Blogging on your own site is a great way to add fresh content, show off your knowledge, attract customers, all kinds of usefulness. Blogging on someone else’s site though. Why would you do that?
Well, readers of those other blogs might well be interested in you and what you do, whether you blog about what you do or not. Reaching that wider audience is powerful stuff – a whole new readership to get to know you. And many blog owners welcome the good content for their readers.
On some blogs you’ll do it for the joy of writing or sharing your opinion, which can attract those who like your style to your own work/business/blog – they want to read more – there is usually a signature area in which to give a brief overview of who you are and what you do.
It’s not about selling or link building or any other such nonsense that just does not work and can even get you a scowl from Google. It is about sharing what you know, developing your authority, getting your brand out there, even just sharing opinions that will attract others who recognise someone they want to know more about.
Take Blokes on the Blog, an online magazine type of blog about and for men that I run, as an example. I welcome guest posts but will not have people selling on there. It’s rare to even accept content that the bloggers have already posted elsewhere – there are exceptions, but only those that I deem interesting for the readers. Blogs such as this are great for exploring your writing style and offer you an outlet for content that may not work on your own site. Indeed I encourage new writers and help them where necessary.
On this blog I’d welcome guest posts that are going to be helpful to you, my readers. Many of you are single-person business owners who just want to make sense of this online marketing stuff. There are plenty of posts that would be useful for you and I know good people to write them, but their often a bit busy – take a look at my friend Suze St Maur’s How to Write Better – now there’s a great writer – every day, pretty much, and open to a good guest post too. There are areas where I’m not expert, plenty of them, and I’d love to be more useful to you by including such. I really must get Suze to write here… 😉
It is always going to be more useful for you to write original content and not just copy what you’ve written on your post already, that’s just common sense. And indeed that is what we need to do when considering guest posting – use your common sense.
There was, and probably still is in places, an over-reaction that guest posting was not a good thing when Matt Cutts posted “The decay and fall of guest blogging for SEO” last year. You have to read what he adds at the bottom, too, though.
So – keep an eye on blogs where your voice might be welcome and ask or offer. Keep exercising that writing muscle – who knows what may come of it…
And if you fancy guesting, let me know, or if you’re not sure where you could guest post, I’ll help you find somewhere.
photo credit: Gemma Garner via photopin cc
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