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