Guest Blogging Etiquette: How to Successfully Pitch a Guest Post?

I get dozens of guest blog pitches weekly but only a few wade through, most of them end in the trash without even being opened or just immediately after reading the first line; the reason being stereotype pitches from web designers, the so called SEOs, and copywriters than from really passionate bloggers. Then, how do you successfully pitch for a guest blog post? What could you do to draw the attention of a blogger?

So, this post is going to be the ethics or the unwritten code of conduct that you need to abide when you pitch for a guest post with any blogger. I am quoting excerpts of some failed pitches for you to easily get a fair idea about what went wrong with those pitches and what might irritate a blogger seeing your pitch. These dos and don’ts of guest blogging etiquette should help you stand apart as a true guest blogger in the crowd of SEOs and copywriters. Okay, first let’s see the dos for a successful guest post pitch.

Start With a Praising Subject Line

Whether you contact the blogger through the contact form on his blog or through his email, make it a point to praise the blogger enthusiastically in the subject line tempting him to open your pitch at once it flashes in his eyes. Let it not be a general praise of the blog, but a specific praise on a latest post, something like “Your post on lowering electric bills was terrific but….” I don’t fall prey to praises but here curiosity killed the cat and it still indicates that you are serious about business.

Give a Personal Touch

Hey admin, I have been reading the articles on your website (https://rajn.co/) and are very impressed with the quality of the information you provide. I am interested in writing a guest post….

This is one of the usual pitches that I receive. Doesn’t it seem to be a standard template wherein you fill only the blog URL and send? Does this show that you are a regular reader? You don’t even know who is behind the blog or what his name is! Your pitch lands straight in the dustbin!

Psychologically, anybody who is blogging publicly is an extrovert and would like to have cherishing relationships. Know the name of the blogger. Try to befriend the blogger on social media sites. Grab the blogger’s attention and give him some favor before you request one. Re-tweet or re-post the blogger’s tweets or status updates. Drag him into a conversation. Read a few posts around his blog before you pitch. Take the effort to make a couple of comments on the posts, not on a single day but take some time. Show that you are a regular reader. No blogger would like to drive away a genuine reader just because he pitched for a guest post, but it is more likely that you would end up with a successful guest post pitch.

Reveal Your Identity

After enforcing authorship as one of the requirements to guest post on this blog sometime back, not even a single post qualified to be published. What does that mean?

Almost all the pitches that I receive are from dirt-cheap website designers from Philippines, India, China, other South Asian countries and so forth. At least to my knowledge, there are scores of people working for pennies and peanuts in web design companies in India claiming to be SEOs! It is interesting to note at this point that 90% of the pitches that I receive from India are from typical western names! Such pitches will be from mail IDs like billclinton1234@gmail.com, willy.patternson007@gmail.com, georgebush345@gmail.com, but if you dig deep to find the origin of the message, it will be from India! Most likely, the mail IDs would end with a random number but definitely not the date of birth. Since Gmail doesn’t disclose the point of origin of an email, they think they are acting smart! Mind that you can still be easily traced with the trails that you leave before you leave a blog or in your e-mail. A blogger doesn’t need to have high IQ to trace where you are from! Had they pitched with their real names and location, there is nothing conspicuous to avoid such pitches.

So as a successful guest post pitcher, how do you stand apart from those purported SEOs? First, let your email ID be from your own domain or at least let it be a real name than something like sales@seocompany.com or guest.blog.pitch123@gmail.com. Leave links to your social media profiles at the end of the pitch, after your signature. Especially don’t miss to include your Google+ profile. Google is serious about authorship markup and social media these days. Of course, you should be active on those profiles and mind that all those profiles should have a clear picture of yours and not the default icon or the photo of some celebrity or that of any gorilla. Little or no activity and no conversation happening at all on those profiles again show that those profiles are made for a specific purpose!

Segregate Yourself from Copywriters

Your website’s blog offers some fantastic healthcare posts and we would like to offer to write guest blogs for your site. We have a fantastic team of copywriters who specialize in writing articles on various topics and they would relish the opportunity to create an insightful blog post for you. If you think this is something that would be of benefit to you, then we would love the chance to create something unique that you and the visitors to your website will find interesting.

Give any subject to copywriters and they can write crap on anything under the sun. Again, here you have to stand apart from the copywriters as a passionate blogger. How do you do that? You have already done that by showing your Google+ circles, Twitter handle or Facebook ID as I said above, by leaving links below the signature of the pitch. Show the best of your previous guest posts that have attracted a lot of comments and a lot of interaction. This shows that you are authoritative in your subject and a passionate writer. Show me a little leg first, if at all I can’t find your face behind the burqa and identify whether you are a boy or a girl, a dirty or a beauty, or a god or a ghost!

Show Your Active Blog

I’m starting to write guest posts, and was interested in doing one for Raj & Co. My personal website is xxxxxxxxx.org and I’m beginning to promote it by offering guest articles.

Bloggers love connecting and socializing with fellow bloggers but why should I show my readers a new domain or just a new blog with one or two posts? Write at least a dozen killer posts on your blog, submit your blog to search engines, get some real or fake comments on your articles, create some buzz around, and then show me your active blog in your pitch. No blogger will be willing to link a new domain or a yet-to-start blog!

Be Humble, Polite, Request

I went through your blog while surfing in Google and was very much impressed with your site’s unique information. Therefore, I decided to contribute to your website as a guest blogger.

Who cares? This is how an affiliate marketer started his pitch. You are actually hurting a blogger’s ego by belittling him with your superiority complex. You may be a celebrity or a lion in your territory but when you need a favor for yourself, be humble, request. Even if you don’t have politeness, act as if you have. Make the blogger feel that he is very much important to you. Say politely “Blessed will be my soul if I can do a guest post for you!” Express your joy in complying with the blogger’s guidelines, if any. Will your pitch ever end up waste?

Mind Your Grammar, Format, Capitalization

Today I find your BLOG through Search Engine. I am sending you this mail I like your website, because it seems to related my theme. I would like to write a content for your BLOG (as a guest post). I am assure you, my content will be unique and only to be related for your site. Here are some of my live guest post for othersites which are following:

This shows neither you are a native English speaker nor you are well versed in English. The pitch has mistakes of all sorts. Would any serious blogger dare to take a risk of accepting a guest post from him? Furthermore, in netiquette, writing in all caps is shouting. Boom! Your pitch ends as a sheer waste.

Mention That Your Guest Post is Free

We have a company who deals in articles related to your website and we would like to promote our website. We would like to offer you unique fresh content for a small fee on the condition that we have 1 or 2 anchor text links back to our site.

Come on, what should I do with this guy? I am still unable to work out his logic! He wants to extract some bucks as well as two links from me! Business mind! Make it clear in your pitch that you are not going to charge anything but all that you want is a do-follow link.

Offer Reciprocity

Mention in your pitch that you are willing to return the favor if you are let to host a guest post on their blog, and that it is not going to be a one-way relationship. Many bloggers wouldn’t find time and would be rather interested in creating content for their own blog rather than creating quality content for guest blogs; however, if they are interested, it is a win-win situation for both of you. You get do-follow links and exposure to the readers of the host’s blog and vice versa.

Send Your Article Straight Away

Instead of waiting for a pitch to be approved and then sending something, straight away send a superb article that the blogger can in no way reject. You have to believe him. If determined, a blogger can cheat you even after approving your pitch! By sending the article along with your pitch, even if the pitch fails by some means, the article should speak for itself. At least, the blogger will read your guest post than sending your pitch straight away to the trash. If found satisfactory, your article could end up in the publishing queue. Most high-profile bloggers ignore emails that just ask permission to send a guest post or an inquiry whether they are interested in a guest post.

Now let us see some don’ts that you have to abide to make your guest blog pitch successful.

Do not Impose Your Own Rules

I have an article I am interested in posting on your site. The article will be 500-550 words long, include 1-2 photos, and contain 2 contextual links. I’d like to have it published within 2 days. Let me know is it possible? How long would my post take to be approved? If it is possible please clear me how many days are required for publishing.

Do you think any blogger will ever bother to reply this nuisance? Remember that you are knocking the door, requesting a favor, and you are going to be the real beneficiary. Under this circumstance, you should seek the blogger’s rules and guidelines that you should abide than dictate your own rules and requirements.

Do not Act Over Smart

One of the most important factors weighed by Google and other search engines is whether a website adds fresh and high quality content on a regular basis. Sites that add content rank higher, get more visitors, and ultimately more customers. Sites that do not add content inevitably fall behind and will lose out on an inexpensive but high quality source of clients. I am willing to help you rank higher online for free. I will write a high quality article for you to post on your website.

What the heck? Who said you need fresh content daily or on a consistent basis to improve traffic to your blog? All that Google stresses always and has reiterated umpteen times is quality and not quantity. I have tried and tested the daily fresh content theory on this blog. I slightly blinked for the guest posts to flow on a daily basis for about 100 posts! Did the traffic go up? A big NO! Looking at the traffic statistics, it is clear that it rather diluted and degraded the blog’s credibility than doing anything good.

The lesson here is: Be short, sweet, and concise with your pitches. While making a pitch, don’t act over smart or preach what you believe is true without knowing the other side of the coin. Don’t expose your scholarliness in your pitch as it could end up negative for you!

Do not Bluff

Hi there, I found your site https://rajn.co/ recently. And I must say that your site has got really good and worthy information. While reading your articles I found them to be really good and informative. I am a regular visitor of your site and I have been reading them since quite a long time.

Pure bluff, what else? The pitcher found the site only recently but have been reading articles for a long time! Your first impression and pitch goes straight to the trash! Truth behold, truth be told.

Do not Rush Through

I have been looking for a great blog and recently found rajn.co. I just read the latest post “How I Paid Medical Bills With Credit Cards But Became Debt Free?” and I think that is an insightful piece for your readers. You have a high quality blog and I have enjoyed reading your posts. I did not notice if you have accepted guest writers in the past, but I wanted to submit my interest.

(Emphasis is mine.)

The post mentioned here was a guest post itself, and it was clearly mentioned right at the beginning of that post. I welcomed guest posts in that post in the introductory part. What does it show? The pitcher just landed on the home page of the blog; to make it an impressing pitch included the latest article title in the pitch without even seeing who wrote it, but unfortunately went wrong. As I said earlier, it takes dedication, time and patience to get into the mind of a passionate blogger and get an approval, but it is worth the effort than getting your guest post published on a spam blog.

Do not Ask What Do You Want, But Offer What You Have

So if you accept guest posts for your blog then kindly advice me that what would be the basic theme like online marketing, making money online or any one else that you want to provide online earning ideas etc.? Title of the post?

Come on, this is the height of laziness. You find an interesting blog, scan it, and decide to offer a guest article but you do not know what to offer. You expect the blogger to spoon feed you, to give you an idea, a title to write!? Instead of spoon feeding you to do all these, he would have better written it by himself with no liabilities! Why should you expect him to do all these? Instead, offer the stuff you have and inquire whether he is interested in your ideas or not.

Follow Up But Don’t Pester

Like you, bloggers too have a busy life with socioeconomic responsibilities. Don’t pester them with subsequent reminder mails again in a couple of days. For some high-profile bloggers, it may even take a month to look at guest post offers! They just segregate all the guest blog offers to a separate folder to be seen later. Hence give them time to respond. Else, your pitch might have landed in the spam box. Give them time to look at the junk mail folder. If there isn’t any immediate response, wait for at least a fortnight. Send a reminder after the waiting period from your alternate email. If you have connected with the blogger on a social media site, humbly draw his attention on the pitch that you made. This should definitely melt even a hard core blogger. Mind that all these is worth the effort as Google still values links from high quality blogs (not spam blogs that accept all crappy posts) after all algorithm updates in the past and will continue to do so in the future with the blogs that prefer quality over quantity.

Did I miss any guest blog pitch ethic here? By the way, what is your pet peeve on a guest blog post pitch? Leave your comments below.