A Guide to Promoting Your Blog Through Guest Posts

If you’re looking to increase the exposure of your blog and gain new readers, consider submitting articles to be posted on other blogs. This article will cover the reasons for writing for other blogs as well as the steps required for a beneficial experience.

Why Write Guest Posts for Other Blogs?

1 – It’s one of the fastest ways to reach a new audience.

When you write a post for another blog you are getting the opportunity to showcase your knowledge and ability in front of targeted readers. If your blog is on a similar topic as the blog in which your post is published, you stand to gain a lot of new visitors.

Obviously, the amount of exposure you get will depend on which blog publishes your article. The number of subscribers isn’t the only significant factor. Some blogs have smaller audiences, but their readers are very targeted and very loyal.

2 – Potential new subscribers.

If the readers like your post they may be inclined to subscribe to your RSS feed. In this way guest posting can be a very productive source of free advertising. Who doesn’t want more subscribers?

3 – You’ll get a link to your blog.

Almost all guest posting arrangements involve a link back to the author’s blog. This not only provides you with potential click-through traffic, but it can help our search engine rankings as well as your Technorati rank, especially if the other blog is a quality, established blog itself. In fact, the link is sometimes the primary interest in guest posts.

4 – It helps other bloggers.

Ok, so your primary motivation is not to help other blogs, but this can have big benefits down the road. If you help another blogger, they are likely to remember you and they’ll be more likely to repay the favor or to link to you in the future. Even if they don’t, it’s still nice to know that you can make an impact for others.

How Can You Make the Most of Guest Posting?

Being successful with guest posts is more than just sending an article to a random blogger and hoping it results in something good. I’ve broken down the steps into 4 categories below:

1 – Finding the Right Blogs

Finding the right blogs to submit your posts to is probably the most important part of the process. After all, a great article on a blog that has no readers will not accomplish very much. The ideal situation is to find a blog that shares your target audience and has a large, responsive group of readers. Here are some tips to help you find the right blogs:

- Start with bloggers that you already know or that you’ve already had some contact with. Your chances of getting your article posted are greater than if you are contacting bloggers who are not familiar with you.

- Look through your RSS reader at the feeds you subscribe to. Try to find ones that you enjoy reading and that may be a good fit with your writing.

- Visit blog community sites like MyBlogLog and Bumpzee. If you’re already a member of some communities, take a look at the other members of the communities.

- Check www.guest-blogger.com. There are a number of blogs listed that have indicated an interest in receiving guest posts from other writers.

- Visit Technorati and take a look at the authority and rank of blogs that you have found. This will give you an idea of the impact that this blog has, and an idea of what type of exposure it would give you.

- Look to see if the blog has posted their number of subscribers via FeedBurner or a similar service.

- When you’ve located a blogger that you would like to contact, try getting involved on the blog first. Subscribe to their feed and get familiar with the type of posts they publish. Leave comments whenever you have something to add to the conversation. When you contact them they may be familiar with you because of your comments.

2 – Writing the Post

Once you’ve found a few blogs that are possibilities, your focus will shift to writing an article that will catch another blogger’s attention and lead to getting it posted. Writing a guest post is a little bit different than writing for your own blog, and you should be very careful with the quality of work that you submit.

- Always check your spelling and grammar. The other blogger will not want to have to do much editing to your post. These types of mistakes can make a bad first impression and can have a negative influence on their perception of the quality of your writing.

- Choose a topic that is a good fit for their blog. Be certain that their readers will be interested in the topic and will benefit from the information provided.

- Check to verify that the subject of your article is not too similar to anything that they have posted recently. You don’t want to submit an article that duplicates the thoughts of an article they just posted last week.

- Don’t blatantly advertise your blog, services, or products in the article. Let the quality of the writing and your knowledge do the advertising.

- Don’t repeatedly link back to your own site.

- Don’t submit the same post to more than one blogger. If you submit it once and the blogger tells you that it won’t be posted then you can re-submit the post to someone else.

3 – Contacting the Blogger(s)

The approach you take to contact the blogger is also very important. Remember that they are very busy and respect their time. Here are a few keys for making the most of your contact.

- Send a brief email asking if they are interested in receiving submissions. If you are a regular reader of their blog mention something that you enjoy/appreciate about their blog. Quickly introduce yourself and your blog (leave a link so they can check out your work). I recommend not sending an article right away, which I think might be a little pushy, but that is just personal preference.

- If they respond that they do accept submissions, follow up by sending your article in the body of an email. Due to viruses it’s best to avoid attachments unless they specifically request an attachment.

- Don’t bombard them with articles that they don’t have time to read. Send 1 or 2 and move on.

- When you send the article thank them for their consideration.

- Throughout the process of contacting them and sending the article, make everything as easy as possible for them. Respect their time and you will be one step closer to getting your article posted.

4 – After the Article Has Been Posted

Your work is not done as soon as the article is posted. In order to get the most out of the experience and to prepare for future guest posting opportunities, follow these steps.

- Send a follow up thank you to the blogger for posting your article.

- Keep track of which articles you have sent and to whom they have been sent. If you start sending out more than a couple you may forget which ones have already been submitted. Keeping a simple spreadsheet will help you to see which ones are being posted and which ones are not. Those that do not get posted can be sent to someone else or used on your own blog.

- Go back to the posts and respond to comments and questions left by visitors.

By following these steps you’ll be able to quickly reach a lot of new potential readers, grow you name recognition, and get some quality inbound links.

Published August 6th, 2007 by Steven Snell