Want to write a guest post? How to approach a blog owner properly
To raise your profile on the Internet and overall search engine rankings, it’s important to be present on several domains. One of the ways to accomplish this goal is to offer to write a guest post or article on different blogs and websites with a link back to your own website. When I explained what SEO was to my friends who were beginner bloggers, they thought that the hardest part of SEO was coming up with different ideas and keywords to write about.
If you are a creative person and have a passion for writing about your expertise, this is actually the easy part.
Believe it or not, the hardest part of guest blogging isn’t writing the posts. It’s actually convincing a blogger or website owner to allow you to guest post on their site. Many bloggers mistake requests by email to guest post as spam and immediately send them to a separate folder: usually trash or spam.
To even have a chance of having a guest blog published, you can approach a blog owner by writing a great email to them.
Here are five tips that I can give to anyone who wants to write an effective outreach email to blog owners that won’t end up in the trash:
1. Great subject line
The subject line gives the first impression about you to a blogger and you always want to make a great first impression. Avoid using generic subject lines such as “guest post” since these will normally be sent to a separate folder automatically without being read. Do your best to relate the subject line to the topic or theme of the blog or website. If applicable, reference an article from their website and use a subject line such as, “Thoughts on diet management article.”
2. Personalize the email
DO NOT SEND OUT A TEMPLATE EMAIL!! I don’t know who thought it would be a great idea to type up one generic email asking someone if they can guest post on their site, but this is why bloggers confuse these emails with spam. Bloggers and site owners can pick these uniform emails out in a second and they will be deleted and/or marked as spam. Take the time to read an article or two on their site and really personalise your email so it is genuine. By offering a different point of view or comment on something they wrote, the blogger sees that you took the time to actually read their work. They are then more likely to allow you to write a guest post for their blog.
3. Keep the email short
People tend to have a short attention span, so it’s important to keep your email short and to the point. You shouldn’t need more than 3 sentences to compliment them on their site and offer an opinion on an article they wrote in your introduction. You should keep your ‘pitch’ focussed on how you would write a great guest post and add value to their blog. It should not take the blogger or website owner more than 45 seconds to read your email. If they are still reading it past the 45 second mark, they will likely get bored and just delete it.
4. Show how you will add value
When making your ‘pitch’, it is important to emphasize how you will add value to their website or blog. If you offer to write about a topic that has been exhausted on their website, I doubt they’ll want another article on the same subject. However, offering a fresh point of view or perspective that hasn’t been discussed before will add value. To sum it up, you need to ask yourself how the blog owner will benefit and how their readers will benefit from your guest post.
5. Signatures
You need to be careful of the signature you use in your email. For example, if it contains a title that includes SEO, Search Marketing, Online Marketing, etc… bloggers will be reluctant to reach out to you, thinking you have something up your sleeves. Either remove your title or write something generic like “writer”. If applicable, include a link to your personal blog in your signature so they can see samples your work.
This was a guest post by Adam Bruk who is an online marketing specialist for Socks4Life.com where he analyzes retail trends in socks for diabetics. When he isn’t busy at work, he enjoys golfing, cooking, traveling, and reading about the latest social media trends.
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http://www.kfm24.com Kenny Fabre
