Let me share a top blogging secret with all of you. Do you know what most of the successful blogs out there have in common? Well, they’ve all invited guest bloggers to write for their blogs. Let me make one thing clear for you, guest bloggers are not made for successful blogs only. They can do a great job to turn a less popular blog into one of the most popular in a short span of time. If you plan to achieve success with your blog quickly, it's a good idea to consider accepting guest posts from other bloggers.
But accepting guest bloggers or writers for your blog is not something that you can do without careful consideration. It’s important to make sure that the guest authors you choose possess adequate expertise to address the specific needs of your blog’s readers or target audience.
[tweet_box design=”box_08″]5 Key Tactics the Pros Use for Finding the Perfect Guest Blogger[/tweet_box]
I’m a guest blogger myself. Therefore, I can pretty well tell you what qualities you need to look out for while selecting guest writers for your blog. Let’s have a look.
Essential Qualities You Need to Look for in a Guest Blogger
#1. Niche Expertise
While choosing a guest writer, the very first thing you should check out is their expertise around a particular niche. The quality of a writer’s guest post actually depends on the kind of expertise or topic specialization they carry. There’s a lot of difference between a ‘freelance writer’ and a ‘niche expert’. You need to work with a guest writer who really knows about the stuff they talk about.
Do you want to work with a ‘freelance writer’ or someone that’s an expert in a specific niche? This is for you to decide!
#2. Social Media Profile
Working with guest authors can also prove to be a great traffic booster for your blog. Think what happens when you choose a guest blogger that has around 35,000 followers on Twitter, over 1,000 connections on LinkedIn and more than 3,000 friends on Facebook. You can use their network to promote your blog posts and attract a good amount of traffic quickly.
So, it’s wise to have a look at the social media profiles of a guest blogger before you choose to work with them.
#3. Knowledge of SEO
A writer that’s a niche expert may not always be technically proficient too. For example, a travel writer may not have any idea about how using the right kind of keywords can increase the visibility of a blog in search engines. They may not know the difference between a ‘short URL’ and a ‘long URL’. If you accept a guest author that’s also well versed with SEO, it can save you plenty of time and money that you’ll otherwise spend optimizing the posts.
#4. Style of Writing
Every blog has its own tone or style of writing. Likewise, writers too have their own writing styles. In any case, you can’t choose a guest blogger whose style of writing conflicts with the original tone of your blog.
Writing style requirements may also vary depending on the kind of niche your blog caters to. So, make sure you get what you’re actually looking for from a guest writer. Otherwise, you can quickly displease your blog’s readers and drive them away.
One important thing that you should always keep at the top of your mind is that web users need ‘actionable content’. You need to think about what readers should be doing as soon as they finish reading a blog post.
#5. Own Blog
I would suggest – ‘Avoid hiring guest writers who don’t have a blog of their own’. All the professional guest bloggers I’ve come across also run self-hosted blogs of their own. Many have more than one. The best part is that you can gather vital information about a guest writer’s credibility, experience, expertise and style of writing by looking at their blog.
BONUS VIDEO:
If you are using WordPress as your preferred blogging platform, inviting guest to write on your blog is quite simple. Take a look at this video on Inviting Guest Bloggers on WordPress.
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