Guest posting is a great way to gain visibility for your own web site. By getting your content out there on other people’s blogs, you are establishing yourself as an authority in your niche, as well as helping people find your web site.
Approaching Blog Owners
First you will need to compile a list of blog owners to approach. Searching for sites similar to yours in Google and browsing Pinterest should give you a lot of good starting places. Once you find a couple of good potential blogs, spend some time checking out their sites and see what other blogs they associate with.
Look for blog owners in your own niche. You want to be seen as an expert in your field. If you can show examples of articles that you have written for your own site or other people’s sites, than a web site owner is much more likely to respond to your inquiry.
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Identifying a Topic
Once you have identified a list of potential contacts, start studying those web sites and come up with some potential topic ideas for those sites.
A lot of writers approach blog owners and tell them that they will write on any topic they want. While this sounds good in theory, if the blog owner doesn’t have a specific topic in mind that they need articles for, then they may or may not take the time to respond to the writer if they have lots of emails to respond to.
If you study the web site and come up with a topic just for that web site owner, then you have a lot more of a chance of your idea being approved. Give the web site owner several similar topic ideas to choose from. The ideas should relate to topics already covered on the site, but with a slightly different take on what is already there. Don’t pitch topics unrelated to the site, and don’t pitch general ideas that have already been covered on the site.
Submitting an Article
Some writers prefer to submit a finished article to a blog when they first establish contact with the site owner. While this method can sometimes be successful, the writer is sometimes taking the chance of the site owner not responding to their inquiry for days or even weeks. The downside of this method is that the writer will not know if the article is going to published and cannot market the article to other web sites.
- Also read – Guest Blogging or Social Networking?
A web site owner may also be skeptical of an article that has already been prepared. They may be concerned about the article being shopped around to more than one blog owner at one time and be worried about duplicate posting of the same article. It is better to pitch the topic first, and then submit the article.
That Extra Edge
If you approach other blog owners in a friendly, personal manner and offer them unique content specifically with their web site in mind, they are very likely to post your article.
There are, however, a couple of tricks you can use to almost guarantee your article idea will be accepted.
Web site owners these days are all looking for great photos for their site. If you offer to include a photo with your article, they will be much more likely to respond.
If you have a presence in social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, then you have a higher than average chance of getting your article idea accepted. If a blog owner is trying to decide between your submission and another one, this often looked over detail may be just what you need to make sure your submission is the one that gets accepted.
Let the blog owner know what social media you use and tell them that you will promote your article through all your social media avenues should your article be accepted. Web site owners really appreciate that extra exposure that you may be able to provide to their site.
Blog owners are always looking for great new content, and if you provide them with what they are looking for, they will often be more than happy to work with you.
Article by Vishal
Vishal Gaikar is a professional blogger from Pune, India. If you like this post, you can follow him on Twitter.
