Published:

11/21/2013 03:09am

How to Get Your Writing Featured on Popular Blogs

I've been trying to break out into guest blogging ever since I attended Jon Morrow's webinar back when he launched BoostBlogTraffic.com.

While it's true that he was pitching a coaching program at the end of the webinar, I love how upfront he was about the fact that his help was not needed to start doing this successfully. All he said his program would do is make it a little easier, but reiterated that it was totally unnecessary.

Jon's honesty is part of why I admire him. In case you're not familiar, Jon is the senior editor over at Copyblogger. I blogged about another one of his webinars some time ago now, which you can find here if you're interested.

At any rate, he inspired me to give it a try on my own. I took some time to choose a small handful of blogs which I had something to offer and reached out to the blog owners with a brief email pitch. As I had expected, most of them said yes. However, not all of them follow through. Just comes with the territory.

So I have put together this step-by-step checklist if you want to start guest blogging. Be sure to follow each step as directed and don't skip any. Each one is important and tending to all the details laid out below will give you a much greater chance of success.

Finding Blogs

What topics are you knowledgeable on? What is your niche?
Go to Google and do a search for your main keyword or keyword phrases in order to find some relevant blogs.

Once you've managed to narrow your list to some high quality blogs, look around their website for something that says "write for us," or "submit a guest post." Read their submission guidelines carefully to make sure your pitch is appropriate and formatted correctly.

If none of your blog selections have this posted on their site, try returning to Google and typing in your niche keywords again + the phrase "write for us" in quotes. This will return search relevant blogs which have this posted on their site somewhere.

Researching Blogs

Be sure that you have read at least 5 posts from a blog before making contact. The more you've read, the better. The longer you have been a subscriber, the better.

The idea here is that you should have a good grasp of what type of stuff they publish and what topics have already been covered recently, so you don't pitch an idea that they don't currently need.

However, you can revisit a topic if you have a new or original twist to add, so long as it will be valuable to their readers and truly offers a unique perspective.

Find out who runs or owns the site where the blog is hosted. Be sure to know their name so you can address them by it when you reach out about guest posting. The better you get to know them before making contact, the better.

Making a personal reference based on what you have learned about them really goes a long way in most cases. It shows that you took the time to acquaint yourself with who they are as a person and builds rapport right from the start.

Formulate a specific idea for your guest post before making contact. Give it a title and write a brief outline. Do everything except for the actual meat and potatoes portion of the content. Create a skeleton of the post so that all you will have left to do is fill in the sections once you get approval (if you do).

Identify why the blog's audience will find your post useful and clearly identify which areas it will help them in the most. Define what sets apart your idea from others similar to it. Make sure you're very clear on the benefits you are offering before you reach out.

Writing Your Pitch

Start by addressing the blog owner by name and introduce yourself briefly in the first paragraph. Mention your full name, your blog or website (if you have one), your area of expertise and any relevant credentials. If your writing has been featured on any other sites, mention this here in your intro paragraph.

In the next paragraph, give a little background on how you found their blog and why you find it useful. Feel free to make a personal reference here. It can be mentioning one of you