The eBiz Blog

Your website is up and running and you’re seeing a steady stream of traffic to your blog. You’re successfully leveraging your social media accounts to attract new customers and engage the ones you already have. Things are going well, but you want to see your numbers go up and continue building your brand.

For many entrepreneurs and bloggers, the next logical step is to enter the world of guest blogging. Contributing content to other sites not only helps the host site stay fresh and compelling, more importantly for you, it introduces you and your ideas to a new audience. One well-written post on a popular blog, for example, can draw hundreds if not thousands of new visitors to your site, and if they like what they see, they may stick around.

While guest blogging is relatively easy, if you screw it up, you’re limiting your potential for future opportunities. I’ve seen potential guest bloggers blow major opportunities simply because they were unprepared, or because they didn’t do enough promotion on their own. With that in mind, I put together this short guide to becoming a sought-after guest blogger.

Deliver Your Best Ideas

One mistake that some people make, especially those new to blogging, is to squirrel away their best ideas for a rainy day. “I don’t want to write about this now,” they say. “I may need it later when the inspiration well has run dry.” So they continue to produce lackluster content, and readers slowly trickle away.

When you’re guest-blogging, though, you want to put your best foot forward. You’re trying to attract new readers, followers and customers, so share your best, freshest ideas. Your current readers, the ones consuming your content already, know what you can do. The readers where you’re guesting don’t. So give them everything you’ve got, and show off a little bit.

Be a Shameless Self-Promoter

One reason that site owners like having guest bloggers is that the guest usually comes along with an established network that is likely to follow them wherever they are contributing. So it’s not enough to simply send off your blog and go about your business. The host is counting on you to let your network know about your contribution, so update your Facebook status, tweet about it, pin it and add a link to your blog. The more you can help your host promote her site, the more in-demand you’ll be.

Be Reliable

Want to have your name crossed off the list of potential guest-bloggers? Be unreliable. Turning in your post late, or sending a post that’s riddled with errors, accompanied by poor photos or stuffed with links to your own site is just going to annoy the host. He might not even publish your work, and you’ll risk damaging the relationship. Again, put your best foot forward and deliver what you agreed upon, preferably before the deadline. If you can establish yourself as a reliable, competent blogger who delivers, you’ll be sought after by site owners looking for fresh content.

Becoming a successful guest blogger requires not only the ability to create excellent content, but also a commitment to professional courtesy and follow through. If you can manage that, you’ll be in high demand and reap the benefits of greater exposure and more traffic to your site.