Sometimes it can be extremely difficult to publicize your own blogs to increase readership. That’s where the power of guest blogging really shines. Not only can it introduce a new perspective and a deviation from your usual posts, but it can also help the guest blogger achieve more readership with their blogs. So it’s a win win right?
The Beginners Guide to Guest Blogging offers a lot of great tips on guest blogging when it comes to doing your research, giving your pitch, and writing your post. I immediately noticed that one of the really big concepts this article kept bringing up was the thought process. You really can’t dive into guest blogging and recklessly try and throw yourself out there. Some of the big tips the author generally involve taking things one step at a time and thinking things through. One excellent point I noticed was his idea to put yourself in the receivers shoes. As the receiver of a blog, you wouldn’t want a guest blog post whose pitch is very sloppy, and or time consuming to read/understand. Therefore, if you can think what the blogger would like to see in a guest blog request email, your pitch will definitely be greatly enhanced.
Some of the key tips that really stood out to me for these emails include
- Being clean and proofread (not sloppy and lazy!)
- Referencing something on their blog to show you have an interest and took the time to read their blog
- Being patient and not coming off as too aggressive or desperate
Overall, you really just have to think things through and take your time because after all you are the guest and the blogger isn’t 100% inclined to allow just anybody to guest post on their blogs, so make sure you really give it your all.
The next article, 7 Essential Ingredients For A Successful Collaborative Blog, really hammers down on the keys for unlocking the door to a great collaborative blog.
A collaborative blog involves multiple authors all working together and contributing to the posts and maintenance of the blog. One of the biggest aspects that popped out to me from the 7 tips is the teamwork aspect. It’s really crucial whenever you have a team that you set yourselves a goal, and all work together to achieve that set goal. This involves equal distribution of work, strong communication, a variety of talents you can bring to the table, etc… You can all be great individual bloggers; but at the end of the day, for a collaborative blog to be successful, you need to have the teamwork aspect.
I also really liked the 7th tip they gave, which was to have fun into the mix. This really applies to all of our blogs whether it be collaborative or non collaborative. We need to have passion and enjoy the posts that we take the time to create everyday or every week. If blogging starts to become more of a chore than an enjoyable experience for you, make sure you take your blog into the right direction where your passion truly lies.
RU Creative Blogging FA14 
Hey Justin!
I totally agree with your first sentence. Today in society, a lot of people have some sort of technology where they can go on social media and speak what’s on their minds or blog. Blogging is a very booming pastime or profession nowadays. And with a lot of people blogging, it is very hard for some to publicize their blogs and increase readership. I think in order for anyone to increase readership it is critical to be meticulous even it is a past time like you mentioned in one of your bullet point. If the author doesn’t proofread his or her work, it shows to the reader that the author doesn’t care. Then, why should the readers? I agree that patience is another way that could increase readership in blogs. Looking desperate and aggressive drives away the readers. This is how I think about it. The word of mouth is very important. The presentation is also very important. I feel like those two are the best way to advertise something. Presenting something interesting to the people’s eyes will attract the readers. That is only the first step. The second step is to advertise so everybody knows. That will only happen if the topic is something presentable and the advertisements such as Instagram, Facebook, through friends, and etc. Through teamwork, advertisements can be successful-sharing, mentioning, tagging, and etc.
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Hey Justin, I think it’s interesting how we both honed into the communication skills that are discussed in these articles. As I mentioned in my post, these skills are super important for the work place. Blogging is a pretty professional endeavor, and successful blogs tend to be more professional by nature. Especially the “be clean and proof read” comment. Today, it seems that spelling and carefully writing anything is a dying art. I even see my own parents texting “How ru”, it’s pretty scary. One of the biggest things that show me that a person is intelligent is how well they use grammar in texting or emailing. Social media and the virtual world are the new first impressions, and if in the old days people would dress nicely and “clean up” when meeting a new person for a collaborative venture, now spelling and grammar in emails and texts is the new “cleaning up good”. In many ways, since internet is permananent, it forces people to be more professional and gramatical in every aspect of their lives. If you tweet something now, you have to remember that in 5 years that tweet will still be there, and if that tweet says “F**K PENN STATE!!!!! U ALL SUCK!”, it will poorly reflect upon you as a person.
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Hi Justin,
I think you pin pointed a very important part of both of these articles and that is the importance of professionalism and teamwork. Professionalism for a blogger whether a collaborative one or not is of the utmost importance. You should desire for your readers to value and trust what you have to say and so maintaining the correct level of professionalism for instill that in your readers is key. Like you said, it is also imperative that display your professionalism when pitching your desire to guest blog for someone, if they don’t think you are professional and take what you are saying seriously why would they entrust you to convince their readers of that? What you said about taking your time and thinking through everything that you put on your blog and send out is very good. The need for teamwork, as you said, in a collaborative blog is vital. It was clear in the articles, what you wrote, and through the advice a blogger gave me that without teamwork a collaborative blog will not be successful. While at the same time if you have a good team to work with it may improve your own work simply because you can be inspired by so much more when there are more people working together. Good job I thought this post reflected the articles well.
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Hi Justin!
I think you were right on the mark when you mention how important it is that someone does the proper research before requesting to post on someone’s blog. I think it’s definitely the little things that determines whether or not someone will be given permission to contribute their guest post. The person do not have to go in detail and look over every single post on the blog which they want to contribute to. However, if they don’t take at least a minimal amount of time to scan the blog and do the necessary research, it will be obvious to the owner of the blog that the individual did not put in the effort to fully understand the topic they will be contributing to. I think this would be not only annoying, but actually insulting that someone is trying to write on your blog but they did not even take the time to learn at least a little bit about it. I also agree with you that proofreading is absolutely essential. Even though at times it can be mundane and tedious, looking over your work is necessary in order to ensure that there are not any careless errors in your writing. If there are errors, this will also be a red flag to the blog owner that you did not put the necessary amount of effort and time into your guest post and they most likely will not accept your request. Great points being made in your response Justin!
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Hey Justin!
I found the articles to be pretty interesting and helpful since we all have to practice guest blogging ourselves. I too, found the thought process to be an important concept. First I found this to be interesting because in general whenever you are working on something with another person or working on a project for someone else, you need to put thought into it. It is one thing to mess up for yourself, but to make a mistake on another person’s piece of work is unacceptable.
I also like how you broke down the articles and specifically touched upon the importance of team work from the second article. Once you have a group working on one task, team work is vital for success. If the tasks are not equally divided with a set goal agreed on by the team, this success will not be found. A lot of us hate group projects or group work, but sometimes you have no choice and if you have a blog run by multiple people, you have no choice but to make sure that the team dynamic is strong.
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Hey Justin,
Your last sentence really spoke to me. The last sentence basically summarized the whole point of guest blogging. Reason you let someone write on your blog is to give you different ideas or different way to look at your blog. That is such global sentence. You can apply that to any situation you want. If you are not enjoying it then there is no purpose in dragging that subject and wasting your time. Because if you’re not gonna enjoy writing that means that you won’t write your blog nicely, making your readers look at garbage which will make your followers un-follow your blog. It will hurt both ends. So its good that you don’t drag something that you’re not enjoying.
i like how you summarize each readings first, that give us idea on what you will talk about because i always forget what i read in article. So it’s good that you brush on main topics and then talk about. Making the readers know what exactly they’re looking at. Overall you bring up nice ideas about guest blogging.
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Hi Justin,
You are so right! Publicizing your own blog can be extremely difficult if you don’t know the first thing about social media and public relations. Even having a slight background in both, I still find it difficult to come up with new ways to get the word out there about my blog. Guest blogging is interesting for a few different reasons. These types of posts give readers something that they haven’t experienced before with your posts, in addition to a new set of followers. If the individual blogging for you is known in a different sector of the blogging community, this may be beneficial for you in that they will bring along fans that might not have crossed your path otherwise. In a lot of ways, I also think that guest blogging has the potential to develop into a freelance gig if you are interested in pursuing that avenue. If the company that you are guest blogging for sees value in your writing and following, it’s possible that they may be interested in having you write for them on a more regular basis. Pitching stories via email is very common nowadays, but it also presents a challenge. Making sure that your story still sounds as enticing as you would explain it in-person, it’s critical that you use proper English and strong vocabulary in your email to this potential future boss.
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Wassup Justin, I really enjoyed your blog post man! I feel that this article was pretty similar in concept with the crowdsourcing. Obviously it was a way smaller scale, but the concept is still there. The fact that we can work together, then combine readership and really enhance everything through these guest posts is really correlated with the idea of crowdsourcing. With crowdsourcing you get something that people enjoy and have everyone climb on board. With partnering up you have more control for whoever want’s to read your blog. Also these were pretty straightforward and simple steps to really reach out to a new group of readers. Maybe they’re not something you’re used to, but it definitely can help. Also really like the point you made that a blog should be something you’re passionate about and something that doesn’t become a job. I know i personally have been struggling with that and trying to really gear it towards something I enjoy and am passionate about.
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Hey Justin, you pointed out some really great concepts in your post. Beginning with the fact of being a guest blogger. It is absolutely necessary that you edit your post, and pay tribute to the actual blogger in your guest post. It is not the bloggers obligation to allow a guest post, so when somebody is given that opportunity they need to treat the blog and their post as if it were their own.
I enjoyed your comments about teamwork. One doesn’t realize how much effort is required individually among people on a team until they are a part of one themselves. For one of my online classes, we are assigned into groups every week where, similar to this class, we need to comment on each others homework assignments. If the other members in your group don’t do their homework assignments, than you can’t get credit for responding to your groups comments. Teamwork is very, very important when doing a project
And of course, a blog always turns out significantly better when you enjoy what you are posting about. I personally have grown very fond of cooking after starting my blog for this class and do not even care when I need to post what I made as a homework assignment. Had I chosen a different topic, such as basketball, my posts would be horrible because I have absolutely no interest in that sport what so ever. It is difficult to come up with a topic that you are passionate enough about to consistently post on your blog, and to come up with a large enough variety of information to keep your followers intrigued,
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Hey Justin! I think you bring up a lot of great points and helpful tips! Guest blogging can be extremely beneficial in achieving more blog traffic because if the guest is established enough, they can attract some of their own readers who may have previously been unfamiliar with your blog. Also, it’s a selling point to readers that you already have and can break up any monotony. I’ve learned a lot from writing a guest post this week, and it’s very interesting to see how different topics can come together. But it’s also a lesson that not anyone can be a guest blogger for any blog, and it’s important to choose someone with the same niche and general idea, so you are both on the same page.
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Couldn’t agree more with Justin on how increasing readership thorough ones blog is important. It could be difficult and sometimes writers could hit a blocking cycle where he or she might not know where to take the blog. Aside from the examples we’ve talked about in class like including tags and putting our posts in categories; guest post could defiantly help. One thing I found was the most useful in this post was the concept you brought up about the thought process. Every author goes behind a process when writing his or her post that will be different from another. Taking the time to read throughout the blog to show that you have an interest in the blog is a tip I found the most important. How can you write and give your insight about a topic if you didn’t even bother taking the time to understand the author. Hence, I like the idea of guest blogging and would be all for doing it more often. Being able to bring different ideas throughout a blog like a collective blog with multiple authors is a way to really connect ideas and expand on them. Personally, this is how better ideas arise and better ones come alive.
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Hello Justin! I think the way that you organized your critical response was intreating. I like the way that you pointed out the specific parts of the articles that you enjoyed and elaborated on them a little more. In regards to the guest posting section you pointed out that “Referencing something on their blog to show you have an interest and took the time to read their blog” was a good idea i actually tried to use this point in my own guest post since we had to do that for a homework assignment. I found that writing a guest post was a wee bit difficult. I can’t say that I would be interested in doing it again. haha. Again, it was nice that you selected important points from each article. When you spoke about “7 Essential Ingredients For A Successful Collaborative Blog” I particularly enjoyed the fact that you stressed the importance of setting a goal. Whenever there is a group project people are not always on the same page therefore it is “crucial” like you mentioned to set a common goal for a collaborative blog. A job well done on this critical response!
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Hi!
I really enjoyed the format of this critical response. I like how you pointed out the most important tips to you .. because that was pretty important to me as well. The first point of proof-reading is so true. For blogs, it is more of a free space to write as one feels but having good grammar is still something that should be presented in any blog. It is something that will appeal more to a reader without them knowing. If I see a million spelling mistakes I am not going to want to continue reading it regardless of how good the post is. This makes me want to be more conscious in my own blog. I need to proof read more!
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Hey there Justin,
I think guest blogging brings forth an interesting aspect of blogging. In your post, I think you pinpoint a major idea that both of the homework assigned readings are trying to point out. I like how you broke it down into three easy to read steps that capture the essence of guest blogging. It is important to make sure the writing is of good quality and that it will appeal to your readers. Guest blogging absolutely requires cooperation and clear communication to appeal to the audience at the website where the post will appear.
I also like what you said about the 7th tip you read. It is important to remember to have fun! I guest blog for the business I work at and between blogging there, blogging for school, and blogging on my own, it’s gets to be a lot of work. I think it’s essential that bloggers remember why they’re doing what they’re doing so as to stay motivated about their writing. This is even more important when posting on another person’s blog as you want them to be excited about your post – not concerned that their readers will find it totally boring.
See you next class!
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Hi Justin,
You bring up some great points about the perks of featuring a guest blogger. I think that guest blogging is great because among the consistency that we as bloggers provide our readers each week, it’s cool to go outside of a routine and introduce an exciting new aspect. This (hopefully) will make readers more interested in the blog because they have something new and exciting to look forward to. In addition, you talked about key tips to remember to successfully run a group blog. I totally agree that for a group blog to be successful, teamwork is a key component. As a team player, each individual has to uphold their responsibilities and also bring their own personalities to make the blog more unique and interesting. But at the end of the day, the ultimate goal is to have fun while doing it. If bloggers are writing about something they are truly passionate about, they will figure out a way to make it work and be successful while enjoying their work. Blogging should be fun and if it’s not, then changes need to be made because at the core, blogging centers around the idea of talking about something that’s interesting enough to the blogger that they could never run out of things to say.
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