But when you already know why collaborating with other fellow bloggers can positively impact your blog, you may consider writing a guest post pitch for some of the influential blogs in your niche. After knowing which bloggers or blogs you want to reach out for a guest post, how are you supposed to write the pitch to get noticed?
In this post, I want to outline some of the tips I'd like to pinpoint for pitching a guest post!
How to Identify Blogs/Bloggers to Pitch for a Guest Post
Once you start blogging, unless you live in a country where there are some specific laws for content creators, your blog is basically under your authority. It's up to you whether you want to host a guest post or just stick to the content you write yourself. As a guest post publisher, fresh content will keep your blog updated with minimum effort. As a guest writer, you can put yourselves out there to get more publicity for your personal brand. After all, there are many content writing tools you can use these days to ease your writing process.
However, there's also some other controversy about whether or not to receive a paid guest post in your blog since it can risk getting penalized by Google or whatever. Again, what's allowed and what's not in your blog really depends on you as a blog owner. For me, I accept both free and paid guest post in my blog as long as it's relevant to my other content, and I can see values by posting it.
While guest posting is encouraged to boost your blog's DA (domain authority), it's been a while since the last time I submitted a guest post to another blog. I join more collab posts than submit a guest post since writing a guest post is more time consuming, and I could really use my time to do something else.
Source: Pexels.
Come to think of it, I think I write an e-mail to pitch for a sponsored post more often than a guest post. However, I got my post published several times by some fellow bloggers. Most of them are published in the blogs relevant to my niche, and I got connected with the bloggers through networking instead of sending them a pitch.
I wasn't really picky when it comes to choosing a blog to guest post, but at the time, I was aiming at some blogs with a higher DA to boost mine.
Apart from DA, you can also pick some blogs that rank on the higher end for some keywords that you're targeting. Or some market leaders within your niche. Whichever blog you're aiming for, here are the dos and don'ts when it comes to writing a pitch for a guest post!
The Dos: How to Write a Guest Post Pitch
Honestly, if I got a dollar everytime I got pitched for a guest post via e-mail, I think I'd probably reach $50 or so per month.
Initially, I would reply to all the e-mails, but I came to the point that it could take forever for me to reply to each of the e-mail I got. Sometimes it's because I got too busy for any other stuff; some others are just not worth replying to either.
I'm writing this post, based on some samples I received the latter. So, what should you do to write a pitch that's worth replying?!
1. Write the pitch properly.
Look, I'm not even a native English speaker, and I have to admit that there is some grammar that I use in my writing that doesn't make any sense either, simply because English isn't the language that I use to communicate daily.
But I received so many e-mails with way too many grammatical errors that my eyes could handle. They offer a guest post in my blog written in English. As a non-English speaker myself, I'd second guess the quality of their guest post just by reading their e-mail, so I tend to ignore this kind of pitch.
To be fair, sometimes I respond to them and tell them straight the rate for the paid guest post in my blog. This kind of e-mail usually responded to ask whether it's okay to publish a post for like $5. First, the ugly-written pitch, and they only have peanuts for the budget. So really, this kind of pitch is a red flag that I can't help to generalize!
Source: Depositphotos.
2. Make a connection first on the first few lines of the pitch.
I don't know about you, but some social media gurus or content creators usually tell you how to get attention on the first few lines of your content. The same goes for your pitch, because the first few lines of your e-mail determine it to be a go or no-go for the recipient.
The other day, I received a pitch whose sender told me that they also have a cat at home. It's a little thing, but it means that they actually took some time to get through my blog and read what's in it instead of just sending me some random e-mail.
An e-mail like this is more likely to be responded since it shows you some effort to connect to the recipient. Let's face it, these days, no one wants to receive cold calls or e-mail to their inbox, but if you really have to send one, do it the right way!
3. Join some relevant groups to connect with the peers within your niche.
If you really want to pitch some bloggers for a guest post, instead of cold e-mails, I'd strongly recommend you to connect with them through Facebook groups instead.
There are so many active groups on Facebook that you can identify based on your niche where those bloggers hang out to support each other. Instead of an unwanted cold e-mail that everyone hates, you better start networking with other fellow bloggers through collaboration.
Source: Depositphotos.
The Don'ts: How Not to Write a Guest Post Pitch
Now that you know things to do before pitching your guest post idea to the blog you want to collaborate with, it's also important to know some things you should avoid when you send your pitch.
So, what's not to do when you send a pitch for a guest post?!
1. Use a pitching template.
While creating a template for pitching saves some time, I personally wouldn't recommend it since sending an e-mail template gives some ‘random' vibes that would trigger people to ignore it than respond to it.
I used a template and just copy and paste whenever I wanted to reach out to a brand or some other fellow bloggers, but I figured that the practice is no longer relevant since most people dig more into personal touch. Something that you couldn't achieve by sending them a template.
Besides, the chance for you to send an e-mail with typo or God forbids, wrong name within the e-mail is higher when you just copy and paste the pitch to the recipient.
On the days when addressing someone with the correct pronoun is important, the last thing you want is addressing them the wrong way in the cold e-mail.
2. Be pushy about your pitch.
Sometimes, no answer is an answer. Remember that scene from He's Just Not That Into You when Justin Long told Ginnifer Goodwin that when a guy treated her like he didn't give a shit, normally it's because he genuinely doesn't give a shit? The same goes for your pitch.
When you don't hear from them, it's better for you to just move on and find some others that might positively respond to you because otherwise… Who wants to even work with someone who tries too hard to the point that it sounds desperate? Right?
Besides, your e-mail might as well go to the spam folder that sending them a follow up twice or thrice might not make any difference.
Source: Pexels.
3. Give a lecture about how to write or run a blog.
This is the kind of pitch that always gets me cringed every time. Duh. The pitch that tries to show me how they know better than I do about running my blog or my business. I offer them my rate for a paid guest post, then they start telling me that it's too expensive. The list goes on, which makes it easier not to work with them.
When pitching for a guest post, you should also respect the way the host run their blog because if you don't dare to tell the house owner what to do with their house when you come for a visit, what reason do you have to do it when you write a guest post for their blog?
Writing a pitch can be quite challenging, but it's possible if you understand the ethics, to begin with. Cold calling or cold e-mailing could be the hardest thing to do, but it can be done if you could position yourself on the recipient's potential point of view.
Connecting with them first is the key, once you nailde it, let alone guest post, you might as well find a new friend… Like the friendship I started with my fellow blogger Shi Hui from IReviewURead.
Do you have any tips about writing a guest post pitch to the other bloggers? Share your two cents below and cheerio! 🙂
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