Guest posting is here to stay.
As long as people write content for their blogs, there is a need for backlinks to gain search engine rankings, people would want to write articles on other blogs.
However, while many still have a negative perception of guest blogging. The truth is— with high-quality content and with a clear strategy, guest blogging could give your marketing a huge boost.
All you have to do is—find the right blogs, do guest post outreach smartly, and write quality content. That’s it.
You’ll have your brand in front of hundreds and thousands of targeted visitors, who’d prefer and even buy your products.
So, how do you go about it?
The first step of an effective guest post-campaign is to strategize.
With a good strategy, you can reach out to the relevant blogs, write content and submit for publishing.
But, not anymore.
The following guest post outreach guide will walk you through the entire guest post outreach process. From approaching other blogs, landing great guest posting opportunities, to creating valuable content, we have covered it all.
What Is Guest Blogging?
Guest blogging is basically getting permission from other website owners to write an article on their site in exchange for a backlink or to promote a product.
And you’ll usually have a permanent author byline link on their website. But it all starts with a guest post outreach strategy.
Let’s get into it…
How to Find Guest Post Outreach Opportunities?
There are many different ways that to finding websites that accept guest posts.
1. Find Blogs Similar to Your Blog Audience
Your first and most obvious choice for finding the right guest blogging outlets is to look at your blog audience.
Start by going over the list of blogs with an audience similar to your blog. And, check how often those sites have been updated in the last six months. If you find relevant traffic and have posts published on a recent date, then it is worth approaching.
And you should then reach out to the owner and ask for his/her permission to write an article for their blog.
2. Google Search
There is no denying it; one of the most powerful research tools in any marketer’s arsenal is Google itself.
However, before you hop onto Google, you need to figure out which keywords and topics those people might be searching for online. While researching on Google, remember to:
- Verify that the target blogs have some level of authority (beware of spammy sites).
- Find websites that are relevant to your industry based on their subject.
- Look for sites that have a sizable, active audience. If their content receives comments and social shares, that’s usually a good sign.
You can search using the below search terms:
- “keyword” “become a contributor”
- “keyword” “write for us”
- “keyword” “guest post”
- “keyword” “guest blog”
- “keyword” “guest *” inurl:blog
- “keyword” “guest article”
3. Twitter Search
Reach out to bloggers and website owners on social media platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn and ask if they accept guest posts.
You can find words such as: “seeking guest bloggers.” You can also find profiles with relevant blogs using tools such as Topsy, TweetReach, or BuzzSumo.
11 Tips to Guest Post Outreach Success
Success at guest post outreach campaigns is all about leveraging the right tips. Here’s a list of the top eleven ways to go about it.
1. Personalize your campaigns
One of the easiest ways to get any blogger’s attention is by personalizing your outreach campaigns. Instead, you need to send message that looks and sounds personal to them.
An example of personalization can be as simple as including a line from one of the blog posts as a reference, and then mentioning how much you’ve liked it. It can make a huge difference.
You can also personalize by using their name or a product that makes your e-mail stand out.
2. Showcase honesty
There’s no need in pretending that you’ve been enjoying someone’s blog from the beginning when in truth it was just about an hour ago when you found them via Google or Quora—they can tell.
So it’s best, to be honest with bloggers rather than trying to act like you know more than you actually do. If you are honest, it’s highly likely that they will trust you and be willing to help you out.
They might even give your guest post a read and even get back to you with feedback.
3. Create a relationship
One of the best ways to get bloggers interested in your request is by creating some sort of relationship with them over time.
You can do that by commenting on their posts, tweeting about various interesting things they’ve written, or just following them on all social media accounts related to your niche.
That way they’ll definitely notice if you contact them about guest posting or ask any other questions. Connections, relationships and networking matter.
4. Have an actual idea for a post
Even though the easiest way to get people interested in your pitch is being personal, you’ll have a much better chance of getting a “yes” from them if you actually have a guest post idea for them.
It doesn’t have to be your most unique idea ever that will blow their mind away. But it should appear useful for their audience.
With this, bloggers are more likely to believe that you’re serious about what you’re doing and give you a shot.
5. Offer them regular guest posts
You can also receive preferential treatment by the bloggers by offering them regular guest posts instead of just one article or two articles.
That’s because bloggers usually appreciate people who write great content for their blog whenever they can, instead of contacting them out of the blue only once every couple of months.
So try and make a long-term content commitment to them.
6. Use your existing network
If you’ve already worked with an editor or a blogger before and he/she trusts you enough, then you’re more likely to receive a response to your guest post request.
For example, you can contact any editor or content marketer you may have in your network. So before hunting for guest posting opportunities from outside your connections, start exploring it among friends first.
7. Write a good pitch
Even though it can seem overwhelming at first, writing a good pitch is something that every blogger should know how to do. That’s because most outreach emails end up in the trash or spam folder without even being opened.
8. Find the right person to contact
When reaching out to guest posting websites, always try to look for someone with actual authority. Somebody who can approve your guest post request or advise you on how to go about it.
If you approach somebody without an authority, you are probably going to waste time.
9. Offer something valuable
It might seem obvious after all of this time, but offering something valuable without asking for more than a backlink really does work.
You could easily share some interesting data related to their industry or niche. While doing so, you can also provide them with a list of ideas for future articles that would fit their blog perfectly. You can also offer them free editing work.
10. Show humbleness
Even if your request is something that you know they might be interested in, it’s still important not to act entitled and demanding.
They receive tons of other similar emails each day, so finding a way to stand out from the crowd will always be easier if you’re nice about it. So, instead of saying that “you deserve” or “need” this spot on their blog, use a requesting tone.
11. Send the pitch at the right time
Finally, don’t just ask them if you can guest post whenever it’s convenient for you. Email pitches are usually most effective when sent during the hours your target bloggers or webmasters are active.
That way they’ll be more likely to open it and actually look through what you have to share.
There’s obviously no hard science about that yet. But I know that sites with huge audiences like Elite Daily or Huffington Post receive lots of new requests each day.
You Need a Great Guest Post Pitch
Guest posting might seem easy when you actually start doing it because there are so many blogs out there accepting requests. However, you have to remember that these blogs and websites only accept the best of the best.
When you can’t make a great pitch, your guest post will never get approved, let alone getting published.
Just make sure you use these tips when pitching next time around and start writing better guest posts than ever before. It’s not just about getting published—it’s also about writing a content piece that has value in it.
How To Get Started With Your Guest Post Outreach
There are quite a few challenges in doing guest post outreach manually. Firstly, find out who the top bloggers are in that niche and then start searching for their contact emails.
You then need to email them pitching your content. However, you may not receive a quick response from most of the blogs you pitch since most of the authority sites /blogs are overloaded with such requests.
So, it can take days or even weeks to receive a reply. And, you may need to send regular follow-up emails to keep them reminded.
But since you are doing guest posting manually, it is very likely that you may feel overwhelmed at times because it does sound like a lot of work. And, truth be told—it actually is. However, there are tools that can help you make the guest blogging outreach process much easier and less time-consuming.
When you use a guest post outreach tool, you can automate a lot of the stuff mentioned above.
Using RangeFlow, The Guest Post Outreach Tool
Enter RangeFlow — The ultimate tool to your email outreach without stepping out of your favorite apps, Google Sheets and Gmail.
You read that right.
RangeFlow works in conjunction with Google Sheets and Gmail, making it the easiest email outreach tool out there.
It helps you prospect guest posting opportunities within your Google Sheets, send segmented emails, automatically follow up and also track progress inside the Gmail interface. Because it works in Google Sheets, there is almost zero learning curve.
How to Use RangeFlow for Your Guest Post Outreach
Using RangeFlow requires you to follow a few quick and easy steps. Here are they:
Step#1: Create A Pipeline For Your Guest Post Outreach
To get started with guest post outreach using RangeFlow, you first need a pipeline.
A pipeline is a visual representation of how leads move through different stages, each stage representing a different level of engagement. It comes with a dashboard that lets you track each of your guest post outreach campaigns.
The Guest Post Pipeline is useful because it helps you recognize, at any given time, where each prospect stands in your process making it easy to identify which ones are the best to follow up with.
And, it also recognizes where you should ask for an introduction to move forward.
The below example shows the process of new pipeline creation starting with the name creation step:
Sample Pipeline:
Stage#1 — Cold Stage
Your prospects are in the “Cold” stage before you send an email to them.
Stage#2 — Hot Stage
Once they reply to your email, then you can move them to the “Hot” stage.
Stage#3 — Approved
If they reply positively on your guest post request and accept your guest post, move them up to the “Approved” Stage.
Stage#4 — Published Blog
Once they publish you’ll receive a notification and move them up to the “Published Blog” stage.
Step#5 — Lost
If a prospect declines your offer you can move them to the “Lost” stage.
Now, our example pipeline has the below stages::
- Cold
- Hot
- Approved
- Published
- Lost
Each stage represents how far you are in the conversion cycle of your prospect. These stages may vary based on your requirements. So, feel free to choose stages that will represent your process more accurately.
1: How to create a pipeline?
You can add your own fields in your pipeline to personalize the guest post outreach process.
When writing a guest post outreach email template, you can include customizations for each prospect. These modifications are handled by fields in your pipeline and help make the message personal to that specific person or the blog.
Since you will be sending a lot of guest post outreach emails, having a standard email template that is personalized with a different prospect’s interest level saves a ton of time.
Fields can also be used to keep track of data concerning each prospect for internal use. For example, we can also include the domain authority (DA) for each prospect to prioritize our outreach.
Here are some examples of fields for a guest post outreach pipeline:
- Name
- Website
- DA
- Topic Ideas
Stage#2: Create segments in your pipeline
The next step in creating the guest post outreach pipeline is to create segments.
A segment is a subset of your pipeline. For example, if you are doing guest post outreach for 10 niches and each niche has 5 blogs, so in total, you have 50 blogs to connect with.
But what if you have hundreds of leads, you can’t go and send the same email template to all of them manually. Can you?
That’s where segmentation comes in.
You break down your long list into Segments like “Guest Blogging for Fitness” or “Guest Blogging for Technology” etc. which will help you manage your outreach process efficiently and get you a much better response rate.
And, when you target each segment with a personalized email template you will have a much higher response rate.
As an example, we will segment our list as “Blog Owners” or “General Contacts” so that we have different email templates personalized for these two types of prospects.
You can then add an email template to a specific segment by following the below screenshot:
Quick tips while writing your email template
Tip# 1 — Use “I”: Avoid using “We” in your email subject lines and email body. Using “I” makes it very personal and has a more direct feel to it. It also encourages the reader to respond quicker than if you use “we”.
Tip# 2 — Personalize your email: Include the link of their blog along with some personal details from the guest post outreach emails to get a response from them. Make sure to add some value in your first email and then ask for a link exchange.
Tip# 3 — Add value: Be generous when you add value to their blog, provide them with research data, facts, share your ideas or thoughts on their blog. This will make them want to respond to your guest post outreach emails faster.
Tip# 4 — Keep it simple: Overcomplicating your email templates prevents you from getting replies. Keep it simple and crisp.
Tip# 5 — Don’t sound desperate: Do not ask the blogger in the first line itself for a link. You can start by giving them value and asking la2t1er after establishing a connection.
Tip# 6 — Be polite: Don’t be rude or aggressive in your guest post outreach emails, have polite conversations with prospects without being too pushy.
Tip# 7 — Have an unsubscribe link: Add an unsubscribe link in your email to avoid getting into spam folders.
Use follow up emails to get higher response rate
If there is no response despite writing the best emails, then follow-up emails are a great way to change that.
However, you need to wait for 24 hours before you send a follow-up email. You are more likely to get an email response then.
You should send at least 2-3 follow-up emails to every prospect before making the final decision of moving on to other prospects. You can automate follow-ups in RangeFlow so that you don’t have to remember when to send them.
Guest post outreach is all about building relationships with bloggers and making them aware of your brand and website. So, be humble and genuine while interacting with the prospects and they will surely appreciate it and reply back.
Here is an example of a follow-up email message:
Subject: Guest Post – Your blog post on “topic1” for this month’s roundup
Email:
Hey [First Name],
I am sure you are very busy, but I never heard back from you — I completely understand if you do not have the time, however if you do I am looking forward to hearing from you.
As I mentioned above, the guest post I will send would be 100% unique, and really valuable to your readers.
Thanks,
[Your Name]
RangeFlow will help you manage all your guest post outreach activities efficiently and seamlessly by bringing in all your processes under one roof.
Create custom templates for each segment, follow up with the bloggers to get replies and track your progress on a daily basis using RangeFlow’s built-in reporting feature.
Now that your pipeline is ready we can get started with gathering prospect details in your spreadsheet.
Creating the Prospect List for Guest Post Outreach
You can find a list of guest blogging prospects in a number of places. The most popular ones are:
- Find a prospect’s email address from their website or blog posts — This is an easy way to get emails but also the least reliable because you cannot be certain that all bloggers add their email addresses in public.
- Find email addresses from their social profiles — This is a bit more reliable because all bloggers have a high chance of having a verified email address on their social media profile.
- Use Email Hunter, Voila Norbert and Find That Lead to find emails — An easy to use and fast tool to get the email address from various places on the web.
- Use Google search operators — A more reliable and advanced way to find email addresses quickly. This technique is fast because you don’t need to register on any website and the results are very accurate.
- Use Rapportive or Fullcontact Gmail plugin — This tool helps you find emails by showing the social profiles of the person in the Gmail sidebar.
Send Out Guest Post Outreach Emails
- While sending cold emails for your guest blogging outreach campaign, use a professional email address of an individual instead of a generic or a company email like info[at]business.com or support[at]yourcompany.com.
- Avoid bulk emailing, send personalized emails for specific prospects as sending too many emails at once can lead to spam filters.
- Remember to tailor your message to the recipient, so he/she could relate to your message. This increases the likelihood of getting a response.
- In the email, don’t forget to include your target audience’s pain and give them what they want. The idea is to basically relate to their problems and then present them with a solution to those problems.
- Last, keep the message short and to the point. Simple messages are more likely to get a response than lengthy and confusing messages.
- Do not send the cold emails to prospects you have already contacted before. You would actually be losing valuable time and energy doing that. Plus, you’ll frustrate them by doing so.
Track Replies And Manage Responses
RangeFlow allows you to track and manage replies automatically—all within the same interface.
Conclusion
A guest blogging outreach campaign can be time-consuming and overwhelming at times, but I hope the above tips help you in understanding how to get started with your guest post outreach. If you still have doubts regarding managing a guest blog posting outreach process, let us know in the comments below and we will be happy to help you out.
