Fellow freelance writers, have you ever wanted to write and publish an article on your favorite blog? You know, that blog that you constantly follow, comment on, and share to all of your online networks?
This is known as guest blogging, and in this post I’ll be sharing basic info and tips on how to write and publish yourself as a guest blogger.
Definition of Terms
Guest blogging is writing compelling, interesting, and useful blog posts for blogs. Take note of those three adjectives.
This is because writing for popular blogs isn’t merely drafting an article and submitting it like your everyday SEO assignments. These blogs have a large number of readers and levels of traffic to maintain.
So unless you’re writing for a baby blog that was just born a couple of months ago, your posts will undergo editing and evaluation to meet certain standards.
The good news is that an approved and published guest post brings in a wide range of benefits:
- More traffic
- New readers
- Engagement with the blog’s growing audience
- Connections
All these can boost your reputation as an expert in your field. It also enables you to market a product or service you offer to a wider audience—people you would not have been able to establish contact with if it wasn’t for your awesome guest post.
How Guest Blogging Works
How you publish your guest posts will differ from blog to blog, but the usual process works like this:
- You come up with a blog post topic or a series of topics. You contact the editor/s of the blog and propose them as potential topics to write about.
- Once a topic is approved, you begin writing the post.
- If the blog’s editors like your piece, they’ll edit and schedule it for publication. They would touch base to let you know when it will be up on their blog.
If the quality of your content is constantly high, it’s very possible to write and submit more guest posts. Once your name spreads throughout the community, it’s equally possible that other blogs would want you to write for them as well.
With that said, let’s take a look at how you can write those awesome guest posts.
How to Choose a Topic for a Guest Post
The first step is picking a topic to write about.
There are three important factors to consider when brainstorming for topics to write about: uniqueness, relevance to the niche of the blog, and your own passion and knowledge.
Let’s break each down to see what I mean:
- Niche relevance – if the blog publishes content about everything and anything to do with pets, it’s pretty obvious they’d publish guest posts should be about pets. Whether it is about house training or breeding Dalmatians, the relevance of the article to the blog’s main subject or niche should be crystal clear.
- Uniqueness - a long-standing blog would prefer new, unique, and valuable contributions over rehashes of the same kind of content they’ve published already. Pitching unique ideas like “5 Ways to Get Your Dog to Stay” or “4 Secrets to Getting Your Cat to Behave in the Tub” will increase your chances of getting published, since it’s a topic that’s new and/or unique with value to readers.
- Passion and knowledge – write with passion towards the topic and sufficient knowledge about what you want to say. Both boost the quality of the guest post tremendously, giving it a better chance at acceptance than a simple post written only for the sake of traffic.
How to Write Good Quality Guest Posts
“With high quality articles comes an increase of respect and recognition from readers all over the world, including potential clients who you’re hoping to work with.”
While guest blogging provides you with the channel to get your name out there, the main purpose is really to provide quality information to the readers of that blog that the editors haven’t thought of (or the time to write) yet.
By quality, I mean guest content written with research, genuine interest in the topic, and good spelling and grammar.
The usual advice is to write, write, and write, but you can also add more quality to your guest post through the following:
- Focus. Always stay on topic or with the blog’s main niche. With that in mind, list down the sub-topics you want to discuss in your guest post.
- Proofread and edit. Always remember to re-read, proofread, and edit your post till it reaches near perfection. You will be surprised how much your guest post has improved after several revisions.
- Gather feedback. Ask a fellow writer to read your post and share feedback about it. While it’s not necessary, it’s good to have an outsider’s perspective over your work. They will be able to pinpoint errors and areas of improvement that you wouldn’t have noticed on your own.
What If They Just Don’t Like It?
There is always the possibility of rejection. That’s part of guest blogging.
There are many reasons why a guest post is rejected for publication, some of which may be because:
- It’s not unique enough.
- It doesn’t fit the blog’s audience.
- It needs more polishing.
- It violates the guest blogging guidelines of the blog.
- The editor doesn’t want to publish guest posts at the moment.
It could be any of these reasons, but what’s the best way to respond to the rejection?
You can email the blog editor/s and ask for a status update on your guest post. If they did reject your guest post, you can ask for feedback and use the experience to improve your guest posts.
Keep in mind that rejection doesn’t mean giving up on your guest post. You can always submit the guest post to another blog, revising it a bit to fit their writing guidelines.
I hope this post will help you in your guest blogging endeavors, especially to my fellow freelance writers hoping to get their first guest post out.
Feel free to leave your comments in the comment section below. 
