Guest Posting 101

Hey there! Welcome back to yet another post on Living The Blogging Life! It’s D here and today, we’re going to be talking about what guest posting is!

Guest posting in very basic terms is the act of posting or submitting a post to a blog that isn’t your own or one that you’re not part of. You’re person A’s guest who’s posting on their blog with their permission and these posts are called guest posts!

Guest posting works in mainly 3 ways:

➼You request and in turn, invite a blogger to guest post on your blog OR someone approaches you

Say for example, you’re starting a mental health series on your blog. Coincidentally, you also know a blogger whose mental health posts are absolutely informative and inspiring. And because you want your series to be amazing, you head over to their blog and ask them whether they would be interested in doing a guest post on your blog on mental health.

I personally prefer this method too because you get to curate what is published on your blog and you don’t have to go through the agony of saying no to a blogger who ‘sends a post in for guest posting‘.

Requests are usually made through contact forms on blogs or through emails. If you are requesting a blogger to do a guest guest post, always make sure you ask a blogger you have known for a while and trust to deliver a good post that both you and your blog’s readers will find interesting.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Now, switch places. A blogger is asking you if you’d like to do a guest post on (insert topic). You’re the guest in this case! Most bloggers usually agree as long as the topics are good and it’s also a way to increase exposure for both of your blogs.

➼Opening guest posting

I’ve seen a lot of bloggers do this. This is basically an open invitation. When you open guest posting on your blog, you’re inviting and permitting all your readers to guest post on your blog. Assuming you have an active readership, you’ll get a reasonable number of posts. You can either choose to publish all gradually or choose the most appealing, out of the submissions and post those.

Bloggers usually do this, via email or google forms. You can either mention your email in a post and ask everyone to email their posts to that email. Or, the more organised way would be to create a google form which those who are interested could fill out and send their posts through.

➼ Swap posts

This is when you write a post and give permission, to person A to post it on their blog and, they write one and you post it on your blog. In other words, you swap posts. This can count both as guest posting and collaborating, especially if the two posts are on a similar topic. This is also very common in the blogosphere and a great way to expand your readership and make friends with other bloggers!

(This point was suggested by Diamond who blogs over at I Have 12% Of A Plan and Build A Bears Furever apart from being a contributor to LTBL).

Why Guest Posts?

➼They increase the diversity of posts on your blog.
➼They provide more exposure to the guest’s blog and yours too which may or may not result in increased readership (depends on the quality of the blogs).
➼Provides opportunities for strengthening your community.
➼Helps you discover more bloggers and learn from them and their writing.

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Like everything, guest posting isn’t always healthy. Opening guest posting to all, might result in you receiving posts that you don’t necessarily like, so having to turn them down can be a hard task. A huge number of guest posts might force you into a creative slump and take attention off your blog’s subject. Like everything, too much of it can be harmful.

Photo by Andrea Davis on Pexels.com

Sometimes, bloggers whom you request to guest post on your blog may say, no too. But trying guest posts on your blog and guest posting on others’ blogs is always a fun and learning experience as long as everything is carried out in a healthy manner!

So, that was all for this post!

This was written in response to Rayna’s @ Ray is Writing idea, “Hi! I was thinking: maybe one of you could make sort of a guide to guest posts?”
I hope this answered it, Rayna! Thank you so much!

What are your thoughts on guest posts? Have you ever done it or have you had a guest over before?

Thank you so much for reading!

D is a teen blogger @ Random Specific Thoughts who loves reading, drawing and anything Science. She adores poetry and enjoys writing essays and creative non-fiction as well!

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