13 Jun How to Write Good Guest Posts for Blogs
The word “blog” is one of the fresh words that appeared in the official dictionary (it was first used in 1999, but you have to keep in mind that a decade, give or take, is not a long time in the evolution of a certain language), and you are most probably aware of that, but if you weren’t – well, there you go – free info. Follow the link if you want to see the Merriam-Webster dictionary entry of the word “blog”.
Actually, nowadays you can say that you can create a pretty successful business out of blogging. Now, when it comes to writing posts, well, I can only say that there are numerous types of blog posts, and if I were to list each and every one of them and divide them into categories and sub-categories, I would be typing for days. I will avoid that. The simplest way explain it all is: “It all depends…” and this opens up a lot of doors, and I will not even peak through them now. This article will focus solely on writing guest posts and that’s it. So, let’s start with something general.
Why are guest posts important???
Let’s say that there is a company that sells toys. They have a store (somewhere), and business is fine. Now I think that I don’t have to mention that if you are running any sort of business, you have to have a website. I presume that this is the norm, and if it isn’t, it will be in the very near future. If you know that more and more people are going online via tablets and cellphones (source), you can predict that after a while, shopping will be something that you do online, and people will go to shops in person, only when their internet connection is not working properly (which happens rarely). And if you have a store, why not have an online store on your website, right? But, everyone knows that in order for your website to work, people have to visit it, so a company has to invest in its development. Apart from social media campaigns and other online marketing solutions, one of the best ways to bring traffic to your site is guest posting, or something I like to call “ghost advertising”.
Let me explain…
When you are writing a guest post, you must put yourself both in the shoes of the reader and the shoes of the webmaster who is moderating content on his or her blog. Let’s go back to the toy company. As mentioned above, this toy company is a small business, so, in the internet world, it is competing with great, well-established brands, like Toys “R” Us, for instance. They cannot expect to receive traffic from Google alone, since their website will not be on top of search lists for a while. With guest posting and ghost advertising, you can direct a significant amount of traffic to their website. But, different blogs require different things from the writer and you cannot run a guest posting campaign with one article. You need several articles posted on several blogs. In the following text I will try and explain how to organize articles so that you get the minimum amount of rejected articles.
Rule No. 1 – Think about your style of writing!
Webmasters like articles that provide relevant info to blog visitors, and this is a fact, but what is also important is how you do it. Look at it this way – Imagine you’re trying to explain something to one of your friend’s parents, but one of those “cool” parents, or think of one of your “cool” professors from university, the one who’s always open for some intelligent conversation. You should think about how you would try to inform this person about a certain topic. More specifically, your post should be neither formal, nor informal, but something in between. Actually, it all depends on the blog itself, but if you “caught my drift” and you do start writing this way, chances are that your posts will get posted smoothly (at least more smoothly than purely formal or purely informal posts).
In time, as you develop, you will develop a style of your own, but if you are a beginner, you should try and keep it simple.
Rule No. 2 – Check, double-check – triple-check if you have to!!!
There is nothing worse than having typos or grammar mistakes in a piece of text. With this sentence, I am not only addressing writers who are not native English speakers (there are plenty of those), but also the people who are. If you are someone who has been learning English as a foreign language, and you are not 100% sure that your post is 100% error-proof, hire someone to check it for you – someone professional. In these situations, you should look for someone who is into blogging and guest posting, but who also has had proper training. On the other hand, if you are a native, be sure to at least check your grammar book for all the things that don’t sound good, when you read them. A good practice is to read your article out loud, or, even better, have someone read it for you.
A common practice is to have someone else check your article, since a different pair of eyes can see something that you won’t. Also, some statements might seem perfectly clear to you, but they can be very confusing to others. This happens, for example, if you want to make a joke, one that will be funny to you and your friends, but you should keep in mind that not everyone has the same sense of humor. If you want to joke, be sure that to use something that all can understand and if you are not sure, open up a pair of brackets and say that you were joking. It is better than leaving the reader confused. Often, when they get confused, readers close the tab – that’s just the way it is.
Rule No. 3 – The structure of your text IS important!
Every single blog post has to have a head, a body and a tail – it has to have an introductory paragraph (or paragraphs), it has to have a conclusion, and the body has to be in between these two. The intro should be something general. It should be something that the reader can relate to, so pick a topic that is familiar to everyone. This won’t be that big of a problem. The problem is to construct the intro so that the reader wants to find out what will happen further on. Think of it as a teaser of sorts. You are supposed to lead the reader into the story, and tickle his or her curiosity a bit. A common practice is to actually write something like this: “if you want to find out more about this topic – read on” and finish your intro with that.
When it comes to the body itself, this is where it gets tricky. No matter what you are writing about (and trust me, there will be different topics), you should strive to keep the text interesting. Sometimes you have strict deadlines and you get sloppy – don’t do it. Always make sure that you think that what you are writing is good – that if you were to read the article yourself, you would not get bored, or offended, or distracted, or confused. The text should flow smoothly. An excellent thing to do here is to divide the text with subheadings and things like bullets and numbering. When you organize your text like that, it will be easier for you to write it, since you will know exactly what to write about, and it will be easier for the reader, who will be able to scan and skim through the article with more ease. It’s a win-win situation, if nothing else.
Finally, the conclusion, again, has to be general, and, again, something that the reader can relate to. In blog posts however, a common practice is to end your article with a reference to another article you’ve written, or some other article that you think is relevant to the topic. So, simply, sum up everything you said in the text above and provide links for further reading – just like I’m about to do now.
One other thing – short articles (less than 500 words approx.) are not really articles. Practice has shown that you cannot organize the structure of a good guest post with a low word-count. You will need to write more. An optimum is 700 words, but I would say that a proper article has to have more than a 1000 words. However, you are, more often than not, limited by the client’s requirements. If you cannot persuade your client that you cannot write a good article with the number of words they required, do what you are told. If they like it, you like it.
So, if you want to find out something more about article writing, check this link.
Rule No. 4 – The title of the post has to be catchy!
Now you might be wondering why is the title part put here, and not in the beginning, as Rule No. 1. Well, I think that you should give your article a title once you have written it. I say this because I found that a lot of articles have this, let’s call it, generic title – something that writers start working with, but throughout the course of writing a piece of text, they drift away from the main subject. This is bad. The title has to somehow cover the whole piece of text. Everything below the title has to be, in some way, connected to the title. And, when I say catchy, I do mean catchy. Dwell on each and every title a bit, since if the title is bad, chances are that your article will never be read, or even worse, never published.
Rule No. 5 – Keep the links relevant!
I have mentioned this before, and I will mention it again. Often you find links that lead you to something illogical. The text reads: “teddy bear”, and the link leads you to a website about endangered animals – illogical and irrelevant. Always put links that will go to pages that will either explain your text more, or that will provide the reader with further reading opportunities. Of course, since you are writing guest posts, you will have to add a link that will lead to your client’s page. For this, you have to organize the text around the link, so that the link itself is, well, relevant. As you might have concluded by now, it’s all about relevance.
Let’s wrap it up
Guest posting can be very demanding, particularly when you are rewriting an already rewritten article. To end this article, I will say that doing this business alone is just sad. You should strive to get a team of writers together and divide your troubles. It will be easier and more efficient. Think about investing in your team, if you don’t already have one. Also, these five rules are not the only ones out there. They are just the ones that I think are the most important. I advise you to open up a new tab and use Google to dig up more about this topic. There’s never enough advice, is there?
