10 Guest Posting DOs and DON’Ts for Maximum Success
(This is Part 4 of my series “The Guest Post: The Ultimate Guide To Guest Blogging.” To become a total guest posting badass, be sure to read the entire series.)
Welcome to the 4th and final part of this guest posting series. If you’ve been playing along at home, you’ve already learned just about everything you will ever need to know about guest posting.
All that’s left to learn now are some final tips for getting as much out of this as you possibly can. I’m talking MaXiMuM GueST PoSTiNG SuCCeSS!!!
And hey, what a coincidence, I’m going to explain exactly that in the convenient form of a list of “DOs” and “DON’Ts.”
And it’s going to start right… about… now.
DO have an amazing post already written and ready to be posted before your guest post goes live.
Pay lots of attention here.
Before your guest post gets published, you need to write up a truly amazing post for your own blog and save it. Don’t publish it yet, just have it fully written and ready to go.
Then, the second your guest post goes live, publish this amazing post of yours.
Why?
So when all of this brand new traffic comes to your site in one big immediate burst, this will be the very first thing they see.
Take my word for it, this will do more for converting this traffic into regular readers than anything else you can possibly do. And the more amazing this post of yours is, the more of this traffic you will convert.
I’m not guessing, by the way. I’m guaranteeing.
The truth is, right after guest posting, a bunch of people who didn’t even know you existed will show up on your site. And just as soon as they show up, they will leave and never return. Your goal (and your job) is to grab them and keep them there for as long as possible. Oh, and you’ll only have about 3 seconds to do it.
This means you need to ensure that the very first thing these people see is something that they just HAVE to read. If it is, they will stay and possibly go on to subscribe, sign up, join, buy, or do whatever the hell else it is you want them to do on your site.
If it’s not, you’ll have lost them forever.
Long story short, you only have one shot at converting guest post traffic, and this little strategy here is the single greatest way of making it happen. Prepare an amazing post in advance and publish it immediately after your guest post goes live.
DO make sure your next post is pretty damn good, too.
Yup, for pretty much the same reasons mentioned above for why that most recent post of yours needs to be amazing, your very next post after that needs to be pretty damn good too.
This post is the one that proves to these new readers of yours that your most recent amazing post – the one that made them stay and go on to subscribe – wasn’t a fluke.
If the guest post is the one that draws them in, and that amazing post above is the one that hooks them, this next post of yours is the one that keeps them.
Make sure it’s something capable of accomplishing this.
DO mention to your own readers on your own blog that you did a guest post.
If you wrote it, your readers will probably like it. So, be sure to tell them about your guest post and let them know where to find it.
DON’T tell your readers about your guest post until a few days later.
Yup. You should definitely tell your readers about your guest post, just not right away.
The reason why should be pretty obvious if you read the very first DO in this post. You know, the one about writing an amazing post and putting it live right after your guest post gets published so it’s the first thing all of this new traffic sees?
Well, the worst thing you can do is have the first post they see be a post along the lines of: “Hey guys, just did a guest post, check it out!”
Click, gone.
They just came from that guest post, so this is something all of this traffic is guaranteed to not give a shit about it. They’ll of course express this to you by leaving your site immediately.
Like I said before, you will only have one shot at converting these people into regular readers (or at the very least people who go deeper into your site to look around and then possibly become regular readers), so ensuring that the first thing they see is something they will love and not something they couldn’t care less about is of the utmost importance.
You should therefore hold off for a few days on mentioning that you did a guest post. There’s no real rush to tell your own readers anyway, so wait until most (or all) of that guest post traffic dies down and then do this post.
Or, better yet, publish that next amazing post first, and then make your “guest post mention” post.
So basically:
- Your guest post gets published.
- You publish a super amazing post on your own blog the second you see your guest post is live.
- You publish another post that is also above average on the scale of awesomeness soon after (how soon after depends on whatever your typical posting frequency is).
- Your next post can be the one where you mention you did a guest post.
- You go right back to posting awesome content.
Rinse, repeat.
DO contact the blog owner and thank them for letting you guest post.
If you have an ounce of common sense (or manners), this one was probably pretty obvious. For those of you that don’t, be sure to contact the blog owner after your guest post gets published and thank them for letting you do it.
DO create an opening for future guest posts.
Whether you really want to guest post on that same blog again or if you have absolutely no intention of ever guest posting there in a million years, it’s always a smart move to at least create an opening for it.
This is pretty easy to do. In that “thank you” email you send (see above), just throwing in something as simple as “would love to do it again sometime” at the end should do the trick.
Real world example: I guest posted for John Chow, and I sent him an email right after my post went live thanking him for letting me do it and literally included the words “would love to do it again sometime” at the end of the email despite having little interest at the time in doing it again.
He replied back with something like “sure, whenever you have another post just send it over” and that was that.
Next thing you know, I felt like guest posting for him again, sent my post over, and it was live on his blog the next day. Oh, and it went on to be 50 times more beneficial to me than the first post. Good thing I created an opening for future guest posts.
Be sure to do the same.
DO pay attention to the comments on your post, and reply to them.
Assuming you guest posted on a blog that has an audience, and assuming your guest post didn’t completely suck, there’s a strong chance that there will be people leaving comments.
And, even though it’s not your blog, you should treat the comments on your guest post as though it IS your blog.
Reply to everything that warrants a reply. Answer questions, give advice, join the discussion, give your (expert) opinion, argue politely and intelligently with anyone who decides to argue against something you said in your post, and basically just use the comments to show these people (and all future people who come across this post) that you are a total badass in whatever subject your post was about.
Forget that replying to the comments is just the right thing to do for many obvious reasons, it’s also another perfect place to promote the crap out of yourself and show this blog’s readers how knowledgeable, credible and all around awesome you are.
Oh, and in the case where you guest post and the readers of that blog don’t actually realize it was a guest post (crazy right?), responding to the comments as the writer of that post is the best way of correcting that.
DON’T publicly make fun of that blog’s owner or readers.
Only a truly sick individual would do something like publicly poke fun at that fact that the readers of the blog they guest posted on weren’t exactly smart enough to realize that it was actually a guest post. (A nice example of do as I say and not as I do, kids.)
Even though it caused no problems for me at all (hell, I even brought it up a second time), it’s still a really good idea to avoid doing silly stuff like this that may jeopardize your chance of ever guest posting on that same blog again in future.
While on that subject…
DON’T publicly complain about anything related to your guest post or the experience as a whole.
Don’t publicly whine and complain about how little traffic your guest post brought you, or how they removed the link you added within the post even though they never actually said you could do that, or that they did some barely noticeable editing to your post, or that it took them a while to publish it, or really any similar thing that is seriously NOT AT ALL worth complaining about.
Just let this kind of stuff slide and don’t be a dick about it.
Well, unless of course it’s really, REALLY deserved.
In some very rare cases, something happens during your guest posting experience that makes some public complaining justified. I mean, I’ve heard of people submitting guest posts and then having their link nofollowed (when it clearly wasn’t supposed to be), or not having any link back at all, or not getting any credit of any kind (not even a name), or having their post edited to the point where it makes them sound horrible/wrong/dumb, and other equally crappy things.
Again, this kind of stuff is rare, and if you paid attention during Part 2 you will have picked a blog to guest post on that wouldn’t pull lame shit like this in the first place. But, in the event that something like this does happen, by all means feel free to strike down upon them with great vengeance and furious anger.
In all others cases though, just let it go. It’s not worth it, it won’t accomplish anything, and you’ll most likely end up looking like a dumbass in the process.
DO guest post on this blog again.
If you get a guest post published on a blog, you just instantly increased your chances of getting future guest posts published on that same blog. This is something you should definitely take advantage of.
Use everything you learned from the previous guest post to make the next one even more successful.
Take my John Chow guest posts for example. I did 2. The first did okay. Got some alright traffic, nothing crazy. What I learned though is that many of his readers aren’t very bright (look at me, I brought it up again) and failed to realize it was actually a guest post.
So, what did I do? Fueled by a combination of annoyance and vengeance, I guest posted a second time and corrected that problem… big time. And then I topped it off with some equally big time self promotion.
While that second guest post of mine definitely provided value (still the key to any successful guest post), it was really just a blatant attempt at self promotion (seriously, the whole post is me explaining what I’ve accomplished and how awesome I am for doing it) and making sure everyone who read it knew without a doubt that it was a guest post (3 words into the post I literally said the words “guest post”).
The result was me getting more traffic in this post’s first couple of hours than my first guest post brought in its first couple of weeks.
Of course, including a REALLY click-through-enticing link within the post itself certainly didn’t hurt, either. And this is another one of the perks of guest posting a second time on the same blog. You have a little more leeway in terms of the stuff you can do compared to your first guest post on that blog.
In this case, that “leeway” was me including a perfectly relevant link back to a specific post of mine within this guest post.
This wasn’t a coincidence. I wrote that second guest post with the intent of including that specific link. And if I wasn’t so busy at the time, I probably would have worked in a second link too. Even still, the results were exactly what I expected/wanted them to be.
The moral: Sometimes your first guest post on a blog goes really bad, just okay, or quite good. Either way, you’ll have learned something, and you can use that “something” to ensure your second (and third, fourth, etc.) guest posts on that blog go progressively better.
The End Of Part 4 (And This Whole Guest Post Series)
And that wraps up this guest posting series. You’ve now learned:
- The point, purpose and benefits of guest posting.
- How to find the perfect blog(s) to guest post on.
- How to write your guest post and actually get it published.
- What you need to do (and not do) in order to get as much out of all of this as possible.
If you made it this far, you are officially a guest posting badass. Congrats.
Now go guest post somewhere.
(This is Part 4 of my series “The Guest Post: The Ultimate Guide To Guest Blogging.” To become a total guest posting badass, be sure to read the entire series.)
Any post that works in lines from Pulp Fiction is a post I love.
Great series, bookmarked it to look back at when I take the guest post plunge in a few weeks.
Jenn: Just wait till my next post… 10 Awesome Ways To Describe What Marsellus Wallace Looks Like