Guest blogging is one of the best ways to increase traffic, generate leads, and build brand awareness. From a business perspective, well-chosen guest blogging opportunities can result in a massive amount of positive impact on a site.
Guest blogging gets you noticed by the people who need to notice you. As a brand, guest blogging opportunities allow your company to get their name out there, while at the same time allowing the readers to then experience your content production skills firsthand. When you do guest blogging right, you’ll start to realize the massive return this form of organic content can afford.
3 Ways to Determine Your Guest Content Goals
Before you embark upon the twists and turns of the guest blogging road, you’re going to need to determine what you want to get out of your guest blogging opportunities. Just like every other structured marketing campaign, you need to have an end-game in mind to properly utilize your guesting posts. Ideally, as a guest blogger, you will be seeking to do one or more of the following:
Position yourself as a go-to person in the industry. Guest blogging allows you to share your experience and knowledge, which helps others perceive you as an expert.
Gain exposure for your brand, products, or services. This also helps to generate backlinks that help your SEO campaign immensely.
Drawing an audience. When done correctly, guest blogging can help you gain new readers that can become sales for your site.
For these goals to come to fruition, you need to have a unique mix of skills and execution. Just having an idea isn’t enough to get the most out of your guest posting. You need to become an expert in your field, reading every bit of information you can get your hands on. Once you’ve done that, you need to develop a real and actionable plan for gaining the attention you deserve from your guest blogging efforts.
How to Figure Out What’s a Good Guest Blogging Opportunity and What Isn’t
Most of the major players in the content creation field are open to the idea of having a guest blogger on their site. The tough part can sometimes be being chosen from the crowd. After all, experienced guest bloggers are more likely to get first preference than inexperienced bloggers.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get your foot in the door, though. After all – everyone starts somewhere!
When you’re just starting out, you may have to settle for less prestigious guest blogging opportunities. Although these aren’t as glamorous or far-reaching as the larger blogs, they are no less important in your quest to build a name as a well-known blogger.
That said, it’s well worth your time and energy to learn to differentiate good guest blogging opportunities from bad ones. Here’s how:
What Good Blogging Opportunities Look Like
Good guest blogging opportunities are those that give you a decent amount of coverage for your time investment. Remember, your guest blog should be as well researched (or better!) than your personal or in-house blogging efforts.
For professional guest blogging situations you are going to need to pitch your topic to the owner of the blog to see if it meshes with what they’re trying to achieve. Generally, you and the host can sit down and discuss what they expect and what you can deliver. From there, you may be able to develop a working topic and title before you get writing.
Keep in mind that some guest blogging options will offer less support than others, and this is largely a function of traffic. The most in-demand guest blogging platforms get thousands of submissions each month, and it’s impossible to keep up with them all manually.
That said, these platforms tend to use electronic forms and a team of editors and content managers to get guest blogs up on their sites. This shouldn’t rule a guest blogging platform out for you. Instead, pay attention to things like the professionalism of the staff, the Alexa Rank of the site, and the expedience with which staffers get back to you.
What Bad Guest Blogging Opportunities Look Like
To put it simply: bad guest blogging opportunities are those that don’t give you a lot of coverage or that abuse your work without giving you enough in return. Beware of sites that make it excessively easy to guest blog for them, since they’re among the worst offenders.
While you shouldn’t have to jump through flaming hoops to get your post featured, you should expect there to be a review and quality assurance process. If this doesn’t exist, it’s a likely bet that, not only will your guest post not count for much, but that it will quickly be lost in the sea of low-quality blogs out there.
Keep this in mind: If all you have to do is sign up and post then it’s probably not a very high-quality opportunity. Avoiding these sites is important since they don’t help you attain your guest blogging goals. These are usually the sites that take anything you give to them as a blog post without an actual discussion with the owner or content manager. Again: if you don’t have to talk to a real person or team, it’s probably not a good idea to guest post for them.
Guest Blogging Doesn’t Mean the End of Direct Content Production
Just because you’re getting into guest blogging doesn’t mean that you can stop producing your own original content. If anything, it’s an encouragement to continue with your own direct content. When you finally start to earn customers from a guest blog, you’ll still need to show them that you can back that content up with your own work. That’s why maintaining your own blog and content creation efforts is so important throughout.
Setting up an internal content production schedule helps you to balance your private posting with whatever guest opportunities arise. Guest blogging allows you to create relationships with the audience of the host blog and this can translate into growing your own audience. When you look at it like that, it’s clear that both approaches are essential, and that you can’t afford to compromise either.
In fact, having great content on your own blog is essential to being accepted to a guest blogging platform. Just like you work to boost your credit score before you apply for a mortgage, you need to build up your own body of content before you apply for a guest blogging platform.
That said, spend several months before you start guest blogging publishing your own high-quality content. This way, any publisher who checks your blog for reference will find that you’re a skilled, successful writer with a lot to offer.
How to Start Guest Blogging: 7 Tips
So, now that you know how important guest blogging is, let’s talk about how to do it. Here are seven tips:
1. Start Small
Unless you’ve already got a very well established brand platform, you can’t expect to pitch Neil Patel and get featured. Start small. Platforms like Business.com are fantastic guest blogging opportunities that don’t require you to be an internet superstar to get featured.
While some people see this modest start as a frustration, since things aren’t moving as fast as they’d like, it’s the natural course of things. Start small and build your way up as you progress. Not only does this allow you to build your skills, but it also helps you build your brand as a reputable guest blogger.
2. Find Some Guest Blogging Platforms
The next step is to find a guest blogging platform. If you don’t already have a few possibilities in mind, you’ll need to start with a few simple internet searches. To start, type a simple query into Google: “[your niche] guest blog.” You can also substitute things like “write for us,” “contribute content,” or “get featured.”
This simple search should offer some results. As an alternative, you can look at sites that your competitors or friends are blogging for, and apply there.
3. Pitch Your Guest Post
Once you’ve found a guest platform you want to contribute to, you’ll need to “pitch” your post idea. When you go to guest blog, the first thing you’ll need to do is develop a plan for what you’ll write about. There’s not a reputable guest blog out there that will accept a post without a pitch topic, so it’s well worth spending time on this process.
When you start the pitching process, here are some things you’ll want to consider:
What sort of problems has the blog owner not tackled yet? Can I cover this?
What sort of content is this blog known for? What encourages its readers to read and share posts?
What will be relevant to their readers?
Remember, when you pitch a blog post, you want to write about something that’s within your area of expertise, but also something that is relevant to the blog’s audience. If you write to an audience outside that one, you’re risking your pitch being turned down or your post not being as helpful and informative as it could.
If you incorporate this sort of thinking into your pitch for a topic, you should not have many problems getting featured. Always keep in mind that reading the blog you want to contribute to is the single best way to help you determine a good topic for pitching to the owner.
4. Write Your Post
Once your pitch is accepted and you’ve got the all-clear to start writing, you’ll want to keep one thing in mind throughout: quality. Remember, your purpose here is to appeal to the blog owner’s audience. This isn’t about you. This isn’t about your company, and it’s not about how great your product is. This is incredibly important. If your blog comes off as salesy or self-congratulatory in nature, you’ll place yourself at real risk of being pulled from the platform. Why, you ask? Site owners don’t want to populate their platforms with useless information, and that’s exactly what self-pitching content is.
Instead, seek to be helpful and relevant to the audience in question. Put yourself in their shoes and develop a plan for answering their questions and seeing to their needs. The more you can cater to their desires, the more successful your guest post will be, and the more likely the platform owner will be to feature more of your posts in the future.
Take your time on the writing process. If you rush, your post won’t come out as well as it could have, which is death for a guest blog. Leave yourself plenty of time to edit your post and read it for accuracy and relevance.
5. Be Prepared to Edit as Needed
If you’re writing for an industry magazine or something similar, there’s a decent chance that your pitch post will come back to you with edits. Be prepared for this. While it doesn’t mean that your pitch was garbage, it does mean that you’ll need to add to it to make it fit the organization’s goals.
If you do get a response email from an editor or site owner, and they want some edits, complete these as quickly as possible. Site owners don’t have time to sit around and wait for you, and they want to get content up on their site as quickly as possible. The faster you can complete these edits, the more likely it is you will be that person.
6. Write Your Guest Post Bio
Next, you’ll want to write your guest post bio. Generally, guest posting platforms have some rules for these. These may include character limits and restrictions on the types and number of links you can include.
No matter what the restrictions are (or aren’t), your guest post bio should be short, professional, and to-the-point. Highlight your largest authority metrics and include a link to your website or social media platform of choice (assuming your guest blog platform allows it) so people can find out more about you.
7. Respond To Commenters
Now comes the fun part: responding to your readers. If you’ve written an engaging and exciting guest post, people will respond with comments, input, and questions. As the author, it’s your job to engage with these commenters. Keep in mind that you always want to be professional and avoid pitching yourself or your company in these posts.
The more helpful and relevant you can be to these commenters, the more you’ll help the site owner out (After all – who doesn’t want friendly, relevant, informative people posting on their site?) and the easier it will be to gain future guest posting opportunities.
The Case for Guest Blogging
At the end of the day, guest blogging is one of the best ways to get your name out there and to generate leads and traffic from external blogs. While the path to a successful guest blogging placement can be long, and there are a lot of dead ends, every legitimate opportunity you get is one more step on the road to success.
By defining your goals early and working hard to achieve them, it’s easy to use guest blogging as a method to build your online reputation and broaden your readership. To ensure your guest blogging efforts are as productive as possible, always ask yourself if a guest posting opportunity is helping you achieve your goals.
If it’s not, you’re better off moving on and finding one that will. This helps you to separate good guest posting opportunities from bad ones, and will ensure that your efforts are always going to the most productive platforms out there.
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Have you ever wondered…what will blog writing be like 100 years from now? Will we see space aliens eating blogs, bring new meaning to “digesting” what one reads? Will writers be telepathically transmitting stories to paper? Will paper even exist—it’s on the way out the door right now, isn’t it? What the heck WILL we see; lots of green and UFO activity?
Let’s go BACK in time to think about the future. Dial the clock back 100 years from today and it would be the year 1914. What was writing like back then? It certainly wasn’t as we know it today. In 1914, World War I began. A lot of writers were reporters and journalists who put themselves in the heat of the action as one of the greatest wars to engulf the world revved up. 1914 was also a year of significant events in literature.
Writing 100 years ago didn’t involve handy word processing programs like Microsoft Word and WordPerfect. Spelling and grammar check wasn’t computer automated, it was left up to writers and editors to sort out. The rules of grammar were much more stringently held to, and reading literary works published between 1900 and 1920 reveal an astonishing evolution of style and the interpretation of the so called rules. Blog writing, social media and online content marketing didn’t even exist yet. Oh yeah, and personal computers and handheld mobile devices, they were pure fiction!
If things have changed this much in 100 years, what can the next 100 years hold?
Speculating About the Future of Blog Writing
We’re not exactly talking about a scientific topic, now are we? But speculating can be fun nonetheless. In the past 25 years alone we have seen an unprecedented improvement in technology, all of which has contributed to blog writing as we know it today. For example:
Microsoft Word is arguably one of the most popular and used word processing programs in the industry. According to a Wikipedia history of Microsoft Word, the first version of the program was developed by Richard Brodie and Charles Simonyi in 1981. However, it wasn’t until the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990 that Word became a sizeable commercial success and started being used by the masses. Later, Word began to receive labels per Windows OS to match each OS. Today, we can purchase Microsoft Office 365 for home or business. The new suite includes Word and is integrated with the latest advancements in cloud technology, providing an interface, work station and even files that can be accessed from any device in any location so long as you have a log-in and an active Internet connection.
Before we had personal computers with word processing programs, we had something called a word processor. When I first started writing, I used a Brother Word Processor WP-230B—talk about a dinosaur! It could switch between a typewriter and word processing mode. It was pretty limited in capabilities compared to today’s computers, but it got the job done with better efficiency than handwriting or a traditional typewriter.
Enough reminiscing. Let’s talk about the future of blog writing, a huge topic as of late, particularly in the area of guest blogging.
Guest Blogging to See De-Evolution
In January of 2014, the blogging community held its collective breath as Google’s Matt Cutts declared the “decay and fall” of guest blogging while staples in the industry said guest blogging is not dead. There is truth in both opinions. Cutts’ is correct that spammy, bad quality guest blogging is dying. And as it should! The writing industry has always stood for quality, which is why bad quality writing on the Internet is ever so surely being replaced by high, editorial quality content.
It’s likely that in the following years we will see an increase in the quality of guest blogging as it returns to its roots. It will become more finely tuned, relevant, educational and engaging.
Blogging & SEO
In just the past 5 years we’ve seen amazing changes in the realm of search engine optimization. Keywords are going, going, gone as a hardcore staple, which opens up blogging and other types of online writing to better flow, higher quality and just plain good writing. In essence, online writing is returning to the true roots of literature: telling a story and telling it well.
The Future of Blogging Is Bright
Let’s talk about the origin of the blog. Back in the day, blog posts were something anyone could whip up. They were opinion tools, a means for anyone who had an opinion of any kind to blurt it out to whoever took an interest and decided to read. Today, the landscape of blogging has radically morphed. Blog platforms offer a myriad of tools and social channels all designed to help you create and communicate something. Blogs now support audio and video and the comment areas of can contain anything from intellectual discussions to bunkering down in the trenches in an attempt to defend a particular thought or idea.
Blog writing is, and has always been, about self-expression. Today, the blog is a content marketing tool leveraged by the freelancer, small to medium sized business owner, and the big corporations. In the business world, blogs are used to communicate informative, relevant information. They’re a means of sharing thoughts and ideas via social media and stirring up conversation.
However, it’s still a powerful tool for the would-be writers who write for the sake of writing and self-expression. Once you step into the world of content marketing, you can easily lose sight of these almost pure forms of blogging. They’re still out there. They’ve been there since the inception of blogging, and it’s my bet that 100 years from now they’ll still be here. The would-be writers and folks who blog for the pure self-expression of it are often the pioneers who push the technology right along, but without the recognition companies and businesses receive.
According to ViperChill.com, over 181 million people actively use a blog platform. A lot of people are using their blogs to make money. Blogs can be highly profitable, and this legitimate form of making money will likely continue to grow in leaps and bounds over the next several years as more and more people find success.
Technology and Blogging – Where Will Be In 100 Years?
Ever watch Star Trek? According to IMDB.com, the very first episode of what would become a multimillion dollar franchise and fan phenomena, aired in 1966. Right from the start, the program almost seemed to predict the future. I stumbled across this humorous infographic style graphic from MindSlapMedia.com while writing this blog:
I just had to share this because it demands appreciation, whether you like the show or not! In 1966, Captain Kirk was using a wireless handheld communication device that the masses got their hands on in 1973, the cellular flip phone. In 1987, Captain Picard was using a computerized pad that gave him Internet-like access at his fingertips. In 2010, we saw the release of the revolutionary iPad—and for those of us who even glanced at the Star Trek series, we instantly felt like we were taking a huge technological step forward.
In 1988, Star Trek: The Next Generation displayed a visual three way conference. What a concept! In 2008, we were able to video conference by using modern video technology in conjunction with the Internet. Finally, in 1998, Captain Sisko from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was using a head display that operated like a window. In 2013, Google released Google Glass.
Did Star Trek predict the future? The answer depends on who you ask. But here’s the KEY point to take away: if humanity can dream up a new form of technology, we have an unparalleled way of eventually creating it.
The Future of Blogging Is Limited Only By the Imagination
There’s no way to predict exactly what blog writing will be like 100 years from now. It’s safe to say that new and improved tools will be implemented as technology continues to advance. Who knows? 50 years from now we might be slapping a transmitter to our temple and thinking our blogs onto the computer screen. Keyboards might be a thing of the past as we use mental power to write, edit, post and share a blog!
Will aliens be reading our blogs in 100 years? You never know! For years we’ve joked about aliens receiving our radio signals and tuning in to our world from a galaxy far, far away. If they are, it’s a fair assumption they’re tapping into our Internet and perusing our blogs. Who knows, maybe they ARE eating blogs and digesting them in ways we never thought possible.
The truth is we have no idea just how blogging will evolve. But one thing is an absolute certainty: we write to tell stories. We write to express ourselves, share ideas, inspire, inform and even destroy. The core purposes of writing haven’t changed in the last 100 years, and it’s doubtful they’ll change in the next 100.
Years ago we said that the pen was mightier than the sword. Today, we use electronic means of writing over the good old fashioned pen and paper. Some of us (the very brave) use voice recognition software to talk out our writing before editing it over; not really use the keyboard much as it is. 100 years from now, we just might be using our noggins in place of the keyboard and mouse.
Regardless of how we blog, our reasons wll likely stay the same. After all, we haven’t changed why we write since cave paintings: we’re all writing by whatever means we have to tell a story, to record something that we hope stands the test of time, and is still here for people to read hundreds of years from now.
Applying today’s Blogging to the Future
When it comes to the content marketing world, we’re betting that the future of blogging revolves around catering to what the audience wants. Right now, audiences want informative material. They want to type a search phrase into a search engine about “21 angry bird toys to buy” and receive relevant information designed to educate them before they make a purchase. People also want good story telling. They want to know why your company does what it does. How did you get into the business? Why did you want to be better than everyone else, and “I wanted to turn a profit” isn’t a viable answer!
Stories drive traffic today. Look at any company on the Internet. Look at yours. Publish a blog that tells a story, a good relevant story to your company’s niche. Will it increase readership and gain new exposure to your business? Chances are it will. Don’t believe us? Just try it. It doesn’t take long to write a 500 to 1,000 word blog with a catchy title, share it over your social media channels and watch the influx of traffic. Go the extra mile to start a conversation, and you’ll likely make connections with a crowd of new people, all interested in your business because of the story you decided to share.
People want to connect with what they read. It’s a sure bet that as we set foot into the next 100 years of blog writing, we’re going to see content that is designed to make a connection. We’re going to see tools that make it easier to create strong connections. Who knows, in 100 years we might have holographic blogs that put us right in the middle of the action, visually sharing a story or teaching us something new (for you Star Trek lovers, it sounds like the “holodeck,” doesn’t it?). Technological advances will likely be limited only by the imagination, which means in 100 years blog writing could be unrecognizable when compared to our “archaic” means of blogging today!
So, what do you think blog writing will be like in 100 years? Will blogs be publicized throughout the cosmos? Will they be the most popular form of literature on our planet? Will UFOs be stopping by for the latest installment from their favorite blogger? How will the technology change? Share your ideas by leaving a comment, and let’s see what happens!
If you’re up on the game in SEO, you know a big name in it is Matt Cutts. The leader of the “webspam” team at Google, he’s a proclaimed “voice” in SEO and all things rankings. When he talks, people often listen; retweet; share; and reply.
The latest buzz from Matt Cutts was posted on January 20, 2014—just three days ago. And already it’s been viral in the Internet world. The reason for the intense, instant feedback was the topic he wrote about. Matt’s blog was entitled “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO” and posed the statement, guest blogging is dead.
“Google Will Take a Dim View” …The Worst The Blog Got
Matt Cutts, Photo Courtesy @ affordableseofl.com
The blog basically stated that all who were guest blogging should stop, and that guest blogging has gone from respectable to totally spammy. He said to stick a fork in the whole opportunity and don’t rely on it for SEO. Note, he never said it was entirely dead, not once in his whole blog; his most distinct ending words were that “Google will take a dim view of guest blogging going forward.”
Matt Takes It Back?
Matt actually added an “add-on” within 24 hours of writing his blog (possibly affected by the huge amounts of noted blogger voices on Twitter and other platforms denouncing his view) saying that he didn’t mean to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” He stated very plainly that he did not mean to discount high quality and multi-author blogs, that he stated are “compelling, wonderful, and useful.”
He Actually Has A Point About The Spam
OK, so just like everything good, anyone—and on the Internet, seriously, anyone—can take it and turn it into something bad. Dirty, grimy hands have touched things like articles, blogs, press releases, web pages, and of course—guest blogging. I recently received a LinkedIN invitation to join a guest blog. I’ll put their name out there: SEO Libra. The invitation read, “Regarding For Free SEO Guest Blogging. Add Guest Posting for Free. Regards.” Ugh, it makes me shudder again.
Grimy fingers like these turn content into spam, spin and trash it, try to recycle it, and overall give content a bad name in various avenues. But does that mean content in general stops working for everyone? Of course not. It only stops working in the wrong hands. In the right hands, content becomes well-written. It is original. Creative. Powerful. It has the possibility to go viral and make a positive impact on the web.
Case Study
Express Writers started blogging on SocialMediaToday about 5 days ago. We’ve had over 300 social shares on each post that was a featured guest blog on SocialMediaToday; new followers on all our social media platforms; connections from other writers and peers; and more than 10 new client inquiries. Guest blogging, my friends, is powerful. It works.
What Did You Say, Cutts?
Don’t forget, Cutts has said other things in the past that were discounted. A couple years ago, Cutts said a statement in a Google forum stating that press releases no longer held value for SEO. He was since proven wrong by SearchEngineLand experts, who did an actual case study with screenshot results that showed exactly the opposite of Cutts’ statement—that in fact, PR links were being counted by Google.
Copyblogger’s CEO Weighs In
The CEO of Copyblogger, Brian Clark, said it best on Twitter: Why change because Matt Cutts said something? Build quality, no matter what. (For more, read Copyblogger’s blog on why guest blogging isn’t done yet.)
Excellent advice. Don’t change what’s working because one person said something. Keep it up, and always maintain quality—and you’ll always see results.
