You should! If you accept guest posts on your blog, it's a great way to network, make new friends, gain exposure for your own blog and even better, help out a new blogger!
I know there's a lot of talk about how guest posting is dead. But is it really? I don't think so.
I've been getting a little bit more traffic to one of my blogs, Party Ideas Buzz, and one of the things that helps me gain some much-needed traction is accepting guest posts.
Just this week I had two new bloggers and small business owners to send me articles that i posted on my blog. They were both very interesting articles that benefited my readers while helping out another blogger.
In my opinion, when you launch a blog and it starts getting a little bit of traffic, accepting articles from other bloggers really helps build your blog too. How?
Your guest author will share your blog in their social networks, so now your blog is getting more exposure.
You'll start getting noticed as someone who helps other bloggers. While their blog gets some backlinks from yours, you'll also gain backlinks and even more traffic as they share the link to your blog with their network.
You get original content without having to write it yourself.
You build depth in your blog by adding more variety and different viewpoints from different writers.
And you get to help other newer bloggers by giving them some space to express their creativity.
I accept guest posts on all of my blogs for all of those reasons. And I've noticed some increased traffic to them, virtually on autopilot. There are a lot of new blogs launching every day, and one thing that they still learn is to Google the terms "submit a guest post" or "accepting guest posts. "
And if you're in a specific niche, and if you're open to the idea of allowing other people to provide content for your blog, you're setting up a win-win for both yourself and other bloggers.
How to Accept Guest Posts
What I did was set up a page specifically for people to submit their articles. It lists what I'm looking for and certain criteria that must be met for every submission.
This is how the page reads:
We're accepting guest posts for our blog. Before you submit your post:
Familiarize yourself with our blog, its content and categories;
Posts must be at least 400 words;
Posts must be submitted as TEXT files, please (*. txt);
Posts must be grammatically correct and written in ENGLISH;
Please include your full name and your blog or business name for the post byline;
You may include TWO links back to your blog or store - as long as they are also relevant to this blog. Just use common sense, please!
All posts will be manually reviewed for content and posted within 24 to 48 hours. I reserve the right to make any non-critical edits as needed (spelling, grammar, punctuation) before posting and post in the category where the article fits best.
Be sure to bookmark this blog and check back frequently for new posts!
And while you're here, browse through and leave comments on other posts - and share this blog with your friends and readers too!
Thank you!
Submit your guest post with this form.
And then I add a contact form that allows them to attach their article.
I don't do guest posting myself on other blogs; when i write an original article, it's for my own blog. But accepting guest posts keeps my blogs active and fresh without me having to write every single post!
