Guest posting is vital to content marketing. Apart from being important for driving traffic to your website and building your backlink profile, guest posting also helps to reach new audiences, build topical authority and increase brand exposure.
However, it can be difficult to get going, especially if you have no idea how to write a guest post pitch – even skilled writers occasionally struggle to write great outreach emails. This leads to guest post pitches getting rejected.
Pitching guest posts doesn’t always have to be a bad experience. All you need is practice and a bit of patience to nail it. And once you get it right, you can significantly increase your success rates.
This post aims to help you achieve that as we discuss the best strategic approach to pitching guest posts using five key steps:
1. Choose a Blog
A successful guest post pitch starts with choosing your target blogs with care. This will help you avoid wasting resources on publications that are not the right fit for you, your content, style and target audience.
A great place to start is by checking out the blogs you read the most and the businesses where you shop. It’s possible your ideal audience may also be interested in the same kind of content that these bodies create. Besides, because you already like the publication you want to write for, chances are you’ll be more inspired to do a great job.
Plus, the fact that you share a similar type of audience with these blogs and businesses means there’s a higher possibility of forming a long-term relationship with them.
You can also consider other blogs with similarities to yours for a mutually beneficial collaboration. When you offer a post on your blog, you will most likely get one on theirs, too.
2. Research
Once you have a list of blogs for your guest posts, you’ll need to do some research – this is a very important step.
First, go through the site and check if they have any information about a guest posting service. They may have guidelines you must follow if you want them to agree to your pitch.
Second, go through their archive to see if there are any gaps in their content that need filling. Usually, a great pitch offers something to the target blog that the blog can’t offer presently. This is where it pays to be an authority in your niche.
Take note of information like post length, tone, image and style. Being a guest poster allows you to bring your unique voice to a post. However, the target blog still expects that your work is a good fit for their general content strategy.
If you’re fortunate, some sites may even reach out to you with an offer to guest post for them. However, most times you’ll be the one to get in touch first.
3. Think of Topic Ideas
Once your target blog responds that they are keen to hear your pitch, you’ll need to do some more research so you can come up with topic ideas.
While crafting your topic idea, don’t forget about SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Make sure you choose topics with high-volume keywords. This tells the target blog that you have your wits about you and it may actually give them an incentive to accept your pitch. Moreover, a well-optimised post will boost traffic to their site.
Trending topics can be great material as long as you have something new to pass across. It’s a wise move to have about three to five topic ideas to pitch. If they reject one, there’s a good chance they’ll like another.
4. Brief Summary
Write a summary of the topics you choose to pitch. Keep it brief, but at the same time provide an insight into what your proposed post entails. Begin with a brief explanation of what your post will cover, and don’t forget to mention any key products or brands you plan to feature. This will make sure that the target blog is not surprised by links they don’t agree with. It can be suspicious or spammy, and you don’t want that.
Add any important references you plan to cite, especially for interview-style posts. One or two citations could make you come across as knowledgeable and trustworthy, while also suggesting the depth of knowledge you’ll provide.
5. Submit
Make sure your pitch is formatted in a clear, readable way. Don’t forget to add a little thank-you to the person you’re sending your pitch to. This presents you as friendly and a good person to work with. As a guest poster, this makes you come across as more desirable.
With large websites, it can take a while to get a response back from them. Online content is usually very dynamic, so hopefully they’ll get back to you quickly. But bear in mind that they may have other responsibilities, too, which means you would have to wait a while before you get a response.
With guest posting, the name of your blog can become more prominent in your niche. This will surely drive traffic to your website. Sometimes things don’t always turn out the way we want them to. So if you get rejected a few times, don’t be discouraged.
There are a lot of great individuals and companies to work with out there. Learning the steps involved in writing a guest post pitch is an essential skill that all bloggers need to grow their reach. However, if you need help with writing high-quality guest posts, consider outsourcing to a professional guest post agency.
If you would like to find out how our services could be of benefit to your business, feel free to get in touch with us today.