How to Be a Good Guest Blogger
Writing by Brick Marketing in Content Marketing
Quality content is perhaps the biggest indicator of SEO success. As more website owners catch on to this fact, guest blogging has seen a boom in popularity for link building purposes and also to help build brand visibility across the web. Guest blogging provides an opportunity to get noticed not only by the search engine spiders, but more importantly by people that may be interested in the products or services that you provide. In order to be a good guest blogger, it’s important to follow these rules:
Actually read the blog
Before getting in touch with a blog owner about a guest posting opportunity, take some time to read the blog and get a sense of what kind of content gets posted. Is it in line with what your business offers and your beliefs? Who is the target audience? It takes time to create a good guest blog post, so it’s important to submit it to a blog that is a good fit.
Respect the guidelines
Some bloggers may outline certain guidelines that guest posts must meet in order to be published. The blog owner may want a blog post on a certain topic or have regulations regarding word count, formatting, etc. Don’t ignore these requests! If you do, it likely won’t get published.
Don’t promote
Guest blog posts should be helpful to the blog’s audience and teach them something new about the industry or niche. A blog post is different than a press release. Don’t use the space to sell your company or pitch your new product, especially if the audience has never heard of your business before. If you want to advertise, buy a banner ad on the site.
Stay organized
Keep a running list of all of the places that you would like to submit a guest post to, have submitted a guest post to, and where posts have been published along with a link to the published post. Include contact information for each blog owner. You don’t want to make the mistake of introducing yourself and pitching to the same blog twice.
Respond to comments
Just as you’d monitor a blog post on your own site, go back and monitor the guest posts that you’ve written that have been published. Be sure to respond to comments and inquiries as necessary. Blog comments maintain the social atmosphere that a blog is supposed to have. If you don’t take the time to respond to readers the blog owner may not allow you to post again in the future.
Maintain relationships with blog owners
You shouldn’t guest post on a blog and then never be in touch again. Make a point of following all of the blog owners in social media and share their content every once in awhile as an act of appreciation. The goal of guest posting is to become a regular contributor on industry blogs that receive a lot of traffic, which is more likely to happen if you maintain a professional relationship with the bloggers.
