Guest blogging? You mean writing on someone else's blog? How is that going to help me? And why would I bother writing for someone else when I have a hard enough time finding the time to write for my own blog?
Good questions, and ones I hear a lot. I'm here to say, emphatically, that guest blogging is one of the best things you can do to expand your author platform online. And it's not that hard to make it happen. In some cases it may pay off exponentially more than blogging on your own blog.
The Why and How of Guest Blogging
1. New audience: If you write a post on someone else's blog, you are able to speak with legitimacy and authority to their audience. The general sense is that if you respect a blog and read it regularly, anyone who guest posts there must be worthy. If you are that guest blogger, you've got stellar access to a whole audience you didn't build.
2. SEO: Guest blogging is a great way to build inbound links to your website. This will help your site show up higher in the Google search results, and it will help you attract more readers. The best part is that you can add links from any keyword in your article back to your own site, so you get to choose how that article will help you, rather than just taking what you get when other people link to you.
3. Ask: People always think there is some major secret behind how to get guest blogging spots, but there isn't. You simply find a blog you want to guest post on, email them and ask if you can, and then do it if they accept. There is etiquette to asking, of course, and the more traffic a blog gets the more difficult it will probably be to guest post there, but that's the basic approach. There are also communities where you can write and offer your post for inclusion on sites that are looking for posts. One of my favorites to use is Blogger Linkup.
Do you guest blog as an author anywhere? Do you have any other tips or insight?
Image source: marcusrg via flickr
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