In order to make your business grow you need to have a certain marketing strategy.

It can happen that you change your strategy along the way once you know better your ideal customer and the type of service or product you offer.

At first it might seem difficult to know which strategy will work best, but that doesn’t prevent you from trying those that best suit your personality and your audience.

If the strategy you are working on is content marketing, you will know that writing guest posts on other people’ blogs who are more popular than yours is a very effective way to make yourself known and increase your audience.

I hear you, it’s not always easy to dare to ask someone to let us write on their blog, especially when we are just starting out and we just get our friends and family to read what we share.

However, it’s a worthwhile effort because guest posts can bring you very good results.

As it happens in all areas in business (and most of the time in life in general) the response we’ll receive depends a lot on how we ask for things.

In this post I’m going to show you how to write a great guest blog pitch so you have a better chance of getting a positive answer.

But first let’s see why it’s important to write posts on other people’s blogs and why I strongly recommend you do it.

Benefits of Guest Blogging

Making a considerable effort of research, writing, editing and layout to see the result in someone else’s blog, may seem like an unbearable sacrifice, however, you have to see the whole process as an investment.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of writing guest posts so we get into the right mood before writing our pitch.

Greater exposure

Writing in a blog with more authority than yours will give you more visibility since you will have more opportunities for a large number of people to read what you write and get to know you.

It’s very important to add at least one link to your own blog and to your social media accounts in which you are most active so that those people who liked your post can start following you.

For this reason, you have to put your best research and writing skills to work so that you write a compelling post and people believe you know what you’re talking about.

Tips to write an irresistible guest blog pitch. #blogging #contentstrategy #contentmarketing #copywriting Click To Tweet

Greater authority

People who didn’t know you at all and have read your guest post, which provides a lot of valuable information on a given topic, will consider you an expert on that topic. You will have more chances that they start following you, either on social media or by subscribing to your list.

To improve your writing

To become a good writer you need to practice a lot. They say that you have to write every day if you want to be a real writer, so the only way is by making a habit of writing. We’ll talk all about it very soon in a post I’m preparing and I’ll publish shortly.

Writing posts in other blogs as a guest blogger will give you even more opportunities to practice your skills and improve every day, because as we said before, you need to reserve your best posts for others if you want to obtain the results you are looking for.

To build mutually beneficial relationships

Writing on someone else’s blog will bring you the opportunity to build a relationship with that person which can bring you more business.

Let me explain.

You don’t always have to see other professionals in your field as rivals, but as people struggling to survive with their business, just like you, so it’s important to collaborate and help each other.

Maybe that blog you have written for offers a service or product that is slightly different than yours, and they might think of you when they need someone with your particular skills.

For example, imagine that this blog offers digital marketing services but they don’t have anyone who is an expert in writing email marketing sequences and they need one, they may think of you then.

Or vice versa, a client of yours may ask you for help with social media but you’re not a Community manager and you think about that person you wrote for who is.

Maintaining a relationship with other professional colleagues can be very beneficial, also in order to learn from each other.

Now that we’ve seen the various benefits of guest blogging, let’s see how you can write a great guest post pitch for which you can only get a positive answer.

First steps before sending your guest post pitch

Before sending your pitch you need to take a few fundamental steps in order not to waste anybody’s time.

Let’s see them in detail.

Tips to write an irresistible guest blog pitch. #blogging #contentstrategy #contentmarketing #copywriting Click To Tweet

Research

The first thing you need to do is to research about those blogs you’d like to write for, firstly to find out if they accept guest posts.

There are many blogs that don’t do it, they just write themselves, so don’t waste your time sending your pitch to one of these because they won’t even answer you or if they do, it will be by reminding you that they don’t accept any guest posts… So what’s the point?

Once you are sure that they accept posts from other people (either because you have seen this type of posts or because they explicitly mention it in their blog) it’s time to study what kind of topics they touch.

The second thing you need to assess is whether your speciality is related to that blogs’ topic.

For example, if you are a personal coach you might be interested in writing a blog about personal branding. Very often people don’t know how to build a strong personal brand because they don’t know themselves well and maybe talking to a coach can help them define who they really are and what they want in life.

If you’re interested in building a personal brand, I’ll tell you all about it in this post.

The next step after being sure that your speciality is related to that blog, is to study what kind of audience reads it.

Remember that every time we write, we do it thinking about the person who is going to read it, rather than about ourselves.

To write interesting posts or articles we have to keep our target audience in mind at all times.

Once you know what kind of people read that blog, you’ll be ready for the next step.

Deciding on the topic

This is a very important step that will conclude whether you get a positive response when you make your request.

You have to check what kind of posts have been most successful on that blog (if you don’t have access to special metrics you can evaluate this simply by looking at how many comments each post has received or how many times it’s been shared on social media), because from those successful posts you are going to get the idea for your topic.

Obviously, you are not going to literally talk again about a topic that has already been already touched in that blog, unless you have a very different perspective on it, but you can do many other things.

For example:

–  Develop an important point that has been mentioned in one of the posts but only superficially

–  Talk about the same subject but from a different perspective. For example, when I looked for topics for a guest post for Innokabi, a blog about digital marketing, I saw that there was already a post about personal branding but from the design perspective (what each colour means, how you can choose a logo, etc.) but there was nothing about the process of creating a personal brand itself. So that was my theme.

–  Analyse examples. For instance, if a blog talks about copywriting but you think they don’t have many practical examples, you can offer to write a post dedicated to analysing great copy.

–  Identify an interesting topic related to the activity of that blog that has not been touched yet. At this point, you have to be very sure that the topic will be interesting for them since it will be strange that they haven’t talked about it yet if it’s really a very important topic. Anything is possible and there may always be something that has been overlooked. If you find it, congratulations because I’m sure they’ll be willing to hear all about it.

Once you have decided on the topic, we move on to the next point.

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Topic description

When you send your guest post pitch you don’t have to attach the finished post yet. What you have to include is a brief description, to the point and significant enough, of what you have in mind to write.

You also need to be clear about the reasons for choosing that topic, that is, you have to explain the steps you have taken in the previous point that took you to that particular topic.

It´s better if you already include the headline. Remember that headlines are one of the most important parts of a post and that will decide whether the person reads it or not.

When you have this summary and the headline then you are ready to write your pitch.

Write a terrific guest post pitch

Most successful blogs get a lot of requests for guest posts so you have to make sure they read yours and like it a lot.

I am subscribed to MarketingProfs a North American blog with very valuable information about digital marketing.

In one of their publications, they devised an infographic with the most common reasons why blogs reject requests for guest posts.

Basically, the first reason they would reject your request would be if you were making spelling mistakes. So be very careful not to screw up. Always reread before sending and use a grammar check app.

The second reason for rejecting a request is when they see that you’ve sent them a mass template and that you haven’t bothered to adapt it to each recipient.

It’s ok to try different blogs to see if there is luck, but make sure you do take into account the previous steps mentioned earlier, and adapt your message.

For example, talk about why you like their blog but without being an ass-kisser. Nobody really likes it.

The third reason to refuse a guest post pitch is because your website is suspicious. Sometimes blogs receive this kind of request from people who want to sell them something and they aren’t completely clear about it. Or it’s simply spam.

The subject of the email

According to this other graph, taken from the same infographic on MarketingProfs, most people prefer that you write very crystal clear what is your email about, but there is a 20% who prefer that you write a clever email subject.

Decide this for yourself but take into account the style of that blog.

If it’s a blog that uses a lot of humour, maybe they’d prefer you to write a funny and original subject, but you’ve already seen that this is only preferred by 20% so I wouldn’t risk it and write directly: “Guest Post Pitch”.

Writing the guest post pitch

What matters most is that you are very clear when you describe what you want to write and why. Include the main reasons why you think it will be an interesting topic to the audience of that blog.

For example, if you have decided to develop a point that had been touched on in a post but you think should be deepened, you can tell them how many people shared that post and send them a post from another blog that has been very successful talking about that point that you are going to elaborate on further.

In this case, you have to specify that you are going to write something different from that successful post since you are going to go deeper and it’s going to be longer.

You should also add the keywords you are going to use in the post to show them that you also care about SEO.

Let’s look again at one of the points of the MarketingProfs infographic that shows at a glance which elements are the most important in a guest post pitch.

1. That the topic is interesting, obviously.

2. That the pitch and the email are personalised and not a mass template

3. That you describe very well what topic you are going to deal with and how you are going to deal with it (perspective).

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Add a link to your blog

This is of course one of the fundamental elements that should not be missing in your email, as the person receiving your request will want to see your writing style.

You can also add links to other blogs for which you have written, of course. As long as you wrote them yourself 😊

Some final tips for your guest post pitch to receive a positive response

When you do the previous research, make sure you understand very well what kind of audience read that blog. Are they beginners or experts? If your level isn’t high enough to write about a specific topic for an expert audience, don’t do it because your lack of knowledge is going to show up right away.

If you don’t receive a reply you can send a reminder, but wait at least a week. We’re all very busy so you probably won’t get an answer right away. And it’s not a question of sending reminders every day because they’ll hate you.

A safer way to get a positive response is to get to know that other blogger or company you want to write for.

Follow them on social media and subscribe to their list. Try to build a conversation with them, commenting on their publications.

This way when you send them your pitch they will know who you are and will be more open to collaboration.

And last but not least, SEO.

Attracting more organic traffic is the number 1 obsession of every self-respecting blog. In fact, good quality is what should prevail, but let’s say that one thing should be related to the other. If you write quality posts, you will get more organic traffic.

But in order to get more traffic you also have to make sure that the post has search potential, so as we mentioned in the previous points, make sure you include relevant keywords in your pitch.

I hope these tips will help you to write great guest post pitches and that from now on you receive many positive answers.

See you around.

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