The Guest Blogger’s Guide To The Blogosphere

This post was guest blogged by Patrick Bisaillon of the gross revenue sharing blog, Piggy Bank Pie.

If you have recently launched your own blog, on top of your ‘to do list’ should be ways to bring home quality traffic. There are many ways to increase valuable visitors to your site, and one that has been proven highly effective is being an active Guest Blogger.

Stop Thinking For Yourself

Have you ever thought about guest blogging? If you answered yes, then you may have written a few posts, but they ended up being so great that each time you thought “man, I don’t want to give this post away, I’m keeping it for my blog!” a common mistake, keep on reading.

Unfortunately, great posts from unknown bloggers are usually wasted on low traffic sites. In addition, once they are published most of the time you cannot publish them elsewhere. If you just wrote a masterpiece and your blog gets 25 unique visitors a day, don’t you think it would be wise to publish that ‘award-winning’ post of yours on a blog that has hundreds if not thousands of daily readers?

Take Your Time

Never rush to write a guest post, it is too important. Dedicate a considerable amount of time, as this text is your keynote, showing what your blog is capable of to an audience full of potential RSS subscribers. Once you are satisfied with the result, try improving the quality by asking blogger friends you can trust to review and comment on your article.

Adjust Your Focus

Remember our primary goal here: bring home quality traffic. This step is as important as your strategy resides in moving readers from reading your guest post to reading your blog. Take the time to find the right place where you would like your post to be published. Once you have a blog on target, review guest posts that have been published in the last month. Now with that information in hand, start brainstorming on ideas that would make your work of art fit in that blogger’s ecosystem. However, you do want to distinguish yourself… that is why I say you need to take your time.

Linking Modesty

Don’t link to your blog unless you have valuable information you wish to point readers to. Remember that it is common practice for bloggers to introduce Guest Bloggers and link to their website in a paragraph right before your post’s introduction. At the bottom, sign your text and place a link to your homepage. Trust me; that is all you need. If the readers connect with your post and your writing style, they have everything they need to find your site. Most importantly, be respectful and do not throw in affiliate links.

Be Professional

The last thing you would want is a Pro-Blogger correcting typos and grammar errors in your post. This is the main reason why I recommend you ask some friends to review your text. It seems like a normal behavior to leave obvious mistakes in an article after hours of writing. At one point, your brain can no longer see the difference between Guest Bloggers and Ghost Busters. Friends reading your post will spot those mistakes at first read.

Establish Contacts

Alright, you have a great post, a blog on target, now you need to make contact. Firstly, well-known bloggers get dozens if not hundreds of emails a day, so you need to stand out from the crowd while staying away from spam-alike messages.

Some bloggers prefer not to publicly display their email address. Instead, they use a form often available under their Contact page. If this is the case, present yourself nicely and briefly, ask the blogger if they accept guest posts and conclude by inviting them to pursue the discussion over email. Make sure to leave your blog’s URL. Important: Do not paste your post in the form, it would lose all formatting and may be cut by a maximum of characters allowed in the text area.

If you have the blogger’s email, you can use a different strategy. Again, introduce yourself briefly and go straight to the point. Conclude with an invitation to visit your blog and paste your post in the email. You can read John’s take on this subject.

Whether you are about to contact the blogger via a form or email, keep in mind that you never have a second chance to make a good impression. Review your message before you press Send.

Secret Tip to Increase Your Readership

Okay, let us recap the goal of guest posting: increasing your site’s readership. Say you submit an article that has tremendous success and the readers are going nuts digging your post and rushing over to your blog. You want to make sure your site is spick and span before they hit your home page. I cannot stress how important this is to attracting visitors. At this point, they have high expectations, so you need to deliver what they are looking for, i.e., similar quality content.

Timing is important here; once your guest article is online, you have to make sure that your site has high quality material to satisfy new visitors. If you are familiar with affiliate marketing, think of it as your Conversion Rate (how many new visitors will turn into RSS Subscribers or regular readers.)
Participate

Once your guest post is online and readers have started commenting, don’t leave them alone, join the discussion. Comments allow readers to interact directly with bloggers, so be ready to come up with fast valuable opinions and also answers to readers’ questions. It is also an additional chance for you to bring home new readers.

Remember, don’t be selfish and send those blockbuster posts out to established bloggers, chances are they will have a much better impact for your blog if they’re published to a large crowd of readers.

Have you had any success posting as a Guest Blogger? Do you have other tips you wish to share? Let us continue this discussion over the comments.