Relationships are everything in the blogosphere, both for bloggers and marketers.
Of all the best practices that make these working relationships a win-win situation for both, guest blogging wins hats down. When you want to guest blog on a blogger’s site, it is important to focus on creating the right pitch so that you make the best first impression.
Here are 18 things you should take care of while pitching to any blogger.
Create a plan of action: Do you want backlinks, mention of product or service, embedding of videos and infographics and so on? List your goals and put together a plan of action before you pitch to blogger. Without a proper plan of action your pitch might not be in the right direction.
Develop quality relationships: Make sure you pitch 1:1 with your blogger. Don’t send a standard template pitch to 100 bloggers, not if you want to find value for your product or brand.
Find highly-targeted blogs: These blogs are more likely to cover your topic, campaign or brand and allow your videos and infographics to be embedded. Blogs that are not that focused may not allow you to all out.
Research: Take the time to read posts on a blog before pitching. Find out what the blog is all about, what the blogger likes or doesn’t like and where they allow guest posts.
Measure blog’s quality: Evaluate if the content on the blog is well written or not. Check the blog’s social engagements – how well does the blog network with other blogs, the social media, forums and discussion lists?
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Know the blogger’s mentality: Study the blogger through their posts; you’ll learn a lot about who the blogger is and how to pitch to them. It helps to know their personal background as well – you don’t want to pitch a series of articles on how to handle divorces to a pro-marriage blogger.
Write a great pitch email: Keep your email sincere, or else your slip will show. Make sure your email coincides with your goals. Don’t promise traffic volume or global interest, but let the blogger understand that working with you will be beneficial to them. Keep your email informal and slightly personal; don’t let it read like a press release. Don’t include attachments in your email.
Target your pitch: Let the blogger see a couple of your posts and their comments. You need to make the blogger understand that the information you’ll provide will greatly benefit their audience.
Include supporting links: Be sure to link to resources that support your pitch. These can be relevant posts or videos on the blogger’s blog or external blogs that are relevant to your pitch. These links should support your overview of how your information will benefit readers and the blogger.
Before you pitch: Show the blogger that you are interested. Follow their blog on Twitter, post comments, forward posts that you like on Twitter and respond to tweets. Follow this up with your pitch.
Include references in your pitch email: In your pitch email, make a reference to a post of theirs that you liked. Make reference to a conversation you had with them on Twitter or a comment of yours to which they replied. Make sure that your references are relevant to your pitch.
Be friendly and likable: Be honest, friendly and likeable. Successful bloggers receive many pitches and they can spot an insincere one easily.
Show that you are reliable: Make sure that right from the beginning, you respond to their notes and emails promptly. Answer questions promptly and proactively follow through with your agreements.
Earn gratitude and trust: Turn on your philanthropic side and be sincerely helpful to the blogger. Point out broken links and misspelled words on their blog and help them fine tune. Promote their posts without asking and let them know if their Twitter button doesn’t function.
Relate to the blogger: If the blogger blogs about travel to eco-friendly places, share your recent travel experiences and offer some tips. This helps you relate to the blogger and creates a soft ground for your pitch.
Be sure to follow up: Don’t forget to follow up on your pitch, but don’t get into the habit of harassing the blogger. If they respond positively, find out when they’ll be able to cover your product or topic. Stay in communication so that blogger does not forget about you.
Pitch unique and relevant ideas: Study the blogger’s blog and submit ideas that are unique and not already covered in the blog. Also present ideas for follow up posts on existing posts on blogs.
Provide contact details: In your email, be sure to include your phone numbers, Twitter Id, Facebook Id, email Ids, address and any other way to contact you. You may have to get to work the moment the blogger gets in touch, so be available via multiple means.
What else you consider before sending a pitch to Bloggers, share with us through comments.
Dean Wood Is a freelance writer for landing page and conversion rate optimization Company that helps business in increasing conversion rate for their online marketing campaigns.
great post, thank you for this information and these wonderful tips, it really helps me as i am new in this field. i will be returning to read more of your interesting posts.
Well I have reading your blog since from a week and I got so many useful techniques to get readers. It’s really awesome. But I don’t getting how I attarct readers to make good comments? I get less comments when compare to other blogs.? What to do? You can reply me personally If you don’t want to share here. 🙂
Amrik, I don’t think that number of comments per post is a good matrix to compare success of blogs. There are many blogs which might not get a single comments or have closed comments on the posts and still earning good money.
To attract new readers, I do guest posting. Select good blog and guest post there…It gives a good reward (Quality backlink and traffic).
Thanks I will do regular guest posts from now.. is 2-3 guest post in a week is enough?
I always choose blogs where a post can stay on front page for some time and usually do 4-5 guest post a month. Keep doing, the more the better.
Great post sanjeev…. This is my first comment on your blog. But I will be a regular reader from now.. Keep posting new things!
Guest Posting is now a trend in the web now a days. If you have a Blog why not do Guest Posting.
It is fun and has promising results.
Marvelous blogging tips !! Would surely keep all of ’em in my mind 🙂 Thank you so much 🙂
Thanks for the advice. I’m also planning to do a guest post soon. I just hope that my blog can increase its viewers. Its only 2 months old anyway.
Best of luck Juphet, Hope you will find success with your guest posts.
A standard template can be a total turn off to bloggers especially if you want to build a good relationship with them. Remember that it is important for you to show them sincerity on what you’re doing. That’s precisely the most important thing you need to consider among these useful tips.
Hi Stan, A before hand study like going through the blog and understanding the topics and nature of blog posts is really important. Sincerity has to come out from the message otherwise it can be a rejection. These all are just a way to bring that sincerity in the pitch.
Correct! Sincerity is very important because too much pitching in blogs could be totally turning off to other visitors just like me. I hope that blog owners will focus more on their readers rather than trying to sell them products they don’t believe in.
Great tips ahead and I definitely agree that guest blogging is a great idea in getting lots of traffic to your site. There are a lot of things I learn here and thank you so much for that. Guest blogging definitely great, I mean it!
Hey all these things really matters a lot while doing guest blogging on other blogs. For me guest blogging is a great and superb way to build the long term relationship with other bloggers. By the way, thanks for giving such a nice explanation and it will help me a lot in my blogging.
Hi Manish, I also guest blogging, its a good way to generate traffic and good quality back links for the blog. Thanks for liking the post, Dean has really expressed it beautifully.
Definitely right! Guest posting is fun, especially if you write about a topic wherein you as a guest author loves it. Thanks Sanjeev for the reminders, especially because many are still new to guest posting. Me, myself is planning to guest post to soon. Been reading a lot.
Guest post is one of the good ways to promote a blog and gained additional readers or customers. I am using it from the start of this blog and gained good results with it.
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