Is Guest Writing A Good Way To Market Your Business?
July 31, 2008
Some people market their business by guest writing for other blogs. I haven’t done this myself yet. But, I’ve spoken to others who guest posted on blogs. Some say it wasn’t really worth it, while others have received huge benefits.
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Successful And Outstanding Blogger
The people who seem to have had the most success are the ones who have guest posted on several blogs in a relatively short period of time. Two that come to mind are Skellie and Tim Brownson.
Skellie’s blog became a success overnight and I’m guessing her brilliant guest posts helped a lot. And I don’t know whether Tim is seeing a return on his investment yet. But I’m guessing he will eventually. He’s written some excellent guest posts, including this one: Are You A Manager Or A Leader?
If I was planning to do a guest posting campaign myself, I think I’d:
1) Study the blog carefully and read at least a dozen posts.
2) Read through the comments section on the blog, to get an idea of what type of post the readers enjoyed most.
3) Contact the blog owner, with a brief outline of the post I was going to write.
4) Put as much effort into the post as I would put into writing my own blog. And I’d edit it carefully.
5) If my guest post was turned down, I’d ask what needed to be changed and I’d offer to rewrite it.
6) If it still wasn’t good enough, I wouldn’t get upset about the rejection. Bloggers take their sites seriously – if they don’t feel that something is right for their readers, it’s far better to risk offending one writer, than it is to turn off their entire blog readership.
Have you guest posted before? Did you find it beneficial? Would you do it again? If someone sent you a badly written guest post for your blog – what would you do?
Comments
21 Responses to “Is Guest Writing A Good Way To Market Your Business?”
I wrote a guest post for Zen Habits. It brought me a temporary spike in traffic, subscribers that so far are sticking around, and a direct advertising deal. So I think it was worth it.
Someone sent me a badly written guest post a few weeks ago. I didn’t publish it. I felt bad, but my blog is too important to me.
Vered’s last blog post..Wordless Wednesday: Vintage Computers
Hi Catherine,
Other than the guest post on your blog, I haven’t done any others. I hope to in the future, but you’re right. it’s important to know the blog and it’s community. It’s their home in blogosphere, and just like in real life, we need to respect their “domain”.
Not to sound like a prude, but I wouldn’t accept a badly written post for my blog (plus, right now, I’m not accepting them anyway). I’ve worked too hard to make my blog what it is, and if the post didn’t meet up to my standards (and my readers expectations), I’d have to say no.
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Interview With Lorelle VanFossen – Part 6 – Let’s Woop It Up
I’ve often wondered about the flipside to this… when readers of a blog absolutely detest a guest post for some reason, and the comments reflect this, often in very virulent ways. I’ve seen it happen a few times, and been curious as to what the after-effects of this are for the guest blogger. Does it negatively affect his/her business, or does it just have no impact (i.e. no new readers gained, but no existing loyal readers lost)?
Mags | Woo-Woo Wisdom’s last blog post..Lynne McTaggart: The Intention Experiment
I’ve been coming across the strategy of guest posting a lot recently, Cath.
If carefully planned, it sounds like an excellent way to build awareness for both your personal brand and that of your blog.
As I know you are aware, I was immensely fortunate to be offered a guest post series on Liz Strauss’ successful-blog.com.
I guess it’s an unusual thing to happen to someone who doesn’t yet have their own blog, but I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive effects it has created.
I hope to be invited to write other guest posts as time goes on and I become a little more well-known as a writer.
I’ve been wanting to do a guest posting gig but I haven’t worked up the courage to ask someone if I can guest post on their site.
I guess I need to be more proactive.
chris’s last blog post..Be Immortalized For Only $10
I could almost write an entire post on this Cath, but let me tell you how it’s worked for me.
I am guessing I have written about 12 guest posts split over 2 concerted efforts. The first was March time and the 2nd was the last 4 or 5 weeks.
The first attempt brought me little in the way of traffic (that I know of) and I even regret a couple simply because I gave away some of my better material for nil return.
I think however, the main reason was that my blog then looked uglier than a bulldog licking piss off a nettle.
I only got my RSS feed up in April when Nick at Goburo redesigned by blog. If there were any subscribers then, I lost them all, but I have my doubts it was any more than 30 or 40, so no big deal.
I now have close to 500 subscribers (inc e-mail) of which 250 have come in the last month alone and it’s rising steadily day by day. I also average about 600 unique visitors per day.
Some sites haven’t worked that well for me like Dumb Little Man. I got poor traffic and I think that’s simply because it is purely guest posts so there’s less inclination to click through. Also, the amount of posts is a bit overwhelming and I’m guessing people are less likely to scroll back and read older stuff.
I got a good initial surge from Success Soul but that died off very quickly. Pick the Brain has brought in a steady stream of solid traffic and that has to be my best result.
Having said all that, the single biggest flow of incoming traffic by some way was a link through from Galadarling when she recommended two of my posts in successive posts of her own. I got almost 2,000 visitors from that one link! More than all the above put together.
The moral of the story?
I’ve absolutely no idea
BTW, I’m always happy to consider guest posts if anybody here is interested.
This is something I’m looking to get into down the road. Kind of what Tim was hinting at, I’m always worried about giving away a great article I might want on my website. But I suppose that’s the business.
James from Men with Pens is doing a great series on this topic right now. If anyone knows about guest posting, it’s him – and I’m learning a lot from it.
John Hoff – eVentureBiz’s last blog post..How To Buy A House Like A Real Estate Investor: Part 9 – Becoming A Problem Solver For Sellers And Showing Them You’re Here To Help
@ John – I second that a very good series by James.
BTW, one thing I forgot to mention, I always stipulate that I retain the rights to the material for use in Ebooks, any offline use or use on my site if the other blog closes down.
Tim Brownson’s last blog post..How To Drive A Man Crazy
@ Tim – that is very sound advice. I will remember that one if I ever guest post. Is there some kind of contract you use or do you just stipulate that in an email?
John Hoff – eVentureBiz’s last blog post..How To Buy A House Like A Real Estate Investor: Part 9 – Becoming A Problem Solver For Sellers And Showing Them You’re Here To Help
I just put it in an e-mail John. The fact is that there’s not a lot that they could do anyway as you wrote it, unless you signed a contract giving them sole rights.
Also, there is a lot of paranoia regarding duplicate copy. Google couldn’t care 2 hoots about an occasional reproduced article, some of the top blogs get ripped off like that all the time.
As and adjunct. I have only once had a post turned down and that was by Dumb Little Man. I offered it Pick The Brain and they took it. It was a bit too in-depth for DLM and the stuff they publish. I’m not knocking it, it’s just a different readership.
DLM took my next one which only took me about an hour to write (normally I’m anything from 4 to 6). Scott Young had me re-write twice and I admired his attention to detail. Everybody else pretty much ran with what I sent it in.
Tim Brownson’s last blog post..How To Drive A Man Crazy
Cath – Excellent ideas about guest posting. I’d like to add one more. Always make sure that the blog that you are guest posting for has the same values that you espouse on your blog. This is important to attract the kind of readership your desire.
Shilpan
Shilpan | successsoul.com’s last blog post..Forrest Gump: How to Build Your Self-Confidence
I’m sure that writing for Zen Habits is well worth it. There may be less benefits from posting on a much smaller blog, but I still think it’s worth it.
For one thing, if you have a schedule of say 3 posts a week, there’s no reason why a guest post you’ve written shouldn’t count towards one of them if you send your readers over there. So it doesn’t really take any time to write the post, since you’d have to spend time writing a post for yourself otherwise.
The number of click-throughs to your blog can be disappointing. But even if no one clicks through, you get a link for SEO and hopefully a little more name recognition. When someone sees your name a few times, then they might click through because they remember you.
Men with Pens is currently doing a series on guest posting. I’ve only read of couple of these posts so far, but they’ve got some good tips.
Here’s a potential risk of running a guest post on your blog. What if people don’t notice that it’s a guest post (yes, it happens all the time), and they say “Oh my God! This is your best post ever! Way better than all the others!”
Hunter Nuttall’s last blog post..Todoodlist: Technology Is Great, Pencils Are Better
@ Catherine – timely post. We started our series on guest posting last week, so for those who wanted to read more, here’s the link:
Starting the Series: Landing Your Guest Post Gig
James Chartrand – Men with Pens’s last blog post..Guest Posting: Finding the Motivation to Write
I did my first guest post gig this week actually. Annie approached me. I had already done an interview for her, and I am a regular commenter on her site and she on mine. I am not ready to ask someone yet. Maybe with more experience.
The Lion and I have an idea for hosting guest bloggers, but it will be carefully controlled. We respect and honour our readers, and don’t want to disappoint them in anyway.
Urban Panther’s last blog post..Please, just throw it out
Hi Cath: I’ve done two posts for Dumb Little Man, one for Pick the Brain, and one for the Change Blog. I think it’s important to get your name out there, and writing posts for blogs bigger than your own certainly does that.
Marelisa’s last blog post..Morning Ritual: A Buffet
I’ve only guest posted for Leo at ZenHabits and that was because he asked me. It did flow through some amazing traffic for SHE-POWER and get me 100 new subscribers, but because I don’t blog about productivity/simplicity and I don’t do how-to articles that much I only kept half of those subscribers past a few weeks.
So, for me it was worth it, but I haven’t done another because I have enough commitments and unless the guest post reflects sentiments I feel compelled to write about, then it’s just work with no pay.
I do think guest posts are an important tool for people who want to raise their profile and grow their blog. But the only real aims I ahve for SHE-POWER is to showcase my fiction and provide me with a personal writing outlet so I don’t really have a strategy for growth. Maybe I should, I can’t decide. If I did do another guest post it would probably be something on writing.
Kelly
Kelly@SHE-POWER’s last blog post..Does Evil Lurk Inside Us All?
I had my daughter do a guest post on my blog once, she’s 8, don’ t know if that counts. I however, can’t imagine why anyone would want to guest post on my blog….maybe if my blog had a focus, I might do it. Otherwise, I probably don’t have to worry about it.
If someone sent me a horrible post, I would have to reject it. After all, your guest poster really represents you at that time and not themselves.
Natural’s last blog post..A Fish Out of Water, Literally
The more I read about guest posting, the more I think my blog theme doesn’t work for that. What I do plan, however, is having interviews and guest posts appearing on my own blog.
Instead of going out and spreading the word via guest posts, I hope to draw the readers of the interviewees’ blogs. That being said, the primary reason for doing the interviews is for my own readers and the marketing will be just a secondary benefit.
Cheers,
Alex
Alex Fayle’s last blog post..A Clean-Dishes Junkie
For those of you interested here are my inbound clicks through July from guest posts.
I actually did Shilpan a huge disservice because I hadn’t noticed that I was getting click throughs from 3 sources off his site. A few of those (maybe 12 or so) may have come from click throughs on a comment I made on another post.
Pick The Brain – 96
Success Soul – 91
Dumb Little Man – 38
In My Heels – 36 (JEMi’s article on being coached)
Put Things Off – 19
The problem is knowing how any subscribed? Could be zero, but I’m guessing because I grabbed 250 new subscribers in the month that it’s a good handful.
OTOH, 2 links from Galadarling got me over 3,000 visitors!
Tim Brownson’s last blog post..How To Drive A Man Crazy
This blog entry has set up some of the most fascinating comments I’ve ever seen.
Really great inside info on guest posting.
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