Last week, I posted an article on Guest posting Dos and don’ts which triggered an interesting discussion on Facebook. I also got a lot of interest from people saying that they can write a fantastic guest post. It was interesting to note that not many were guest-writing on a regular basis even though they wanted to.
It got me thinking. If guest posting is so great, then how come we don’t engage in writing more? Is it because we are unable to manage our time for writing yet another post or is it because we have no clue what to write on?
I feel that it could be a combination of many reasons – lack of proper time management skills (Guilty!), a feeling of inadequacy when it comes to formal writing (language and style), and an inability to churn out interesting content ideas that might be suitable for a global audience. Writing for your own blog is easy, but writing for another blog could be terrifying because we assume things. So what do we do to create fantastic guest posts?
“Stop Assuming and start Communicating!”
Before you write a Guest post
Whether you are a guest-posting pro or beginner who plans to get into it, ask yourself (and publishing blogger) the following questions before you write.
1. The Title and scope – What should I write about?
2. Length & Depth – How long and how detailed should the article be?
3. Image requirements – how many images, what size, with or without watermark
4. Can I backlink to my site from the article? If so how many links
5. Voice and style
As I have already discussed points 3, 4 and 5 in my previous post “Dos and Don’ts of guest posting“, I am now going to discuss in general about the scope, style and textual requirement of articles when it comes to guest posting.
How to write a Guest post
- Choose a topic relevant to the niche of the target blog
- Write using specific examples
- Maintain the desirable word length
- Optimise for keywords – SEO
- Maintain readability
The Title – What should I write about?
This often depends on the blog, its niche and the audience, which might be similar or very different from the audience of your blog. Communicate with the blogger on what kind of articles they want, again do not assume. As JOS is a design blog that focuses of Accessorisation, I accept articles with respect to jewelry and accessories. The more detailed post will be up later this week which will discuss the eight content categories that I am looking for on Jewels of Sayuri.
Scope
Scope refers to the extent of coverage or range of the subject matter. For example, if you are discussing the scope of a design degree, then you talk about the subject areas, the skills that you learn in the course and types of jobs it could prepare you for. Simply put, scope is the measure or estimation of how much information you can disperse through the article. Scope depends upon the length, depth and breadth of the article. As a rule of thumb, Avoid topics that are extremely broad or convert it to a series of articles instead of one post, just like I am doing with this Guest Posting Series.
Length
1. The Niche (and therefore your topic)
2. Your style of writing
3. Current google algorithm requirements
Niche: Design, photography and art blogs tend to me more visual than verbal so these blogs ideally require about 300-600 words with lots of images. On the other hand tech blogs, blogs on blogging, business management would expect a minimum of at least 1000-2000 words. I like posts that are between 500 to 1000 words for JOS with a minimum of 2 images per post.
Style: If your tone is more conversational like a story, people would love to read even if its long but if you make it too long then you just kill the reader’s curiosity and interest. Also, this really depends upon who your audience is – are you targeting teenagers, moms, hobbyists, research scholars, industrialists or a hybrid mix of everyone who is out there.
Readability: Follow readability rules – use active voice, transition words and limit paragraph length.
Width & Depth
The root cause of this problem is the writers themselves – they are great writers but they lack the technical expertise on the particular topic. As a solution, I suggest that we should write only about what we know – either its our field of study or practice and we can talk about it with confidence. Even then, we should do enough research before writing the article to maintain authenticity of the content and the suitability of our viewpoint on that topic, for the particular blog. That is what turns an ordinary guest post into a fantastic one.
Conclusion
In conclusion, for your guest posts to turn out fantastic, pick out a topic that you know about and a blog niche that is relevant to it. Do your research to write a fantastic Guest post. Create posts that are error free, true to the point with appropriate images and links in a style that is in-sync with the voice of the publishing blog. If you are interested in trying out your hand at guest posting at Jewelsofsayuri, do wait for the next installment in this guest posting series where I’ll discuss top content ideas suitable for this blog. Till then do share in the comments, any blogging or writing tips that you have.
I hope you found it interesting
Cheers
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