Content is king.
We hear that a lot these days. In the age of Web 2.0 (or are we on 3.0 already?) – we know that content can attract better rankings in Google and better, more faithful readers. Readers who often turn into loyal customers.
Great! So let’s get writing, each and every day! But what if you have a busy work life and an even busier family life? You aren’t going to grow an extra hour or two overnight just because Google wants you to blog. But you still need to feed that content beast. What you really need – is help.
Help can come from other writers. Help can come from that most helpful of Joint Venture partners: The Guest Blogger. It’s the ultimate content win-win. Your guest blogger gives you content and in return – you give him or her exposure. Match made in heaven!
So now the ‘hard’ part. Finding them and convincing them to write for you.  Luckily this hard part isn’t so hard after all. Here are a few ways I connect with and sign up guest bloggers.
- Google Them: The quickest way is to plug in something like “Your Industry” + Blog. Or “Your Industry” +Â expert. You’d be surprised how many great writers there out there. Writers who are just dying for exposure on your site and they have to wordcount to prove it.
- Look Within: Got any regular commenters who’s writing is always entertaining, incisive or otherwise valuable? Reach out to them and see if they wouldn’t like having a “real” presence on your site.
- Follow the Leader: Your industry bigwigs might be more willing than you know to blog for you. A lot of times these huge names get huge by blanketing the internet (and blogs like yours!) with their brand. So contact them and ask. You never know!
- Tweet It Out: Tweet that you’re looking for guest bloggers. RT the posts of bloggers or twitterers who’s style you admire. Once they start following you, DM them that you’d love to have their guest appearance on your site.
- Trade: Maybe there is more you can do for a guest blogger (esp a regular one) than just publish their blog posts. Maybe you can promise to frequently tweet about their blog and their events. Brainstorm cross-promotional webinars, newsletters. Get creative! You have more to offer than you think!
Ever guest blogged yourself? Ever *found* a great guest blogger using an unusual resource? Share your stories below.
You’ll never know if someone will guest blog for you or accept a guest blog from yourself if you don’t ask! Go ahead and ask your favorite bloggers, the worst that will happen is they will say “no” and you just might be surprised at the positive response.
Just Share It!
Aunty Sa
Excellent Don. Thank you.
This is completely the reason I created this blog [link removed by moderator – sorry, like your site, but our policy is that we don’t allow self-promotional comments from anyone and if we approve yours, then we’ll always get questions about why we didn’t approve others’.]
Hope someone who passes here will choose to make use of this opportunity to share some of their great content. I haven’t done a lot yet to promote the site & will be doing that much more soon.
Cheers, Thea
Don,
This is something that’s been on the back of my mind for a while but I haven’t really taken much action. Having guest bloggers makes sense for a variety of reasons not least of which is to have someone with a different perspective help your readers see things in a different light. I especially like your advice to “look within.” One of my posts (regarding Radian6 not necessarily being “the best” monitoring tool) attracted a fairly high number of commenters. I can definitely see where one or 2 of those commenters might want to expand upon their comments in a guest post.
Thanks for the tips!
Sincerely,
Hugh
PS In case you’re wondering, I found you when searching for the twitter elite in Wisconsin over at Hubspot’s twitter grader! Good to see a fellow Wisconsite with such an active presence online!