Guest blogging is all the rage these days. Savvy marketers have seen the opportunities that guest blogging allows. As a guest blogger, you can reach a new audience, drive traffic back to your website, build links back to your site for improved search engine rankings, and so much more.
But what about allowing others to guest post on your blog? Should you do it? How can you benefit by letting other people post articles to your blog?
Guest Blogging Benefits
There are a lot of benefits you can enjoy by accepting guest posts on your site, such as:
• Get fresh, original content for your blog—
Managing your blog on your own is a lot of work. You have to come up with great ideas for new posts on a daily basis, and let’s face it, writing inspiring content every day can be really difficult. Even the best bloggers eventually get burned out, run out of ideas, or end up publishing filler content.
By allowing guest bloggers on your site, you can get fresh, original content to post on your blog. This is a great way to lighten your load, so that you’re not responsible for writing so much content.
• Provide your readers with a fresh perspective—
Sometimes, it can be beneficial to provide your readers with a different point of view on things. As just one person, you’re only able to provide your readers with so much information, expertise, and opinions on particular issues. By bringing in guest bloggers, you get different voices with unique perspectives, helping you give your readers more well-rounded coverage of your niche.
• Get a new, untapped source of traffic—
Every blogger wants more traffic, but reaching new readers can be a difficult task. One of the great benefits of allowing guest bloggers on your site is that you can tap into a new source of traffic. See, whenever you publish a guest post on your site, you can bet that the blogger is going to share that post with his followers. Many of those people will come check out the guest post on your blog, bringing a fresh stream of traffic to your site.
• Build relationships with other influencers in your niche—
Building your network is important to getting your message out. Like the old saying goes, “It’s not what you know but who you know.” By connecting with other bloggers and influential voices in your field, you start to build valuable relationships that you can leverage for a range of purposes. Networking is such an important task, but too many bloggers and marketers overlook it. Allowing guest posts is a great way to start building great relationships.
• Turn your blog into a top resource—
When you bring in other experts and respected voices to post articles on your blog, you start positioning your site as a valuable, trusted resource for your niche. Readers will see that your blog posts quality articles from a range of subject matter experts, so they’ll begin to understand they can turn to your blog for all the information they need on the subject area you cover.
• Cover new topics—
You probably have a great deal of knowledge on a few specific areas related to your niche, but nobody knows everything. By bringing in guest bloggers who have expertise in other industry-related areas, you can start to publish content on new topics that you are unable to write about yourself. Again, this is another crucial step to positioning your blog as a go-to resource for your field.
• Learn from other bloggers—
One of the great things about working with other bloggers is that you get to see the different approaches they take to blogging. As a writer, I’m always reading other people’s work and trying to learn from them. Allowing guest posts on your site gives you the chance to sharpen your skills by learning from the work of other writers.
Tips for Success Accepting Guest Posts
Clearly, there is a very strong case to be made for accepting guest posts on your site. There are lots of benefits you can begin to enjoy when you allow others to submit articles to your blog, but simply publishing guest posts doesn’t guarantee you’ll enjoy all of these benefits. If you want to be successful, you need to follow these important tips:
• Publish clear guidelines for guest bloggers—
If you’re going to start accepting guest posts, you need to come up with some guidelines for writers to follow. Publish a “Write for Us” page on your guest blog with guidelines that detail what you expect from your guest posts (e.g. minimum word count, number of links you’ll allow, topics that can be covered, formatting, etc.).
This will hopefully help to ensure the guest posts pitched to you meet your standards. You can see the editorial guidelines for our writers here.
• Reject posts that don’t meet your quality standards—
Because guest blogging has become such a popular link building tactic, there are a lot of shady marketers who submit low-quality posts just because they’re only interested in getting links. You can’t publish bad content. It will ruin the credibility of your blog and drive readers away. If a post isn’t good, reject it. You have to maintain the integrity of your blog.
• Get the blogger involved with promoting their post—
Encourage the guest author to promote his or her post to their network. Let them know when the post will be going live, and once it’s published, send them a link, encouraging them to share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, their blog, etc. This will help drive more traffic to your site.
• Pay attention to reader feedback—
Keep a close eye on what your readers are saying after you start publishing guest posts. You might find that they love it and want to see more guest posts or that they want to read more content from a particular guest author they really liked. Or you may find that your readers hate guest posts and only want to hear from you. That’s why you need to listen to their feedback.
Do you allow guest posts on your blog?
Tell us your reasons and thoughts below.