Guest posting is seen as the miracle pill that cures all blogging ills. Got no traffic? Guest post… Got no subscribers? Guest post… Got no inbound links? Guest post… but like everything else in life guest blogging takes a bit of work. A lot of work actually, but pretend I never wrote that.
If you want to guest post start with your friends.
Your friends are the most giving and forgiving people you will be connected to. They’ll heap you with your grammar, your images and how to write for the reader.
If your friends blog then the chances are you’ve discussed all your blogging fears with them. They know all about your mean comments, they understand what it feels like when you say you have no idea what a terrabang is and where you would put it. Your friends that blog know all this and have their own fears surrounding many blogging myths. This means that you can talk to them about guest blogging and pitch them a post that isn’t likely to get rejected. And that’s what we are fearing here: rejection.
Your guest post for a friend will be your best guest post ever.
If you replay in your mind every conversation about blogging you’ve ever had with her, you’ll know all about her audience and what she’s trying to achieve with her blog. That means your very first guest post will speak directly to that audience. It means you know the readers, where they come from and you know what their problems, their pain points, are. You have the tactical advantage and you should use it.
Your first guest post isn’t about traffic or building awesome links; it’s about confidence. It’s about someone believing in you enough to get you guest posting. It’s about leveraging your connections and deepening the relationship.
So stop the pity-party and focus on your contacts and how to guest post for them.
Once you’ve got some guest blogging confidence then by all means go and pitch some other bloggers in your niche. You’ll have a published guest post to show them and then you can start building a relationship and finding out more about their blog in order to target your next post that speaks directly to their audience.
This method may not be the fastest method to guest blogging success, but let me reassure you – slow and steady will win out for you.
photo credit: DBarefoot
About Sarah Arrow
