Guest blogging is one of the best ways to attract a new class of audience to your own website. It helps you establish long term relationships with other bloggers and enables you to get strong editorial links directed to your website.
In this short definitive article, I’ll discuss how you can go about targeted guest blogging effectively.
I’ll show you how to prospect for potential guest blogging opportunities, successfully pitch to editors, and how to write accordingly to their standards.
The first step in targeted guest blogging is to look for blogs that accept guest posts from other people.
Using search engine operators will help you concentrate your search efforts efficiently and cut through the clutter.
Here are a few sample searches to get you going.
What do these search operators mean?
“ “ – use quotes to make sure that Google returns exact phrases instead of pages that just use these words throughout the page.
Twitter is also another great place to look for opportunities. Established blogs with a following usually tweet about their recent posts and almost all prominent bloggers have a Twitter account.
This will easily help you find blogs that are actively looking for writers or guest bloggers on their sites.
Alternatively, you can use Twitter to network with certain bloggers as well. Retweet content that you like, reply to their posts, and establish some form of engagement before you reach out to them about an opportunity.
There are blogger outreach tools that you can use such as Buzzstream or BuzzSumo. These tools combine influencer research and pitching. You’ll be able to find out where popular bloggers are and what they are writing about; at the same time you’ll also be able to use an integrated email client and relationship manager to streamline your efforts.
You’ll come across some blogs that appear to host content from other bloggers but won’t have an obvious submission section. Do not disregard these websites but instead, keep looking for a “Contact Us” section and find an editor, Webmaster, or content manager to whom you can send out your outreach emails.
The most important part in targeted guest blogging is the pitching process. This is where you’ll tell them about your intentions and persuade them to allow you to guest blog.
Keep it short and sweet. Most editors don’t have the time or the patience to read a two page sycophantic email that sounds insincere.
Don’t forget to proofread your email a few times. No matter how good or relevant your pitch is, an email can get deleted if grammar is bad. It’s an indication of your skill as a potential writing candidate.
The outreach process can be effectively scaled using email marketing tools. We built a lot of links to our dropshipping guide simply by reaching out to other bloggers (that published content about ecommerce) using Mailshake. Another option would be Gmass. Both have their pros and cons and the final decision is yours to make.
However, do not engage in a bulk email campaign when you’re pitching to several editors. Make sure that each email is personalized according to the blog that you are pitching to. Generalized or generic pitch emails are an indicator that you’re just in it to get your content out and get a link and that you never really cared about their publication in the first place.
The subject line is important, consider these two examples.
The first example sounds like a generic email, but the second subject line example sounds like the prelude to an engaging email. It shows that you’ve already done your research and merely not trying to get your post on their site.
One of the most important steps that you have to take, even before the pitch, is to read up on some of the material that the blog has published in the past. It gives you an idea of their audience and the type of writing that they accept.
Some of these sites will have guidelines. If not, they don’t ask the editor for some advice.
Some blogs won’t let you link out to your own blog in the text and instead give you an opportunity to craft an author bio and place your link there. In any case, the limited space that you have to talk about yourself and even place a link to your blog makes this part of the process critical.
The trick to crafting an author bio is to write it with the target audience in mind. It establishes the credibility of your post and in turn makes the post more personal. It has to be both relatable and actionable.
Hopefully, this guide should help kick start your guest blogging campaign.
Remember to be direct, personal, and resilient. It’s inevitable that some blogs won’t be too receptive, but you’ll be surprised at how many will accept a pitch from you.
Great tips Catalin! I always considered blog posting a great source of link building!