If you write guest articles regularly, you know that it has becomebecame quite difficult to contribute across third-party resources nowadays. Guest contributors face more strict rules regarding content quality. Plus, it takes lots of time to get a guest pitch reviewed. Why does it happen? Let’s get back to the 2019 year for a second. According to statistics, there were 4.4 million blog posts published every day. And the numbers grow with each year.
Therefore, due to a high volume of guest post requests blogs receive, it became less possible to publish 2-3 guest articles per week. Despite the fact, the necessity of guest blogging is still in priority for marketers. How to turn the table on in this situation? In this guide, you will get familiar with the tips that will help you get your guest articles published without delay. Shall we begin?
Start With Exploring Guest Post Opportunities
Practice shows that the first thing that a guest post writer should do is collect a list of niche-related blogs that accept guest contributors. When you have the list of blogs, you should proceed with pitching your guest post ideas.
There are two things that you should avoid doing:
- Send a single guest post topic idea for review
- Start writing a post before a suggested topic has been approved by a blog’s editor
Let’s review what could happen if you make the above-mentioned mistakes.
First of all, you waste your time writing a post. You are not a professional content writer who writes posts for money. You must value your time. Secondly, you don’t know if the topic will be interesting for a blog’s audience. You can’t predict if the blog editor will approve the topic and like the post. Hence, the chances that the game is worth candles are slim.
Instead, you should follow these steps:
- Explore as more niche-related blog opportunities as you can
- Pick up about 10-15 blogs and split them into sub-niches (email marketing, SEO, content design, web design, social media marketing, etc.)
- Brainstorm about five topic ideas per each sub-niche blog
- Send your pitch
- Start write content
Stick to this approach. It will increase the success of your bust blogging drastically.
So, how to explore niche-related guest post opportunities?
There are a few actionable ways that will help you find blogs that accept guest contributors. Let’s review them.
- Google + specific search commands
The very first place that can help you find guest posts service s Google. Hence, go to Google and use one of these search commands:
- [niche] + write for us
- [niche] + submit a guest post
- [niche] + become a contributor
- etc.
For example, you want to find several blogs related to design.
This approach of finding guest post opportunities is actionable. However, it lacks SEO-related metrics that can help you target more high-quality blogs.
Content Explorer tool from Ahrefs
The market is full of different SEO tools. They vary with the toolkit each of them suggests. When it comes to exploring blogs for guest posting, Content Explorer from Ahrefs can help you a lot.
In this case, you should search for blogs where either your competitors or niche influencers have published before.
A huge advantage of using this SEO tool for finding opportunities is that you can filter down the results by Domain Rating, Page Traffic, and other SEO metrics. Thus, you will be able to explore the most promising guest post opportunities.
Social media channels (Twitter)
Twitter can help you find guest post opportunities as well. Put your search command into Twitter’s search bar and reap the benefits straight away.
Now you know how to explore blogs for guest blogging services. Use these approaches and move to the next tip.
Brainstorm Topic Ideas That Would Spark the Interest
Guest blogging has one major drawback – the absence of fresh topic ideas. When you’re writing guest articles regularly, you start to notice that you lack unique ideas that you could suggest to the audience.
It leads to writer’s block – the state of inability to write something new.
How to escape writer’s block and be able to come up with fresh ideas all the time?
Here are a couple of tips that you can implement in your practice.
Use a “Skyscraper technique”
This technique was created by famous SEO expert Brian Dean. The idea behind the skyscraper technique is to cover topics that drive tons of traffic constantly.
How does it work?
First of all, you need to explore topics that have lots of social shares, backlinks, and traffic. Once the topics are identified, you should update the content with new information. You can do this by adding statistics, covering this topic from another angle, enriching it with related visuals.
Afterwards, you need to get in touch with the blog editors that have content on the same topic on their blogs. Introduce your updated version of the topic to them and ask if they could publish it.
Eventually, you can cover top content ideas over and over again.
Pick gem ideas across other popular blogs
Every niche has top blogs where different experts and influencers publish their content. You can find some guest post topic ideas by conducting topic research on these blogs.
For instance, you want to cover a topic related to advertising. You need to come up with a topic idea that would be related to PPC specifically. Type your request and see what posts have been published on the same topic before.
Now you have a list of the posts. Your next step is to review each topic and see what points it covers. Pick up a few best topics to your mind and create a new topic idea.
Visit Quora to find fresh topic ideas
Quora is a Q&A platform that you can use to find inspiration for creating shareable content that would be in demand. Put your query and filter down the results “by time” and “by type.”
From the example above, you can see what questions people ask on the “content design” topic. Some of the questions are out of interest but a few of them could be transformed into topic ideas.
- The question “How is a content designer different from a copywriter?” can work as a topic “Content Design or Copywriting: Key Factors You Should Know to Never Confuse”
- The question “How is collaboration key for SEO and content design?” can be turned into a topic “Content Design and SEO: How These Two Directions Can Complement Each Other”
As you can see, Quora is a good source of topic idea suggestions.
With the help of SEO tools
Yes, specific SEO tools can help you find guest post ideas easily. You noticed that there is a mention of Ahrefs’ Content Explorer tool that can help you find guest post opportunities. This tool can help you with topic ideas as well.
Assume that you want to come up with some topic ideas on sports supplements. Let’s see what other people covered across different blogs by using the tool.
The tool suggested a wide range of articles related to this topic solely. The results are sorted by the amount of traffic each post drives. Your purpose is to review top topics and brainstorm how you can cover them from your end.
Now you have a list of blogs that accept guest contributors and topic ideas you can pitch them with. But how to do it correctly?
Read further and you’ll find out!
How to Pitch Your Guest Post Ideas Effectively
The success of your guest post pitch depends on the email template you use.
What should your email template include?
First thing first, draw attention to the pitch requirements each blog has. Some blogs suggest what you should point out in the subject line of your email. If you don’t follow recommendations, your pitch will be rejected.
However, if there is no strict rule regarding this, you can use the following subject line that works pretty well.
“A guest post request from [your company brand name]”
Talking about the email template, it should be short and sweet. Here is the example you can use.
“Hi there,
It is Ann from Technotronic here.
I was exploring blogs related to “[niche]” to pitch my guest post suggestion. I couldn’t pass your blog because it looks good + highly authoritative.
Therefore, is there a chance for me to contribute?
Here are my topic ideas to choose from:
1) Topic idea
2) Topic idea
3) Topic idea
4) Topic idea
5) Topic idea
Here are the examples of my past publications.
1) Sample of work
2) Sample of work
3) Sample of work
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Ann”
Reach out to the blog editors and wait for their replies.
A Few Suggestions That Will Help You Speed Up Guest Post Writing
Guest post writing is an unpredictable process. You can never know when you will get a reply from a blog’s owner and what topic will be chosen. Hence, you can’t predict what type of content you will have to create.
Therefore, you should be aware of the major types of content. It will help you manage your time and efforts more productively.
There are four main types of content. Let’s review them one by one.
Case study
If you want to say a word for your product or service, writing case studies is what you need. A case study allows you to explain to your target audience how your service can help solve people’s issues. However, you must understand that you can’t promote the product blatantly. You can underline the avid benefits that people might have if they use the product.
What’s more important, you can apply various visual elements when creating the case study. Especially if you need to present some statistics. Enrich your case study with infographics, graphs, charts, and other forms of visual content.
Keep in mind, if you want to add visuals to your case study, you might need to use design tools for this. For example, an online graph maker can help you create a beautiful graph that would work great to visualize the data.
Other than that, any case study is way time-consuming. Hence, you will have to take your time to create it.
Review
Review articles help your target audience to find answers to the questions they have regarding some product or service. As a rule, you will have to test all the services or products that you are willing to cover in the post by yourself.
It takes lots of time and forces you to analyze every service perfectly. You will have to explore all pros and cons of each product personally and introduce your findings to your audience.
“How-to” article
This type of article aims to provide your target audience with a step-by-step tutorial on how to do something. It includes all the stages of an educational piece of content along with some actionable tips.
It depends on the topic you cover of how long you will have to write this post. Plus, the “how-to” article requires you to have firsthand experience in the subject you’re covering.
It should be admitted that “how-to” articles demand you to apply visuals in the body of the post. Thus, if you don’t have time to work on infographics for your post, you can hire a graphic designer who would do this instead of you.
Lists
“Lists” articles remind “review” articles at some point. You will have to present different tools or services with all their pros and cons included. However, in contrast to “review” articles, “lists” ones illustrate a huge number of products in a single post. That’s why you don’t need to go into detail about each tool. Just a short description, pros and cons, and conclusion.
By knowing the types of posts you will be able to predict how much time you will have to spend working on the post.
Other tips that you should be armed with are:
- Create a comfortable place for work (no noise, air-conditioning, no distractions)
- Decide for yourself when you’re more productive (an early bird or a night owl)
- Don’t forget about breaks and physical exercises
- If your process of writing lacks inspiration, don’t write
- Remember about deadlines
Follow these simple tips and you will see that you can write guest posts on autopilot.
To Sum Up
Guest posting is extremely important for brand awareness, gaining more traffic, and earning backlinks. You should not neglect it for all costs.
In this guide, you found out how to find guest post opportunities, brainstorm fresh topic ideas, pitch them effectively. Plus, you got a few actionable tips that will help you write guest articles without any stagnation.
If you have something to add, feel free to share your ideas in the comments.
