If you’re a blogger, content creator, or marketer, you’re familiar with the importance of guest-blogging. However, blog owners might have turned you down a few times for different reasons. For example, your pitch probably wasn’t good enough, or the site choice was wrong. To make sure you get the chance to guest blog, read the following guidelines and make notes. By the end of this article, you’ll be able to make successful proposals and create guest blogging opportunities yourself.
Meet Criteria
Guest-blogging opportunities are at every corner. However, it doesn’t mean you should take advantage of every one of them. Before creating a guest blog post, you want to be sure you have the same niche or industry in common. Otherwise, it won’t produce the expected results. Therefore, determine if the site meets the criteria. For example, the blogger should be active on social media because it means your content gets promoted on various platforms. Then, the audience should be your target one and engaged in comments and shares, so you can interact and build relationships.
Seize Guest-Blogging Opportunities
The go-to place for searching for guest blogging opportunities is Google. By typing keywords from your industry, you can find many blogs accepting guest posts within seconds. The best part about this is that you get directed to the post submission page with detailed guidelines and contact info. Apart from Google, you can also search the close-knit community on Twitter and seize the opportunities you find. In case you want to create the opportunities yourself, network through LinkedIn. Ask other fellow bloggers to recommend you to blog owners they worked with in the past.
Prepare Before You Pitch
Not all bloggers are lucky to land a guest blogging gig. Often that’s because they find the right site and immediately contact the owner missing one crucial step. To increase your odds of landing the gig, you have to prepare your pitch. Before you reach out to the owner with a guest post proposal, get the know the site’s content inside out. Who is the content for? What type of content can customers find on the site? How long is the content on average? Then, you can analyze the guest posts and their authors’ bio. This information can help you determine if you’re the right person for the job. Also, you’ll know what to expect based on the success of previous guest posts.
Prepare Some More
During the preparatory stage, leave no stone unturned. The essential step you have to take is reading the guidelines and making sure your pitch satisfies the owner’s criteria. In the guidelines, you’ll discover whether or not you’re required to submit only a proposal or the entire content piece. Next, you’ll familiarize yourself with the format, length, and the allowed featured links and images. Finally, if you need to produce the content right away instead of pitching ideas, include a few internal links from that site. It’s a good guest blogging practice, and it shows you’re familiar with its content and covered topics.
Pitch Your Guest Post
At this point, you’re ready to pitch your guest post to the chosen site’s owner. All that’s left to do is to leave a good first impression. You should personalize your email instead of sticking to the formalities. Since the information about the contact person is most likely on the post submission or about page, you can use it to start the email strong. In one of the paragraphs, mention you’re a blogger. Some blog owners prefer other fellow bloggers to write their guest posts. It doesn’t hurt if you’re an entrepreneur, too; highlight your blogger side first. You can share some links to your previous work or portfolio so the blog owner gets some idea of your background and the quality of your craft.
Monitor Metrics and Maintain Relationships
Although your content was published, you should still maintain a relationship with the blog owner. For example, you might want to guest post again in the future. If the blog owner is a blogger themselves, you can return the favour by offering them to guest post on your blog. Similarly, don’t forget about your guest post. You created it with a goal in mind, whether it was to increase visibility or drive traffic. Therefore, monitor its metrics to see if it’s producing desired results.
Conclusion
Guest-blogging is an amazing opportunity for your site to take advantage of other reputable sites’ success and achieve set marketing goals. To take it, you first have to make a great impression with your pitch. If you follow these guidelines, the next time you pitch for a guest post will be a notable success.
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