5 Tips for Landing BIG TIME Guest Posts

Guest blog posting is one of the most effective ways to market your startup. Guest posting helps with both SEO and traffic. Landing a guest blog post on a quality site can lead to hundreds of hits over the lifetime of the article. All sounds great right? But where do you start?

Here are 5 tips for landing bigger and better guest posts.

1) Submit 3 different articles for review

When you are emailing the owner of an awesome blog you need to make the interaction count. If you submit one article and the blog owner hates it you are screwed. By submitting 3 completely different original articles you have substantially increased your odds that the blogger will like one of your posts.

PRO TIP: Write the article on a Google Doc. Add relevant links. Enable the share settings so anyone with the link can view the content.

2) Follow the guidelines

Bigger blogs may have guidelines for their guest posts.

The guidelines may require a specific:

• word count
• format
• location/email to receive the submission

A great way to completely strikeout guest posting is to totally ignore the guest blogging policies. Do your research. Submit the article in accordance with the guidelines and you will improve your chances of landing the post.

3) Look outside of your niche

Everyone (myself included) focuses WAY TOO MUCH on their own niche. If you focus outside your niche your guest posting opportunities increase by several orders of magnitude. Now the guest posting world is your oyster. Hundreds of great high traffic blogs are now available to you. ALL BLOGS ARE HUNGRY FOR QUALITY CONTENT. So create a Google Spreadsheet of 5 NEW niches you are going to land guest posts on.

PRO TIP: Schedule your guest posts weekly. Meaning every week you say “Ok I have this guest post in our niche going live on Monday and this guest post outside of our niche going live Wednesday.” Repeat and repeat and repeat until you can’t write another word.
4) Build relationships

Remember big time badass sites and bloggers get a silly amount of guest post submissions. If you land a big time post on your first attempt you are a stud. The reality is that you will probably have to build a relationship with the blogger and pitch him religiously. Add the target blogger on Skype, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Make sure the blogger knows your name and face. That way he feels bad every time he turns down your post. Relationships are like links in that they are a long term assets for your company.

5) Be persistent

Don’t be a wimp. ABC. Always been closing guest posts. To land a big time guest post you have to hustle and keep grinding. Major posts on TechCrunch or Onstartups may take a year to land. Like any big deal it takes a while to close. No secret tips here just don’t give up after the first rejection. The great part about pitching these guest posts is that when people turn you down you can use the post on your own blog or submit them to Ezine Articles.

This guest post was written by Matt Smith (Co-Founder of Business Pirate)