest bloggers to your site? Here are seven tips that can help you keep a steady stream of willing bloggers at your door.
1. Use SEO
Most people seeking to do guest blog posts will research who to ask the same way most people research any topic on the Web, by using Google. Make sure that your site scores well in your field for the term “guest blogger” or “guest blogging” to ensure that those who are interested find you first.
For example, if your site is about monitors, you want to ensure you rank at the top for “Monitor Guest Blogging” and related keywords. For this you would need to do the right on-page optimization and have some external links with the right anchor text. read more
This is a guest post is by Ann Smarty, founder of a community of guest bloggers: My Blog Guest.
To me, guest posting has been by far the most effective free way to promote a resource (as well as my brand). That wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that everything I have ever achieved in my online career was due to my guest posts.
I wouldn’t like anyone to think about guest posting as a link building (or SEO) tool though. There is much more behind the tactic. It builds long-term contacts, exposes your resources to a wide interested audience, promotes your brand and expertise, and many more.
But yes, it takes much time and effort and is only effective when taken seriously. So the aim of this post is to actually describe this serious approach to guest blogging step by step – to make sure the tactic works for you.
Step 1: Search for guest posting opportunities
Unless you are about to start guest posting on a weekly basis, spotting a promising guest posting opportunity shouldn’t be a problem for you. Most niches have high-profile blogs that are known for accepting guest posts (and frequently featuring them).
For social-media-relates topics this is Mashable, for productivity it’s Lifehack, for copywriting it’s CopyBlogger, etc. Arranging a post at such a busy places is not an easy task, but the outcome is amazing, so you should give it a try. read more
Yesterday in Exploring Social Media: The Power of the Link Needs Content, I introduced the most powerful social media tool in the world, the link, and explained that unless you have make the link direct people to valuable and useful content, you are shooting blanks. The link makes a lot of noise with nothing to show for it.
The impact of linking to yourself is magnified in value. When you email or publish a link to something you wrote, recommending it, you are telling the world:
I know that which I write about.
I am an expert in the subject.
I have the experience to back up what I’m writing.
This is the best I can do.
Do your links qualify?
When you contact a blogger or anyone to encourage them to link to you, do you keep these things in mind? Are you offering your best work? Does your blog or social media tool show the world you are an expert in this?
If you have the proof behind your link, then maybe your failure is in the presentation of that link, especially when directed towards bloggers, the most capable of spreading the word far and wide about you and your blog. read more
First, a link is a door people open to your world, be it a world within your blog, social media tools and services, or a recommendation to visit another world, one you hope your fans will enjoy so much, they will return to your world with joy, eager for more and telling the world about what you have to offer.
Second, if you link without anything worth linking to, without anything positive to offer people, without anything worth recommending, without anything worth returning to, you have lost the power in social influence within the modern online world.
If you link to yourself, then these two characteristics are magnified. You are offering people a gateway into your world, one they expect is worth linking to, deserving of attention, exciting, and worth telling others about.
The link is the most powerful social media tool of all. read more
