Image by kris krüg
If you’re new to the blogging World, then you must have heard somewhere about guest blogging and probably wondering what it is or what is does.
Guest blogging is great for creating recognition for you and your site because it is an opportunity to prove your worth by writing great content on another person’s website.
Sure it doesn’t sound nice writing for someone else’s blog but on the bright side, it’s not a permanent contract.
How often you want to write for the blog depends on you, or the blog that you’re applying for.
Here’s some great tips to help kick-start your guest blogging journey:
1) Linking to influential sites
Many blog posts by newbies that I noticed doesn’t seem to have links to others sites.
Maybe it’s because they are scared that their visitors will click on that link and never return.
Stop this!
It is totally the opposite because when you link to other influential websites like The Huffington Post, you are showing quality because your post is thorough, you are showing effort because you put in hard work researching to put those links, and you are also showing image that you are connected to the big guys.
To top it all off, linking to those influential sites will send a pingback request to that site that you are linking to which means that they will know when you link to them.
So is this good?
Yes! When you send a pingback, they will also check your blog and to see who you are and if your content is good, you are actually telling them “Hey! I’m in the same niche as you and I respect you!”
2) Have an online thumbprint
Don’t worry, it’s just a fancy word for online presence which of course, means social media.
If you’ve noticed, ALL guest bloggers or even blogs are connected to Social Media in a way.
At the very least, blogs usually have a Facebook and Twitter presence but of course, the more the merrier.
It doesn’t hurt to have a profile in all Social Media platforms, including LinkedIn, Pinterest as well as Instagram.
Always remember, you want to have a positive image on the internet, and you want people to find you easily because even in the real life, people value the online presence for recruitment.
So make sure that your profile are up to date, detailed and most importantly, portrays your true face and NOT some cartoon or a picture of a kitten.
3) Knowing how to write
Writing is one of the most important part of a blog post let alone guest blogging.
It is actually very simple and there is not much to it except to try to keep your blog writing more human-like and not too corporate-looking because remember, it’s a blog post!
Be sure to include things like your personal examples in order to relate the situation to the readers.
For example, if you write this as one of your tips “Eating garlic can attract vampires”, then you should explain the story to help your readers understand better like “One night, I woke up with a female vampire on top of me. She is so warm and comforting but I couldn’t move. I wanted to get away but reluctantly, I was also seduced. As she was kissing my neck, I felt her teeth among her warm breath sipping in and after that, blank…”
It doesn’t have to be your story all the time, you should mix other examples you can find on the net to add mixture and spice.
Lastly, adjust your blog post title one last time before you can finally call it complete.
The blog post title is your first line of defense so don’t worry if you do spend time thinking of the proper titles because if it is not interesting enough, nobody would want to click on it to read your content.
If you’re out of ideas on how to make your titles more interesting, here’s a cool list of clever templates made by Social Ocean that you could use.
Conclusion
Guest Blogging isn’t as hard as it looks, it is much more like how we write our own blog post for our own sites.
Just start writing and tweaking as how you would for your blog in order to make it more interesting and attract more readers and before you know it, you’ll get more readers than what a new blog would get in a year!
For more information on blog monetization, check out my review of Wealthy Affiliate here.
Riaz Shah
