Building relationships with other bloggers is a vital component of being a successful blogger. When other bloggers talk about you, share your links, or ask you to guest blog, you’re not only reaching new markets, but you’re also showcasing your expertise to the entire online world. How’s that for increasing exposure?
Below are a few tips for developing a positive reputation as a guest blogger:
Be consistent: Provide the same amount of quality content to each blogger—no matter his / her current audience and readership base. Just because a blogger has fewer readers than another doesn’t mean his / her readership is any less important. In fact, the blogger with fewer readers could be more influential than the blogger with more readers. And influence far outweighs popularity.
Be on time: Stick to the guest post deadline that you worked out with the blogger at the beginning of your agreement to guest blog. This is not only polite, but it is also essential based on the nature or blogging. Blogs usually work off of a schedule that is created anywhere from 2 – 4 weeks in advance. Bloggers plan these schedules accordingly in order to ensure that posts are published on specific days at specific times. When you are late, it can ruin a relationship. Adhere to deadlines.
Go above and beyond: Make the blogger’s life easier by providing him or her more information than they requested. This doesn’t mean you need to send a novel of your life story. Simply provide some extra materials to use, such as a brief bio, an image to go with the post, and your blog or company logo.
The blogger will appreciate your taking the time to send these materials. And it shows that you respect his or her time.
When you provide these additional materials, it also helps you to create a more accurate brand / blog message for the blogger’s readers. This attitude of going above and beyond also looks good to the blogger, which makes it more likely that the blogger will recommend you as a guest blogger to other bloggers and possibly ask you back to guest blog again.
Share the love: Nothing is more rewarding that seeing your blog readership and subscribers increase. When your guest post goes live, make it a point to share your post with your social network, email colleagues and clients, and heck, even send the link to your mother! When you share with your network, you in turn increase awareness and exposure for that blog. As a blogger, when someone is a guest blogger on my blog and he or she heavily promotes the post, I am more likely to ask him or her to come back as a guest blogger because I see the guest blogger as a key influencer—someone who can drive mad amounts of targeted traffic to my blog (and eager prospects).
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Michelle Salater is an award-winning writer and president of Sumèr, LLC, a company which specializes in web copy writing, SEO copywriting, and the promotion and marketing of websites after they launch. As an avid business blogger, Michelle has grown her marketing blog, Copy Doodle, to be a powerful lead generation and client education tool, and frequently guest blogs and lectures on blogging. In 2009, Michelle won the Charleston Business Journal’s Forty under 40 award for her business and community leadership.
