Who To Choose To Write a Guest Post on Your Blog, and How to Approach Them

So your blog is doing great — you’ve got a respectable number of subscribers, you’re posting on a consistent basis, your page views are rising and you’re seeing some shares on social media. Congratulations!

A great step to go from here is to consider featuring guest bloggers. You want to pick your guest bloggers carefully. Ideally, you want someone who:

• aligns with your brand’s values
• has a respectable following themselves from their own blog or on social media
• complements your own service offerings so you are providing information your subscribers are expecting from your blog.

Featuring a guest blogger offers a lot of benefits to your business but really should be a mutually beneficial relationship. For one thing, it’s a great way to build relationships within your industry and bring quality content to your blog from experts in your network. It also gives your guest blogger a platform to showcase their expertise to a new audience and expands their reach a step further. In this way, you and your guest blogger can leverage each other’s audience by promoting the blog post through one another’s social media channels and get it in front of each other’s audiences, essentially increasing the reach of the blog post. To add more mileage, be sure to reference the blog post whenever possible when you write future blog posts or write on other platforms.

How to Choose Your Guest Bloggers

Before you do anything else, stop to revisit your brand’s goals, voice and values. Anyone you invite to write on your blog should match these. If your brand is all about integrity and the blogger you approach consistently promises quality but delivers the opposite to their customers, it’s not a good match!

For a preliminary list of prospects, take a look at your network as well as the bloggers or business owners you follow and respect on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. Who has a voice that you think would really speak to your ideal client? Whose values match yours? Who has an offering that complements yours? For instance, I blog about social media and my clientele could benefit from a post on business strategy. Having a colleague from my industry write a guest post on business strategy offers value to my readers and also offers my colleague exposure for her own business and blog.

Before reaching out to potential guest bloggers, first look over the list and determine which prospects speak well within your industry; which have the greatest reach both on their blog and in their social media; and which match your values.

Reaching Out

Now, reach out to the bloggers whom you think might be open to writing a guest post for you and who are a good match. Let them know that you love their ideas and the discussions that their blog generates, and that you would love to feature a guest blog post by them, thus expanding their reach via your own network. It’s a good idea to offer some ideas of the types of topics that would fit well on your blog. You’ll also want to educate them on your blog — what you normally post as well as your message and values.

Finally, name the mutual benefit. Do you plan to offer them a free product or service for writing the post? What kind of exposure can they expect when they post on your blog? How do you plan to promote the post? Would it make sense to do a trade and write a post for them in return?

With periodic posts written by strategically chosen guest bloggers, expect to see your blog’s reach grow even faster than it already is. And if have questions about how to plan your digital marketing strategy, give Tenato a call!