Find It Friday! How To Be An Outstanding Guest Blogger

Welcome to  Find It Friday in which we help you find the answers to your how to blog questions. 

The Question

I got an e-mail this week from a reader who is happy to have his question shared on Find It Friday.

I have been asked to write a guest blog on an aspect of my business which the blog owner feels would be of interest to her readers.  How do you suggest I make the most of this opportunity?

The Answer

As anyone who has attended my talks will know, I am a big fan of guest blogging. It benefits both the blog owner and the guest blogger, introducing both to a whole new readership.

Here are my top 5 tips for guest blogging

1. Do your research

Read the archived posts of the blog owner. Make sure the tone and language of your post fits the character of the blog. Which posts get the most comments?  What resonates best with readers?

2. Pull out all the stops to make your post top-notch

This is your chance to shine, so really make this the best piece of writing you can. Check your facts, credit your sources, and link to external references and sites.

3. Provide an author bio

Write the basic facts that readers will want – don’t overdo it, just enough to make it interesting and relevant.

4. Don’t be self-serving

There is nothing guaranteed to put a reader off than something that is obviously written as a sales pitch for your product or service. You will get the opportunity to link to your business in your author bio and trust me, if your content is good enough, people will check you out, just so long as they don’t feel as if they are being aggressively sold to.

5. Follow through

The last step, but this, in my opinion, is the one that separates the mediocre guest blogger from the finest. When I invite guest bloggers to write for me, the outstanding ones are those who show they care enough to follow through by responding to comments, promoting via social networks, connecting with commentators online, and even expanding the discussion, as happened on one of my other blogs this week, by starting a twitter chat around the topic.

Over To You!

Do you invite guest bloggers to contribute to your blog? Or have you contributed as a guest blogger to other blogs? How did it work out for you?