The Secret to Building Blog Credibility: The Practice of Guest Posting
A blogger’s greatest asset is his or her credibility. It is a blog’s credibility which results in readers and eventually regular subscribers. There are millions of blogs out there and unless you can brand yourself as an authority in your niche, your blog will never live up to its full potential.
So, how does one go about building credibility?
It is a long process that requires a great deal of time and effort. You need to be able to show what you know and demonstrate why others should listen. However, it is more than just great content that you need. To build credibility, you need a platform on which you can demonstrate your expertise to the masses. The practice of guest posting in the blogosphere gives aspiring bloggers this platform.
For those of you who don’t know, the practice of guest posting is when one makes a post on another blog. No blogger alone can provide expertise on every subject matter so they recruit guest posters to provide new perspectives and insights. This is a guest post on John Chow. In exchange for writing the post, the author gets a byline with a short bio and a link back to his/her website.
Guest posting is by far the easiest way to establish yourself as an authority in your niche. It is a free marketing tactic which associates yourself with well-respected individuals in your niche, instantly building credibility. It also gives you the platform you need to share what you have to offer. An insightful guest post, backed up with well developed posts on your own blog is one of the most effective ways to find new readers.
To illustrate my point, lets look at my personal case study. I started AMBeat.com as a blog about entrepreneurship and business opportunities a little more than a month ago. For this blog, I have exclusively been promoting it through the use of guest posts. I have written posts on various blogs in this niche including ProBlogger, Shoemoney, JohnChow, and others. These posts have driven hundreds of targeted visitors to my website. However, more than just raw traffic that resulted from these posts, it is important to analyze visitor engagement with the blog. I saw that these visitors were spending more time on my site and browsing more pages. Within days of the first few guest posts going live, the average visit length increased from less than 20 seconds to over two minutes a day. Page views per visit increased from one to about three and bounce rate decreased to about 42%, significantly less than those of my competitors. (Statistics from Alexa and Statcounter)
Guest posting results in visitors who interact with the site; reading multiple articles, commenting, subscribing, and most importantly coming back for future posts. This tactic will never drive as many visitors as a popular article on Digg or StumbleUpon will, but it will drive targeted traffic that will help in building an initial reader base.
To get started with guest posting, make a list of reputable blogs in your niche, large and small. Once you have made your list start contacting bloggers with ideas for posts you think would be a good fit for their blogs. Your messages will not always be replied, but of you e-mail enough bloggers, some guest posting opportunities will come. I recommend starting with smaller blogs in your niche and working your way up. The most authoritative blogs in any niche will be the most selective and showing past guest posting experience is a good way to get one foot in the door.
When pitching a blog, make sure to take the time to search through the archives to ensure no similar posts have previously been published. Analyze the writing style so that you can craft your post in a similar manner. Encourage discussion through the use of comments and make sure to interact with any responses on your post.
Guest posting is an art that requires patience and persistence. Large amounts of traffic may not come immediately; however with time targeted quality guest posts can result in regular readers and a vibrant active blog community.
This post was written by Aditya Mahesh, founder of AMBeat.com, a complete resource for entrepreneurs complete with advice articles, start-up profiles, interviews, news analysis, and more.
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Trackbacks
- The Secret to Building Blog Credibility – 7 More Tips | John Chow dot Com - October 9, 2009 at 11:09 am
- Building Credibility via Guest Posts | AM Beat - October 14, 2009 at 8:40 pm
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Hey John! Really ironic you posted this today as I have just begun my guest posting journey. I got wrote a guest post for dumblittleman and positively present
I’ve tried guest posting for a few sites and the response has been mediocre. I guess it just depends on the type of niche you are working in.
Actuall it was Aditya Mahesh who wrote it.
Yeah.
This article is a guest post.
And surely we learn a lot from it.
Yes we like the writing style of Aditya … with in depth analysis.
Thanks for sharing, it is help to more understand how to find suitable blog for guest postng. I really think that guest posting is a great way to get both quality traffic and backlink.
The suitable blogs for guest posting are the A bloggers if you want to get well known.
can you more specific ?
Thanks Aditya for this well written and informative post. I like how you are using Guest Blogging as one of your primary methods of driving traffic to a brand new site. Now how did you get a PR Ranking of 5 in just over a month? That is unheard of isn’t it? Do you think that is just from Guest Blogging or something else?
I think guest posting on other blog work well to drive traffic to your main blog, but you have to write something really interesting to grab the attention of readers and make them want to read more from you, if you do guest post on several blog, people will recognize you, and maybe become one of your faithful reader.
Wow I just realized that Aditya’s one month old blog has a PR5! That’s unbelievable for a 1 month old blog! But Aditya is doing guest posting in all high PR blog such as JohnChow, Darren, shoemoney and etc, all of them have PR5 and above.
But still I want to know whether it’s guest posting which helps to boost the PR.
I went and had a look-see. There aren’t many backlinks, but they are generally from high PR pages with do-follow. Not just guests posts, but an intelligently targeted link-building campaign, witht he emphasis on quality rather than quantity.
I like it, and gave him a StumbleUpon review as a reward
Yes he bought this domain in the month of May and I think in such a short time he did a superb job.
I couldn’t agree more about the value of guest posting. Like you, my blog is still very young, and most of my traffic comes from commenting others.
I have already witnessed the power of recommendation in the form of retweets. Posting a guest’s article is perhaps the highest form of recommendation a blog can give. (Would you post something written by someone else if you didn’t believe in it?)
Good reminder on the steps of how to secure a guest post as well.
I’m interested to hear how much traffic you get from this guest post
Thanks for breaking this down into manageable parts. The idea of guest posting seems a tad overwhelming, but your point is very well taken. Start with smaller blogs, and if you ask enough, someone will accept some free content.
Let’s face it though, I do not think that too many people have the writing skills to make it onto the A-list blogs, but you have to start somewhere, and practise makes perfect, I suppose!
I do feel that guest blogging is a very sound link and authority building exercise.
Great info here. I just started up a blog about a week ago and all the advice given here so far has been a great help. I don’t know if I’m ready to do some guest posting yet, but I will definitely try it after reading this, perhaps after I’ve blogged for some time.
Great Advice! I am all over this…putting a list together now.
Hey john,nice post there.I agree, guest posting can really help on building credibility
it’s not john who wrote this post but a guest named Aditya.
Bwahahahahahahaaaa! Some people are just the funniest. It makes you think whether they actually read this blog post or not….
Guest posting is a great way to get yourself better known that just starting a blog and hopng for people to stop by.
I totally agree with you.
Guest posting would be great, but you need to have good point of views and writing skill for the guest post to be well known. Guest posting in the right blogs should be the important point too.
I couldn’t agree more to the strategy
Just two of my posts on “Membership Mastery Course” on this blog has earned me hundreds of visitors so far. My blog (SiteJerk.com) is climbing in SEs quickly.
I will be expanding on this idea more in coming few weeks.
I am sure this post will help lot of people in future too..
Regds,
Deep
Sounds a lot like textbook evaluation copies! Free samples to show off what you’ve got. Thanks for this informative post; you have definitely gained credibility in my mind!
Hi, John, I would love to be a guest poster. I am looking for bloggers that will allow me to be a guest poster. Can you recommend of one to start with for a relatively new blogger such as me.
thanks
One way of reaching guest bloggers is the old fashioned way – email. Email is casual, it implies serious intent and most important – the vast majority of bloggers check their email couple of times a day so it might as well be the fastest way to connect.
In addition, with the intense growth of social media networks, Twitter and Facebook are also great ways of reaching other bloggers. According to recent polls, 31% of internet users are spending more than 2 hours on Twitter and Facebook a day! But then again, 95% of all statistics are made up…
It might even mean that you are better off trying to reach someone via Tweeting than calling them on the phone. Amazing huh?
That’s a great method for brand building especially for a new started blog. I’ve seen you done a few guest posts in JohnChow blog, this shows that you have good tips and excellent writing skills for the posts. I’m sure your blog will be growing rapidly in short period.
Regards,
Lee
There is no doubt that Mahesh really have indepth view … But if you are into blogging for few years or say 12 – 15 months you will be able to know that your name as brand is quite important …
Building Brand … and keeping that brand both need great time involvement and devotion.
Spot on ZK! It is all about branding, and in the ADD blogosphere you have to keep it up, otherwise you quickly become yesterday’s old news. Most guys don’t have enough time and/or content to populate their own blogs, so where are they going to find time to write guest posts?
people love lists in blogs
5 ways to make money with…
10 ways to find a soulmate…
write that for your bog post, then take 1 of the items in the list and really go into detail on it and expand it to about 400-500 words. Then ask other blog to post it as a guest blog post.
Make sure you have a link back to the original post, with good keywords in the link text. You will build really good backlinks by doing this.
If you can’t find a guest blog post, just use it on ezinearticles
The good news is always this: if you have a blog, you can write about the “whys” of blogging. You can write about the process rather than the expertise.
I got onto Technorati’s top 100 blog list, picked a handful of blogs that I thought I could write something more, and started pitching my posts. To date, nobody has said no.
thank you for a concise yet meaningful advice
Hey Aditya,
That case study was really inspiring. Great growth for your blog. However, few screenshots would attract a lot more readers to post & your blog. Because, as someone has said correctly, ” Seeing is believing.”
What do you think?
Guesting might not be for everyone, but there are few things more satisfying to me than seeing one of my posts on Problogger and then having hordes of readers visit. They often say things like, “I never, never would have found your blog if you hadn’t been a guest here.
I must say that this is one of the ways.
Another way is to help people in the same niche in a forum. And if possible link it back to a blog post that will help them answer their questions or difficulties.
Persistence is key when it comes to finding a guest blogger. You will be turned down over and over, just don’t give up. Great post Aditya.
Excellent post. No doubt guest posting is a great tactic. I know I’ve found a few blogs myself reading from guest posters.
Yes! I agree with Gabe…Guest posting is great strategy to build credibility.
Arrgh! I mad because I don’t speak english well! (English is my second language)
Thanks for the great information. I was looking for ways to expand my blog content.
Thanks!
AMbeat is writing half the articles on this blog, where is John?
John is here:
http://xun6.com/file/d26070415/make-money-online.pdf.html
John’s article is here:
http://xun6.com/file/d26070415/make-money-online.pdf.html
John, someone used your name to leave comment? Check and resolve it?
Nice post, thanks for sharing, it is difficult to get an entry for newbies
l heard a lot about ambeat before… based from what i see and what i read . you are a nice writer
air tickets 243 cheap tickets 09258 plane tickets 8-)))
Guest posting on reputed blog means you are capitalising the name of famous blog and people would love to know more about you through you blog.
I think you’ve given me something I not only understand, but that I understand enough to put into play. Gonna give it a whirl and see what happens.
For those who has had not much luck with getting any Guest Post opportunities, just remember the maxim “Give Before You Receive.”
Give others the opportunity to do a Guest Post on your blog first. Build the relationship with that blogger. Do this with a handful of bloggers in your niche or complimentary to your niche. I can guarantee you that in good time, you’ll be Guest Posting in ALL these blogs that you have helped build.
And to show my point, I’d like to invite some of you to do a Guest Post on my blog. Hop on over and if you think it may be a good fit for your writing and at the same time relevant/complimentary to my niche, contact me.
Cheers!
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I ran across this hotel blog and wasn’t sure what to think.
Should I trust it, or do you recommend any other sites?