We’ve talked previously about our love for guest blogging. We’ve used it ourselves, for our clients and have had people produce great guest blog posts here on our blog.
Sometimes we’ve talked about the benefits of guest blogging and other times about how you can go about securing a guest blog post.
We get e-mails on a regular basis from individuals asking whether they can produce content for our blog in exchange for a link, but the whole conversation is almost always poor for a variety of reasons.
The following information should give you a clear understanding of what we’re looking for (and undoubtedly what others are looking for), but don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any questions.
Triple check your e-mail
As humans, we aren’t perfect and the occasional typo passes through everyone’s checking procedure. However, when you’re writing an e-mail asking to publish content on someone else’s blog, you need to be certain that the e-mail copy is as near to perfect as it can be.
If you add in an extra letter to a word (let’s say you wrote ‘For exampple’), chances are it’s a genuine error that’s simply been overlooked. However, if you wrote ‘its’ when you actually meant ‘it’s’ all the way through the e-mail, that just shows either a lack of understanding of the English language or an inability to truly check through your work.
Ask to produce relevant content…
Blogging is a varied subject and with a little thought and imagination, you should be able to tie it in to a range of subjects.
We’re also quite open about content here at The Blogshop. Yes, we like our blog content to have a focus on blogging, but the most important point is that it’s of value to you, our readers. Therefore, if you approached us about a blog post on SEO that only touches briefly on blogging, chances are we’d be interested – our audience are interested in various digital tools, resources and platforms, so as long as there’s a bit of a discussion around blogging, an SEO focused article would work.
What we don’t want to see is an e-mail suggesting topics around medical insurance or football coaching. Unless you have some fantastic story about them that you can link to blogging, the content is going to be irrelevant – and therefore useless – to our audience.
…and talk about relevant links
In the past we’ve had people contact us who want to produce content around blogging, which is fantastic – but they’ve then gone on to say they would like a link back to their completely unrelated website.
Whilst the content is going to be suitable, by providing a link to a seemingly pointless website, it’s going to be of little benefit to the guest blogger (guest blogging is a great way to develop backlinks, but SEO isn’t just about getting any links – one backlink on a relevant website will be better than 10 links on unrelated websites) and it’s going to potentially alienate our readers (remember, guest blogging might be of benefit to you as the blogger, but it needs to first and foremost be of benefit to the audience and the company you’re going to be guest blogging for).
Don’t forget to reply
Arguably one of the most annoying things we’ve encountered with guest bloggers is their inability to reply to e-mails. They’ve e-mailed us, we liked their idea, got back in touch – and then never heard anything back.
Even when we don’t like an idea, we always reply thanking them for their time and explaining we’d be open to future suggestions if they were more appropriate, but we don’t get any response.
Whilst such a reply would mean you’ve essentially got your foot in the door and have developed that relationship with the company, it’s simply common courtesy to reply – you’ve contacted a company, they’ve replied, so an e-mail in return is considered to be the right, polite thing to do.
From increasing your online reach to improving the awareness of your brand, an effective guest blogging strategy to supplement your own business blogging activities can see some fantastic results.
More to read
- 5 Things To Ask Yourself If You’re Not Seeing The Results You Expect From Business Blogging
- How Important Is It To Add Meta Data To Your Blog Posts?
- 3 Reasons You Should Get Your Staff Involved In Business Blogging – And 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t
- How To Get A Guest Blog Post Spot Here On The Blogshop’s Blog
- 5 Things Your Business Blog Content Shouldn’t Do
- Should You Be Formal On A Business Blog?
- 3 Reasons Why The Inc. 500 Are Wrong To Lose Favour With Business Blogging