15 Powerful Guest Blogging Tips to Grow Your Audience
Updated December 2022
What You Need to Know About Guest Blogging
It is 2022 (soon to be 2023,) and by now, you should be aware of the benefits of maintaining an active blog. Numerous studies have shown that companies and individuals who write and maintain a regular blog have much higher organic engagement rates. Blogging is also an effective way to create fresh, relevant content, as Google and other search engines require.
But did you know that guest blogging has many of the same benefits? Our guest blogging tips will show you what to do to become an active guest blogger and get your content in front of new audiences in no time!
There are over 600 million blogs in the world today, out of over 1.9 billion websites. In the United States, there are over 31 million active bloggers posting at least once per month.
Guest blogging is a little different from writing your blog. On your blog, you can write more or less what you want to or what your brand guidelines specify. But writing for someone else presents new opportunities and challenges for the guest blogger. To help you get a great start on your guest blogging career, our team of bloggers and content strategists have come up with 15 powerful guest blogging tips.
60% of bloggers write one to five guest posts per month. 87% of bloggers come up with guest post ideas themselves, but only 52% of them do the actual writing.
Before we go any further, you need to understand that guest blogging is not merely rehashing existing content and posting it on a different blog. Google hates scraped content! For our guest blogging tips to help, you have to do one thing: create fresh, original content. Sorry, no shortcuts! Got it? OK, let’s get started!
12 Powerful Guest Blogging Tips
1 – Form relationships, not just target lists
It is not a bad idea to get to know blog owners before you contact them about a guest submission. This information makes things more natural and paves the way for multiple guest posts rather than single submissions.
You’ll need to establish a relationship with site owners before approaching them to recommend a guest post (a process known as “pitching”). Some people also call it guest post outreach. Don’t be fooled by all the email pitch templates you find online; cold pitches won’t work for most site owners unless it is relevant to the blogger.
2 – Read a blog before you submit to it
You should be familiar with key topics and themes and whether the blog tends towards long or short articles or a particular style.
3 – Only choose blogs you want to be associated with
This tip is familiar to us, but we wanted to note it in our guest blogging tips because many guest bloggers overlook it. If a blog has many readers or a higher page rank than your site, It doesn’t necessarily mean that you want your ideas to appear.
4 – Remember the three significant benefits of guest blogging
You should seek exposure to the right audience when writing guest blog posts. You want links to your website and the credibility of being published in the right places.
5 – Understand the benefits of your content
It’s impossible to put together a high-quality guest blog post if you aren’t aware of your value. As a prospective guest blogger, the responsibility to prove yourself worthy is yours. The best way to understand your value is to be clear about what you can offer. What benefit is there for the target site editor? Identifying your strong points is essential.
Perhaps you have something new to share that complements the target site’s existing content? You will need to sell yourself in a competitive market, so be honest. Evaluate all aspects of your site, and get to know its strengths and weaknesses. Building long-term relationships with others is difficult if you seem flaky, unsure, or lacking brand confidence.
6 – Offer something of value
Before pitching any ideas, it’s vital to do some solid research. Choosing the right site to target is as important as putting a great pitch together. Ask yourself if your knowledge is of interest to the target audience. No established editor will look twice at a guest post pitch that offers no value to them or their followers.
Make your pitch irresistible by demonstrating how your content will appeal to their audience, offering to carry out detailed keyword research, or proposing you cover a topic already penciled in on their content calendar.
7 – Keep to a regular guest blogging schedule
Just like any other form of blogging, consistency is crucial. Stick to a maintainable schedule, like one guest post per week, to make the most significant possible impact.
8 – Take feedback from blog owners and readers
Sometimes blog owners will reject the post you submitted but ask for something different in the future. If you can accommodate them, that’s an excellent way to keep the relationship and conversation moving forward.
9 – Be persistent but not annoying
If a blog doesn’t like your first couple of submissions, try sending them to another blog. But don’t forget about the initial contact! Persistence is another of our crucial guest blogging tips: the best marketing opportunities require time to develop fully.
10 – Engage with the commenters on your guest blog submissions
Pay attention to the comments provided by actual readers. Engagement sharpens your pen, opens new discussions, and helps you see the potential for future posts.
11 – Submit articles that make you stand out
Sending posts with humor, statistics, or those based on personal experiences make your content much more memorable, unique, and, most importantly, more credible!
12 – Pay attention to the blog guidelines
Many blogs have very tight rules about what links you can include, what photos you can provide, and even the length of your author bio. Your goal should be to stay within these guidelines while maximizing the marketing value of your post.
Follow these strictly to avoid getting your draft rejected (this can happen). Besides making sure your draft will be approved, following the guidelines will reduce the time you’ll need to address any edits the website’s editor suggests.
13 – Track your submissions
Tracking your submissions is another of our guest blogging tips! Once you start blogging regularly, you might find it challenging to keep track of which posts and ideas you sent to particular blogs. This reason is why editorial calendars can be extremely helpful. You can download an editorial calendar and templates here if you don’t have one.
14 – Promote your guest posts
Promoting your articles on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook would be best.
Don’t wait for the blog owner to tell you; do it yourself as soon as the post is published.
Also, you might want to place an outbound link to another blog in your guest post. You can then tell that blog owner that you linked to their work, and they will consider promoting your guest post to their readers. Again, cross-promotion is an excellent strategy to build authority and get others to like you.
But don’t include links just for the sake of building backlinks. A blog owner will reject your post if you’re only trying to build backlinks.
15 – Don’t forget to feed your blog regularly
The last of our guest blogging tips is also one of the most important. Yes, guest blogging can be fun and pay off pretty quickly in terms of marketing impact. Please don’t get so focused on it that you forget your blog!
Implementing Our Guest Blogging Tips
As you can see from the above guest blogging tips, this is not rocket science. Some of you are already guest blogging, so this is just a helpful reminder. Even if you are new to blogging or guest blogging, this is still straightforward enough for you to do on your own if you feel out of your comfort zone to ask a fellow blogger for help.
59.8% of bloggers guest-post at least occasionally.
If you are looking for guest bloggers to write posts for your blog, you also have several options. Maybe you know an expert in your field who happens to blog. If not, check with your local college or university to see if they offer writing or blogging courses.
Be aware that students are not as experienced as professionals, so check that their post meets your criteria. If you are interested in a more authoritative voice, you may need to find a professional copywriter.
If you are still unsure about our guest blogging tips and how they apply to you, don’t worry! Reach out and contact us. Our expert team will listen to you, answer your questions, and determine the best way for your business to get the most out of our guest blogging tips. That is one of our specialties, after all!
Are You Writing Guest Posts?
Are you writing for other blogs? How is that working out for you? Do you have any guest blogging tips you would like to share? Feel free to add your comments below so our audience can benefit and grab our feed so you don’t miss our next post! And feel free to share our guest blogging tips with your audience!
Thank you! We appreciate your help ending bad business websites, one pixel at a time!
By Gregor Saita
Co-Founder / CXO
@gregorsaita
