There is no doubt that guest blogging is one of the most efficient and in fact a successful ways to boost up the online presence of your business. Proven with results that guest blogging has taken businesses to the next level of success and revenues. No matter who you are, either you are an individual blogger or working for a company; blogging will let you achieve your goals. I will be sharing my personal experience of my initial times of guest blogging and the difficulties I had faced.
I am writing this blog post for the new bloggers to learn from my experience and avoid repeating same mistakes. Here are few mistakes that I did in my earlier times.
The time when I started blogging, I was just blogging solely for link building and not for building interest and guiding the readers. In my haste to build links, I forgot that I was not catering to the needs of the readers, in fact, was just writing to acquire back links. Yes, it optimized my site, but I was unable to attract readers to my blogs.
Understand that with great content means making useful posts for readers. Write to guide and educate your readers and the link building will follow naturally. It will thus make you acquire back links but will also get the readers attracted to your content.
Not now obviously, but right at the beginning of my career, I was sending out poor email pitches, honestly speaking. Email pitches like,
Subject: The Amazing post is coming your way!
Email Body: I love your blog, and I want to submit my post. All I need is a link back to my site.
Email Body: I WANT TO WRITE A BLOG POST.
The pitches like those above and many other such pitches will not get many takers. The person will not be reading the complete email and would just be ignoring it.
Yes, I made few mistakes but also learned from it. Below are some email pitches that have worked better for me. You may paraphrase it and use for pitching guest blogs.
Look at these few tips which I have been using in to send guest blog proposals,
Subject: Guest Blog Proposal
Hi Name,
(Using the name of the recipient makes the reader feel acknowledged and valued and he is more likely to read the email further. If you use the same template for all emails, you are lessening your chance of getting a response.
Introduce yourself: Give a strong introduction of yourself.
Suggest topics: Suggest at least 2-3 topics.
Tell how your guest blog post will benefit your readers: Give a brief description of let’s suppose 3 – 4 lines stating how your blog post will help the readers. These are the most appealing lines that show the benefits of your content and is likely the point where you may get a response to your email or not.
Warm Ending: Just don’t end your email all of a sudden. Give it a proper closure by thanking the reader.
Example: Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you!
Another mistake that I did in few of my earlier blog posts was switching off comments for the readers. As I mentioned earlier, I was solely working on building links, so I had no interest in interacting with the readers. Though I got back links I did not interact with the readers, therfore I had no comments and ultimately I received less traffic.
What I then started doing was enabling comments and I began to get much more traffic, my readers started tagging their friends and this way I experienced a huge traffic to my site. I was then able to learn what appeals my readers and what are they most interested in reading about. The suggestions from my readers led me towards my next blog post because they were telling me what they were interested in with their comments.
Wrapping up my story,
I have written this post to guide my readers, so they do not end up repeating the same mistakes. There might be some other guest blogging mistakes that I have not mentioned that you have made. Please share your experiences in the comments area here.
Explore more and learn more. Before starting guest blogging, develop a relationship with the editor with an appealing request and your primary focus should be a great content that motivates the reader to read more.
If you do it well, you may have more guest blogging opportunities than you can handle. Link building in a blog post is far easier than engaging audience with your content.
The links that you create are mostly landing to your homepages, or product pages, in fact, if you get your audience land to your landing page or the ad page, you are going more likely to get conversions..
Moreover, a long term strategy quality driven strategy is the one that will benefit both you and your readers the most.
With quality content, adequate keyword research and authentic link building you can take up your work to the next levels of success and your story will soon be narrated by others.
Share your blogging experiences with me, and I would like to hear your suggestions and experiences as well..
Author Bio:
I am Loius. I work as a Marketing Manager at a professional logo design company. I hold a business degree from Brookhaven College. I started doing freelance projects with my studies that included logo design and web development work.
My professional career began as a Digital Marketing Executive that led towards a managerial position at my present organization. I look after the guest blogging, SEO and digital marketing activities of the brands I own at my company and have taken them to a huge level of success within a short span of time.
Here are some other articles on guest blogging mistakes that I hop you will find helpful: