This article is a follow up to a lesson I posted the other day in which we talked about guest blogging. This is a method you can use to get new fans by writing articles for other blogs in your music scene.
Today we are going to focus on how you can increase the chances that your article will get accepted by the blog. To do this we need to look at six key factors.
After all there is no point in going to all that time and effort in creating the article, if it just stays on your hard drive gathering virtual dust.
But first…
I need to answer a question that has been popping up in the inbox.
A lot of people have been wondering if you can reuse the posts on your own blog for guest blogging opportunities?
The simple answer to this question is YES, although there is a BUT…
The only problem with this method is that some bloggers might be worried that if they post duplicate content on their site, Google might blacklist them for scraping content.
This is not the case…
What Google hates is people trying to put the same blog post on one site 1000’s times to try and game the system for more hits.
If they penalized people for posting the same article on two different sites, half the Internet would be blacklisted for scraping!
I have often seen the same article taking multiple spots on the first page of Google. This is good for you because it means that you have more chance that fans will visit your website.
But if the blogger is not happy with this you should not try and convince them because…
“A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still”
Just write a new article in this case.
So with that cleared up let’s move on to getting your guest post approved.
1. Quality
This should of course be your first priority with all your music marketing, but for guest posts you really need to turn the quality knob up to 11!
Keep the basics in mind….
- Check spelling
- Grammar
- Write catchy headlines
- Provide great information
- Add pictures
- Embed a YouTube video if you can…
You have to remember that most bloggers will not do you a favor for the sake of it, so you need to make sure that you provide them a lot of value for their readers.
2. Research
Another way to increase the chances that your guest post will be accepted is to thoroughly research the blog you are targeting.
Look through the latest posts and see what kind of content the readers have commented on most. Also make a note of anything that impressed you about the site.
Then you might say something like this…
“Dear celebrity blogger…
My name is Chris Rockett from PaddysGang.net, we’re an Irish folk group from London.
I have been reading your blog for ages, and I have been enjoying adding to the conversation where I can.
Your post on “the best place to buy banjo strings on a budget” was second to none!
I have written a post on my favourite banjo songs which I think your readers might like. Feel free to post it up as a guest blog if you think people will enjoy it, and if it fits into your publishing schedule.
Here is the ready made blog code so you can copy and paste, and have it live in just a few minutes.
I look forward to hearing what you think….
Chris”
P.S None of that was true by the way, but just a cheeky little example to get you started 
3. Make it Easy Peasy
I think this is the number one factor in whether or not your post goes live, so you need to do everything you can to make it as easy as possible for the blog you are targeting
The method I use is below…
- Write your post in Google docs.
- Use my proofreading process to make sure that everything is perfect
- Use your own blog editor to set up the post as if your were going to post it yourself. Include a few images and styling you think makes the post more effective. (By “styling” I mean bold, italics, underlines.)
- Make sure that you use short paragraphs and sentences so that your article flows nicely.
- Include a couple of links in the article, one back to your site and the other back to Facebook or Twitter.
- Once you are happy with your post you want to switch the text editor in your blog to show you the html version of your post.
- The code might look a little bit weird, but your blog target is going to love this because all they have to do is paste the code into their own html text editor and “hey presto”, they have a fully set up ready to go blog post in minutes.
- Now you want to open up Google docs and create a new document.
- Paste in your blog code including your title and a simple instruction line for the blogger, that explains what they need to do.
- When you are happy click “share” in the top right hand corner of Google documents and then “publish to the web”.
- Google will now give you a link which you can email to your blog target.
You can see an example of one of my guest posts templates here…
You should then find the contact details on the blog and post off you article with a nice introduction message as I showed you above.
This process may seem a little tricky but the easier you make it for the blogger, the better the chance that they will feature your posts.
See the video at the end for more information =>
4. Follow Up
Wait a couple of days and if the blogger does not post your stuff send a follow up email to explain once more what you sent, and ask for some feedback on the article. (This will get people to at least read it in most cases.)
5. Move On If You Get Ignored
If you hear nothing at all from the blogger chances are that it’s not their main business or website, and they don’t really keep an eye on their contact email. You should move onto other popular sites ASAP until your post is live.
Don’t take no for an answer and you will increase your website hits massively.
6. Promote
Another great way to increase the chances that your guest blog will go live, is to send the blogger a few hits once your work is posted. You can do this by adding your live guest post to twitter and facebook.
This will obviously not help for your first article, but if the blogger sees that he or she gets a bump in traffic when they post your stuff, they will be much more likely to post your work up quickly and be happy to get it next time.
This is still a double dare!
I challenge you to get a guest blog post live over the next couple of weeks, and then let me know what happened.
So get writing!
- Chris
Watch the video podcast version below…
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