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5 Important Elements of a Perfect Guest Post Contribution

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guest blogging pitch

This is a guest contribution from Hugh Beaulac

You’ve found your niche, and creating new content on your own site brings you joy, but you also don’t forget to find reputable websites to submit guest posts.

And you want to contribute to top blogs that match your niche, right?

It takes time and energy to rank, and proficient bloggers understand how valuable that is in terms of link juice, and if a blogger accepts your submission, you enter an already-established community, sharing your message.

In short, guest posting gives you many opportunities, and here are some other reasons why it is great:

  • It allows you to build your writing portfolio and get your name out.
  • Collaboration with top-notch blog owners helps to become a better writer.
  • It helps to establish contacts with other bloggers and find new readers.
  • It’s a way to find potential clients.
  • You can get a backlink for your site.

Although blog owners also know core benefits to accepting guest posts, they want to collaborate with trustful writers only. If you can prove your expertise and knowledge, you can be featured on top-notch websites.

But…

How to create a perfect guest post contribution? You’ll learn how to craft it in this blog post.

 

#1: Do Research

Have you found a website you want to contribute to? Great!

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and do research before bothering a blog owner. The more you know about the website, its owner, its values, and writing style, the more chances you have to hook a blogger.

How to do research:

  • Read submission guidelines to follow the instructions;
  • Analyze published content to find what topics have been covered on the site;
  • Pay attention to a content calendar to understand what type of content is in demand;
  • Find contact info and blogger’s name.

Before contacting the blog owner,  analyze the website to understand more about its audience and their needs. If applicable, follow guidelines closely as it’s a proven way to show your interest in contributing to the site.

 

#2: Write an Eye-Catching Email Pitch

In the business environment, we write many emails daily.

If you don’t get as many replies as you might want, just imagine:

The more popular a blog owner is, the more emails he or she receives daily.

What does it mean? You need to send an eye-catching email pitch that will be both interesting and useful!

Writing emails that don’t convert is just a waste of time and effort, so do your best to send a solid email.

So, how to write a brilliant guest post pitch?

  • Personalize an email by adding blogger’s name;
  • Introduce yourself;
  • Describe the purpose of your email;
  • Write down several guest post ideas that might be a good fit for the site;
  • Create a short outline for every topic;
  • Provide a blog owner with the best links to your recently published articles.

guest blogging pitch

Sending an email pitch, you make an impression on bloggers and help them make the final decision whether they need your assistance or not. Once you start writing better emails, you can reach influencers and get your topic approval.

 

#3: Craft a Well-Written Article

Once a blog owner has chosen a blog post topic, it’s high time to start crafting a well-written article as writing a post gives no guarantees of acceptance.

Criteria for a well-written article:

  • Comprehensive and smooth content that offers new perspectives;
  • Actionable tips and pieces of advice;
  • Statistics proofs;
  • Visuals that support ideas (infographics, screenshots, images, etc.);
  • Links to other posts on the blog;
  • Improved readability of your article (headings and subheadings, the text is divided into chunks,  short sentences, bold/italic/underline font styles, etc.).

If you need the ultimate guide to writing a compelling blog post, here it comes:

  • Analyze your potential readers, their needs, and problems to give them what they crave.
  • Do research and collect useful information, statistics, data, case studies, etc.
  • Create an outline to put down all important insights and make your writing easier.
  • Write the article, adding visuals.
  • Give it some time and proofread/edit the text.

If you offer evergreen, unique and compelling content, people will read it with a big pleasure. Plus, it’s more likely they will share it on their social media which means attracting new visitors to the blog. All in all, publishing a well-written article gives many advantages for a blog owner, readers, and the author.

#4: Promote on Social Media

Congratulations! Your article went live on the blog!

You’ve put much time and effort into it, but it’s not enough to satisfy a blog owner’s needs. After publishing the article, it’s time to promote it to attract more readers!

Don’t hesitate to share your article via social media.

By the way, do you know the power of social media?

All the above-mentioned stats prove that sharing articles on social media helps to attract more readers and promote your text without investing money. If you help to drive traffic to the website, a blog owner might be thankful and, therefore, you can be invited to write another post in the future!

#5: Communication with Readers

Experienced bloggers know that putting readers first is a surefire way to create a perfect post. If you write an article thinking about your audience’s needs and expectations, you should stick around and respond to comments on the post after it has been published.

For a variety of reasons, communication with readers is crucial, and you’d better reply to their comments as fast as you can.

If readers interact with you after reading a blog post, it’s a great sign that the material was interesting for them. Encourage people to leave comments and involve them into communication to hold audience’s attention and make them want to check the website over and over again.

In Conclusion

Being a successful guest blogger pays off, so try to contribute to profitable websites and always think about benefits a blog owner may get with you.

If you need to understand top reasons guest content is declined, pay attention to picture below:

guest post requirements

Learning from common mistakes most guest contributors make is a great way to stand out from the competitors and be featured on top websites.

Have we left something off the list? Share your thoughts in comments!

Hugh Beaulac is a writer who runs MC2 blog and writes on various topics. He contributes to different websites, so Hugh knows how to give a blog owner what his/her audience craves. 

Guest Blogging Made Easy

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Ever consider guest blogging? Writing content for other people’s blogs is a great way to gain credibility and get more traffic to your own blog. Guest blogging is the one method that Leo Widrich credits to most of Buffer’s success.

That’s right. The same social media tool that accrues millions of dollars in revenue each year.

If you get your content on the right blogs, then you can set yourself up for incredible success later down the road. But how do you write a lot of guest posts, and how do you get them on the right blogs?

That’s what I discuss in my latest video.

If you like this video, then I would love it if you subscribed to my YouTube channel and spread the word.

[Tweet “Guest Blogging Made Easy.”]

Three Great Places To Republish Your Blog Posts

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Republishing Blog Posts

A while ago, Google made a change to their algorithms. Google makes many changes such as the notorious panda updates that put half of the web out of whack. While Google makes panda updates that change the entire landscape, Google occasionally makes necessary changes that address different issues with content creation.

One problem with the web is that copying, pasting, and putting someone else’s blog post on your own blog is too easy. Some people decided to plagiarise content on other people’s blogs. Then, both websites would suffer because Google couldn’t distinguish the difference.

Now, Google can recognize the difference. If a blog post is published on your blog first, Google knows that your blog is the original source of the content. To be sure, give Google two weeks to index the blog post as your content.

What does that mean for us? First off, original content wins more than ever before. Even when people copy and paste your content onto their blogs, you still get the search engine traffic.

It also means you can copy and paste your own blog posts to different places on the web—and not get a search engine penalty. It’s your content. You can put it anywhere you want.

With this in mind, I look at my older blog posts that once got traffic but now get a small amount of visitors. While keeping those blog posts on my blog, I can also breath new life into those blog posts by publishing them elsewhere.

Are you looking for some ideas? Here are some places to publish your older content.

 

#1: LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the best place to publish your older content. Publishing an old blog post on LinkedIn only takes a few minutes, and you can get a good amount of engagement from this strategy.

LinkedIn Published Post

One of my LinkedIn posts was viewed 19 times. I’ll admit the number isn’t big, but I was just starting out.

That same LinkedIn post—the one that only got 19 views—got seven likes and one comment. Let’s add some zeroes to show the impact of a highly successful LinkedIn post.

190 views —> 70 likes and 10 comments

1900 views —> 700 likes and 100 comments

It doesn’t take long to see the benefits associated with posting your content on LinkedIn. After my third LinkedIn post, I was getting more than a dozen daily visitors from LinkedIn. Not bad for a little over 500 connections—and a completely new part of my strategy.

 

#2: Tumblr

I won’t lie. Tumblr hasn’t brought in incredible results for me yet. The main reason that’s the case is because I have a little less than 10 Tumblr followers. Tumblr is on the list of social networks for me to optimize, but it’s deep down on the list.

If you have an audience on Tumblr, then Tumblr would be a good place for you to republish your content. More people would see it.

LinkedIn happened to work well for me because I already had over 500 connections. If Tumblr works well for you, then go for it.

 

#3: Guest Blogs That Let You Republish Content

Most guest blogs only want original, unpublished content. However, there are some guest blogs that make the exception and allow you to copy and paste published content.

One of the first blogs I started writing guest posts for was Business2Community. While the guest posts in the beginning were unique, I decided to use Business2Community as a platform to breath new life into my old content.

The idea sparked in my mind when I wrote a guest post for Jeff Bullas. For anyone interested, the guest post is called 5 Ways To Flood Your Blog Traffic Using Pinterest. A few days after Jeff Bullas published my guest post, I found it under my Business2Community author page.

It didn’t take long for me to figure out that people were using Business2Community to breath new life into their old content and also spread their new content.

Thus I began copying and pasting some of my blog posts into Business2Community. I published over a dozen blog posts on Business2Community in just three days. The best part is that I didn’t do any additional work.

When I got the first two guest posts published on Business2Community, I got four extra visitors to my blog. While all bloggers look for more traffic, four extra visitors isn’t exactly life changing. However, new life was breathed into those older posts. Take a look at this one:

Business2Community Guest Post

Three days later, traffic to my blog from Business2Community tripled to 12 visitors for the day. Again, these numbers aren’t large…yet. The very next day, the amount of visitors I got from Business2Community more than doubled.

That number continues to grow as I put more content on Business2Community. Even if I never reach more than 100 daily visitors to my blog from Business2Community, the impact cannot be questioned.

The first 10 guest posts I put on Business2Community got a combined total of over 2,000 shares. That’s over 2,000 people promoting my content on their social networks. All I did was copy and paste 10 of my blog posts into Business2Community.

Ever since I started guest posting like this on Business2Community, my Twitter engagement has also skyrocketed. More people are sharing the blog posts and mentioning me.

All of that from one guest blog. If I find three guest blogs like Business2Community, these would be the numbers:

Over 6,000 shares for 10 guest posts

Over 100 daily visitors to my blog from those guest blogs

Hundreds of extra mentions on Twitter every day

Those are some big numbers. When I publish enough of my blog posts onto Business2Community—20 more—I’ll get those same numbers.

 

In Conclusion

Publishing your content elsewhere should form a core part of your content marketing strategy. By publishing your content elsewhere, you get to tap into a new audience while connecting with people in your current audience.

Publishing my blog posts on LinkedIn allows me to build stronger relationships with my LinkedIn connections. Publishing my blog posts on Business2Community allows me to tap into a larger audience.

Your blog is not the only place where your blog posts can go. They can be put on other sites, and that will result in more traffic and credibility for you.

Which guest blogs will you implement this strategy with? Do you see yourself publishing anything to LinkedIn or Tumblr? Sound off in the comments section below!

The Guest Blogging Formula To Success

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Guest Blogging Picture
Guest blogging isn’t dead. It’s actually growing.

Guest blogging ain’t a joke. It’s actually a big deal. Ever since I began blogging, I wrote several guest posts here and there. Now, I am on a guest blogging frenzy. Writing on the right guest blogs can potentially skyrocket your growth and put your content in front of millions of new visitors. How do you reach that point? Here’s how:

 

Build Credibility

The owners of guest blogs want skilled bloggers to write guest posts for them. Popularity is another factor, but you must prove that you have skill. This is why most people with guest blogs will ask for the links to some of your past work before giving you the green light.

They also want to know that you are an expert in your niche. This is where credibility comes in. 90% of the time, the person with 10,000 Facebook likes knows more about Facebook than the person with 100 Facebook likes. You want to boost your credibility in the areas of your brand that you envision yourself writing guest posts about. If you envision yourself writing guest posts about getting more Facebook likes, then keep on getting more Facebook likes yourself. The more you have, the more people will listen to your guest blogging inquiry.

Even when you are deep into the guest blogging strategy, and you have become successful with it, you must still strive to build your credibility. One great thing about credibility is that there is no maximum to how much credibility someone can have.

 

Create The Golden List

One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make is assuming that as they boost their credibility, the top people in their niches will find them. As I continued growing my Twitter audience, people did contact me and ask me to write guest posts. I agreed and saw more traffic come in.

However, I was not getting guest post requests from the top bloggers who were getting millions of annual blog visitors. Very recently, I had a desire to land my content on several top blogs that were getting millions of annual blog visitors. I wanted my content to reach out to more people so it could empower more people and potentially lead more people to my blog.

I came up with a revolutionary idea that I never used before. I created the Golden List—a list of 100 top influencers in my niche. I wasn’t even sure about who accepted guest posts and who didn’t. I just wrote names down, and towards the end, it became extremely difficult for me to think of influencers in my niche because I already wrote down the names of people I heard of before.

With the Golden List in front of me, I had the names of 100 top experts within my niche. I then went to each of their blogs to see who accepted guest posts and then made my pitches.

 

Pitch The Right Way

I knew that since these influencers are popular, they probably get dozens (hundreds?) of daily emails filled with pitches for guest posts. If you are getting hundreds of emails every day, you’ll pay more attention to the people who stand out, and you may delete some emails after reading the first 1-3 sentences. If you want an idea of what this process is like, put up a legit query on HARO.

So I knew that I immediately had to stand out right from the beginning. But not only did I have to stand out, I also had to stand out for the right area of my niche. If I want to write a guest post about Twitter, here is how I start my pitch:

“My name is Marc Guberti and I am a 17 year old digital marketing expert with over 200,000 Twitter followers.”

This sentence is deja vu for me. I must have started dozens of emails with that one sentence in one week. In one sentence, I let the blogger know about my age (which is rare for my niche) and my Twitter audience size which establishes my Twitter expertise. I mention that I have over 200,000 Twitter followers in nearly every pitch I send, and if I want to write a guest post about Pinterest, then I will mention that I also have 20,000 Pinterest followers.

And that’s just the first sentence. Here’s how the typical pitch goes from start to finish:

“Hello {Name of Blogger},

My name is Marc Guberti and I am a 17 year old digital marketing expert with over 200,000 Twitter followers.

My idea for a guest post is {name of guest post}.

Here are the methods/key points I would discuss

{List methods/key points and write 1-2 sentences explaining how you would discuss each method}

Please let me know your thoughts on the idea.

{Closing}

The email is concise and to the point. I am not doing anything to gain brownie points. I am simply stating what I would do if I was given the opportunity to write a guest post.

One important thing to know is that when I send an email like this, I have not written the guest post yet. I only start writing the guest post when the blogger contacts me and says that he/she likes the idea. If the blogger doesn’t like the idea, then I can come back with another idea when I am ready.

 

Before The Pitch

Want to ensure that your guest post idea gets accepted? Take a look at several pages of blog posts on the blogger’s blog. Look at the titles of blog posts to see common trends, but also look for what’s missing. I came across one digital marketing blog that didn’t publish a blog post about Pinterest for over a week.

I saw my opening, and in the first sentence of my pitch, I mentioned that I have 20,000 Pinterest followers. I then came up with a guest post idea and followed my rubric. Less than two weeks after I sent the initial email, that guest post was published on a blog that gets millions of annual blog visitors.

It’s not enough to know what niche a blog is in. You also have to know what type of content has been published there before so you put yourself in a better position to publish a unique piece of content. If I ever opened this blog to guest blogging, I wouldn’t want a guest post idea strongly related or identical to a topic I recently wrote about. You have to make a pitch that suggests a completely different topic from the ones that have been discussed, but the guest post you suggest must be related to the blog’s niche.

 

My Results

For a long time, the only authority blog I wrote for often was Business2Community. This guest blog taught me the potential of getting traffic by writing guest posts. However, I largely abandoned guest blogging to write longer, more in-depth blog posts on this blog.

When I went back to guest blogging, I implemented this formula. In the first day of implementing this formula, three bloggers wanted me to write a guest post for their blogs, and I landed an interview. Part of my quick success was that many of the people I contacted responded in a few hours, but I have seen long-term success for this strategy. My content is reaching thousands of new people who I am only able to reach because of my guest posts.

 

In Conclusion

Guest blogging is anything but dead, but not every guest blogging opportunity is created equal. Some of your guest blogs will generate more traffic back to your blog than others, but as you get better at writing guest posts and contacting other bloggers, you will become comfortable with writing numerous guest posts.

Writing more guest posts and getting them published on high authority blogs will expand your reach and allow you to tap into a new audience.

Do you write guest posts? Who have you written for? How many guest posts have you written? What is your tip for guest blogging success? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

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5 Reasons Why Guest Blogging Needs To Be A Part Of Your Strategy

Since the beginning of 2014, there has been an ongoing debate about whether guest blogging is still a good way to increase blog traffic. On January 28, 2014, Google said that any attempts to get spammy backlinks by writing guest posts would no longer work. Since this statement, some guest bloggers have stopped writing guest posts because headlines such as “Guest Blogging Is Dead” have appeared more often around the web.

On the contrary, guest blogging is alive and well. There are still people who are utilizing it properly and writing for popular blogs. The guest blogs that allow people to write guest posts are still sending out numerous posts every day. If you are not writing guest posts, you definitely should, and here are five reasons why you should do so.

 

#1: You get backlinks

One of the important takeaways from Google’s statement is that spammy backlinks that you get by writing guest posts would no longer work. When Google says spammy, that’s referring to you writing on a guest blog completely out of your niche. Spammy backlinks refers to something such as you having a social media blog and guest blogging on a fashion blog. The two topics are completely different.

The quality backlinks from guest posts, the ones on guest blogs related to your niche, are still valuable. The person with the social media blog would want to write on guest blogs about social media such as Business2Community and Social Media Today. When you write your bio for your accounts on these guest blogs, be sure to include a backlink to your main blog.

 

#2: You get your content in front of a large audience

When I was struggling to get 100 daily visitors, I often wrote guest posts on Business2Community. Writing these guest posts allowed more people to know about me because I was writing to a larger audience. Business2Community is a blog that gets thousands of daily visitors. Business2Community boasts an Alexa rank under 3,000 and a bounce rate under 40%.

Every guest post I put up on Business2Community got shared over 100 times. Getting shared this many times allowed more people to see my content. Some of these people scrolled down to my bio and visited my blog.

 

#3: You can get more blog traffic

The people who like your guest post may decide to go to your bio and read your blog. This is the common association between guest blogging and getting more traffic for your own blog. However, there are more ways to get traffic from your blog posts.

One method of getting more traffic for your guest posts is by including links to the content on your main blog throughout the content of your guest post. For some guest blogs, including a link here and there to your blog posts won’t be any trouble, but you should check the rules of writing guest posts before implementing this strategy.

Whether you can implement the first method or not, you are getting another backlink for your blog. Backlinks are still very valuable for SEO, and most of the successful blogs that get thousands of daily visitors are getting that traffic from SEO. These blogs also happen to have thousands of backlinks, and that is not a coincidence.

 

#4: You can get more subscribers

There are many guest blogs that allow users to write a bio, and the first three lines of that bio appear at the bottom of every guest post. If the guest blog you are writing on permits you to do this, you should tell your readers about a free prize. That free prize, whether a video or a guidebook, should be related to the guest post you just wrote.

With this in mind, your guest posts should be geared towards the free prize that you already offer. When you write these guest posts, be sure to get them to at least 1,000 words. Writing longer blog posts makes someone read your content longer, and the longer someone reads your content (as long as your content is valuable), the more content that person wants from you.

Your guidebook or video that you tell them about in the three lines that appear at the bottom of every guest post will be the content that they want. When someone clicks on the link, send that person to a landing page. Entering an email address will give that person the ability to read more of your content, and you will have another person on your list.

 

#5: You will become a better writer

In order to be the blogger who people come back to again and again, you need to produce valuable content. Writing more guest posts will allow you to get more practice in. The great thing about writing is that there is always room for improvement. You can be a phenomenal writer, but it is even possible for the best writers in your niche to get better.

By getting more practice with your guest posts, it will be easier for you to write valuable content on your blog as well as any books that you may write in the future. Writing is a powerful skill for dominating the web, and many people utilize it. Whether writing takes the form of a blog post or an email, it is a big factor towards success on the web.

 

In Conclusion

Guest blogging is alive and well. In addition, now is the perfect time to utilize guest blogging. There are numerous guest blogs in your niche that are waiting for contributors like you to submit content. You should strive to write one guest post each week so you can become a better writer and get your content in front of multiple audiences.

Some of these audiences will consist of hundreds of people while other audiences will consist of thousands of people. However, getting quality backlinks for your blog will help your blog posts rank better on SEO and get more traffic. Guest blogging is the perfect win-win because you get your content in front of people, you get the quality backlink, and the person who owns the guest blog gets more content.

Are you a guest blogger, and if not, do you plan on becoming one?

How To Get Found By People With Guest Blogs

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Finding guest blogs can be a gruesome process. There are a lot of factors that go into finding the perfect guest blog such as the traffic, approval rate, and several other factors as well. First you have to find those guest blogs, and then you have to go through all of those factors. However, what if all of the people with guest blogs found you.

It should work like that. However, that is not the case for many people. In the beginning, everyone who pursues guest blogging needs to find guest blogging opportunities. I had to do a lot of searching before I finally found the Business2Community blog where I have been writing guest posts ever since.

The approach that saves a lot of time is for the guest blogging opportunities to find you. In order to get the opportunities to find you, you need to establish yourself as an expert of your niche. You need to show off your knowledge in your blog posts and follow people on your social networks who would be your target audience. Some of these followers will eventually read your blog and have a guest blog. These people will like the content on your blog and ask you if you can submit a guest post.

This is the method that I use in order to get more guest posting opportunities. I no longer need to spend as much time looking for guest blogging opportunities as I have to spend writing guest posts. As more people see your content on different parts of the web, their trust for you will grow.