What You Need to Know Before Writing Your Guest Post

Once you’ve landed your  guest posting gig there are a few things you’ll need to know before you send your post to the blog owner. These little details will make you a great guest poster who is more likely to be invited back again.  You want to make sure you make it as easy as possible for the blog owner ~ since this is suppose to make their life easier.

Topic?

What topic do they want you to write about? Now I suggest you have a few things in mind you’d like to write about ~ or a couple topics you’re confident in writing about. Ask them about your topics, find out if they would like you to write about that, or tell them that you’re strong in a specific area or topic, is there something you’d like me to write related to that topic?

Don’t just go in and ask… “So what do you want me to write about?”. That’s not easy. If I have to come up with blog post ideas for you, I might as well come up with them for myself.

I did a guest post a while back on a copywriting blog. I mentioned that I do a lot of work on Squidoo. The blog owner wasn’t familiar with Squidoo and asked if I could write a  piece on how to grow your copy writing business using Squidoo.  So that’s what I did. It was a win/win. She got new information for her readers, and I got to write about something I feel comfortable writing about.

Length?

In this same article I received an email from her that stated she had edited a little of my article because it was running over her word limit. Which is fine. I didn’t ask how long it should/could be, and I should have.  She did ask for some revisions and additions that made it a little longer than it had been originally.

However, this is an important point. Whether you like to write short, sweet, to the point articles or you tend to run on at they keyboard like I do, make sure you know the length the blog owner is expecting. Depending on the blog it could be a minimum or a maximum word limit or both.

Format?

What format does the blog owner want you to send the post in? Make sure you know ahead of time. There’s nothing worse than trying to open a document that doesn’t open. Worse yet, getting a document that you have to completely reformat before you can post it. That’s not easy for the blog owner and we’re doing everything we can to make it easy.

Here’s some formats I’ve been asked to submit:

PDF
word doc
text doc
in an email

There are plenty of options, so make sure you ask what the owner’s preference is. I personally would never request a post in word format due to the additional code that is often embedded in word. (which makes the post look all kinds of funky)

When?

This is a two parter. Make sure you know when they need to have the post. Make sure you deliver your post on time if not before the date they need it. Also make sure you have a good idea of when the post will be posted. You want to be able to promote the post yourself, as well as go and respond to comments people make on your post.

Links?

Make sure you know how many and where links are allowed in the post? Can you put links in the text itself or only in your resource box? Will they be linking to their own articles within your article text? Find out this stuff ahead of time to avoid hassles.

What next?

If you can see the absolute benefit of guest posting you might want to think about taking this whole thing to the next level. You can grow your site exponentially by doing a guest blog tour, which means doing a bunch of guest posts in a short amount of time. This takes planning and a little bit of hutspah but it can make a drastic difference in your blog traffic.

Nicole Dean did a Rock n Roll style Blog Tour last summer, and has put her experiences in an amazing DIY blog tour ebook. It is very helpful, has plenty of great information as well as worksheets and all kinds of good stuff to keep you organized and on track. An excellent resource if you plan to make guest blogging one of your main promotion tactics. (And you definitely should. It’s the biggest bang for your buck.)

If you have any questions or other tips for writing guest posts feel free to leave them in the comments section!