How to Attract Guest Bloggers (and why you’d want to)

I’ve written about guest blogging before, and how you, the author, can use it to help spread the word about your work. You, the blogger, may want to consider inviting guest posters to your site as well.

There are lots of reasons this can be beneficial. Let’s take a look at a few.

Reasons to Consider Inviting Guest Posters to Your Blog

• Day Off! — Unless you’re a prolific blogger who has lots to say and can whip out posts quickly, you may have weeks where you’re struggling to post regularly. Whether you’re trying to promote your books or looking to make a few bucks as a book blogger, consistent posting is going to help attract and retain readers. Other than a couple of minutes for proof-reading, guest posts shouldn’t take much of your time. In return, you get free content for your blog.
• New Ideas/Information — We all have our areas of expertise, and we have other areas that we’re less knowledgeable on and less passionate about. Bringing in a new point of view can give your regular readers access to information and ideas they might find useful but which you weren’t interested in covering.
• Help with Promotion — If people want to guest blog, it’s a forgone conclusion they’re passionate about promoting themselves and their work. If a lady has a post appear on your blog, she’s probably going to promote it to her blog and her social media followers. This can introduce your site to a whole new crowd of readers, some of whom might just stick around.

That all sounds good, you say (well, I hope you say!), but how does one get these lovely folks to come around, offering to submit free blog posts to you?

Let’s talk about that next….

How to Attract Guest Bloggers to Your Site

Once your blog is popular, you’ll probably get contacted by folks interested in guest posting, even if you don’t do any of the things listed below; when your site is newer, you’ll have to convince people they’ll get something out of writing up an entry for you. Here are a few ways to do that:

• Let people know it’s a possibility — I have a “guest posting policy” in my About section, which is on the header of every page of my site. If I really wanted to attract folks (I’m just posting a couple guest entries a month right now), I’d have an easy-to-find link that said “How to Guest Post” or some such on the blog menu.
• Make it easy for visitors to contact you — One of my pet peeves is not being able to find a contact form or the owner’s email address. Whether you’re looking to attract guest bloggers or not, it’s a good idea to make it easy for a visitor to find a way to get in touch.
• Have an established site that gets traffic — While people often appreciate the value of a link, even on a new blogs, they’ll want to make sure the time and effort they put into constructing a post won’t go unnoticed. The reason they want to guest post in the first place is to get the word out, so you’ll probably want to wait until you’re getting 100+ visitors a day before trying to solicit guest posts.
• Ensure the “what’s in it for me” information is clear — Since people want to guest blog for publicity, you may want to make it clear they can include bios with links to personal blogs, author pages, book pages, etc. Or, if you don’t mind them working links into the content of the post itself, let them know if that’s okay.
• Show willingness to promote guest posts and encourage folks to comment — Remember, your guest posters are hoping to gain recognition, and they’ll know their mission has been accomplished if a) they get hits to their site through the links in their post and b) they get comments and questions from your audience. Part of the onus lies on their shoulders to create an interesting post, but you can also help promote their post. One thing I appreciated, too, when I did an interview at Alexander M Zoltai’s Notes from an Alien blog was that he emailed me to let me know when people had posted comments. That made it easy for me to know when to pop in and respond.

There we go, reasons you’d want to invite guest posters to your blog (and how to interest them to start with!).

If you’re looking to finagle guest posters to your site, leave a comment below, and maybe some will find their way to you.