Don't Make Guest Blogging About You

Don’t Make Guest Blogging About You

Written by: Justin Germino

June 4th, 2010 7:00 am - 7 Comments

I couldn’t have wrote a better article myself talking about the “Don’ts of Guest Blogging” than the one I found on Blog Engage on Sam’s Web Guide. The article talks about the three essential don’ts of guest blogging which include not using guest bloggers strictly for a backlink, not focusing on A-List bloggers, and not promoting yourself or your content as the primary focus of your guest post.

I highly recommend you read the article above for more details and author views but I wanted to add my own two cents worth before you do.

blog or not blog Dont Make Guest Blogging About You

Cartoon by John Cox & Allen Forkum

When guest blogging you don’t want to try and steal the hosting blogs focus and attention and try to steer that traffic to your own blog, instead you want to compliment that blog and build upon its foundation with your own credit and minor references to your own site in your post. This serves better in the long run because if you write high quality content you are more likely to get people engaged and follow links or leave comments on your guest article.

I would add a 4th don’t to the list as well:

Don’t ignore people who comment on your guest posts

Make sure that you check your guest posts often, and reply to comments in a timely fashion. If you ignore the commenters, because you weren’t checking actively or subscribed to your own posts comments you may lose potential readers and audience who would follow you back to your own blog.

I myself can scarcely come up with the time to put a guest post or two per month on blogs where I signed on to contribute too, I try not to be a one time guest poster because this is another way to get lost in the crowd and only get very temporary value from your guest posts.

What are your thoughts on bad guest blogging habits? What peeves you?

Also, I am always looking for guest bloggers on DragonBlogger.com and if you are interested in writing about SEO, Social Media, Technology, Gadgets or Entertainment just hit me up and I would be happy to accept a guest post from you.

-Dragon Blogger

Digg Digg

Is Guest Blogging the Next Big Sell? Tips for guest blogging and how to make sure you provide value and receive value from being a guest blogger...
Looking for Guest Bloggers – Inquire Within Guest Blogging is something that increases your exposure to other blog readers as a writer, it is a symbiotic relationship...
Guest Blogging Strategy: Maximize Returns From Guest Posts In a previous post we discussed various strategies for maximizing returns from blog commenting/posting comments on other blogs. Now, we...
Blog Engage $500 Guest Blogging Contest You can bet I will be entering the Blog Engage $500 Guest Blogging Contest #1 and have already submitted my guest article...
My Blog Guest: A Forum for Guest Blogging MyBlogGuest is a fantastic forum for finding authors who want to write guest articles for your blog, or for finding...

Article Written by Justin Germino (1579 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

Follow Justin Germino on Twitter @dragonblogger

Aury (Thunderdrake)

I think one of the most fun things to do on a guest post is being able to comment a little more liberally on them than you would with any other post. That's fun, and a very lovely way to engage other readers and bloggers.

I haven't looked into it as part of my marketing strategy. But I've become really tempted to...

share flag

spam
offensive
disagree
off topic

Mike Jones

I'm afraid I don't do guest blogs but I like the emphasis you put on keeping an eye on comments made to guest posts. It's so easy to forget to check and thus it's even easier to lose potential readers by failing to respond. Aside from which every one likes to see a comment with an answer!
.-= Mike Jones´s last blog ..Fashion – Makeup In the 60s =-.

Joshua Dorkin @ Real Estate Investing

I'm curious what your take is on allowing guest bloggers to post self-serving links within their posts? I am against it, since they automatically get a link in the byline section. Do you allow your guest bloggers to include links back to their sites from their articles?

dragonblogger

This is a good question, and I would allow it if a blogger wanted to showcase a particular article that was relevant to the post, since the byline just has the homepage. But I would expect it not to be abused and not be a blatant, "go read my article here" but more as a follow up or way for a reader to go get more info on the subject.

Thanks for the feedback. That sounds reasonable to me, but it is rare that I see someone link to relevant articles. They mostly try links SEO purposes in my experience.

This is why I moderate all guest posts and they must go through review before I approve them. I don't allow contributors to just publish upon submit.

You Set The Pace When Blogging says:

June 14, 2010 at 10:01 am

[...] last two years of blogging and that I like many bloggers started out with the “bug” of content creation and just mass churning out 3-5 articles and posts per day to jump on board as quickly as [...]