5 Eye-opening Facts About Guest Posting to Help You Get Started
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60% of content marketers struggle with producing clear and compeling content. Therefore, they are open to high-quality guest posts.
A couple of Google searches might get you a list of websites offering guest posts for cheap. Apart from the fact that this will not benefit your website in any way, cheap guest posting may actually end up hurting your website’s authority and link profile.
Running a high-quality guest posting and blogger outreach campaign takes some skill and experience, whether it is for yourself or for your clients. Therefore, if you’re new to this, it’s vital to arm yourself with necessary information about the industry before you end up falling for a scam.
In this blog post, we will share eye-opening facts about guest posting or guest blogging (both terms are acceptable).
Read on.
Facts About Guest Posting
Most of the following facts about guest posting will help you gain valuable insights into the guest posting industry. This, in turn, can be used to improve your guest posting game.
So here goes.
1. Prepare For A Lot Of Rejections!
On average, editors reject around 9 out of 10 guest posting pitches. Having said that, this is a small number compared to the guest posting requests a high domain authority website gets. However, it’s enough to explain the significance of pitching to an editor.
Your guest posting pitch reflects your writing abilities and attention to detail. Therefore, it’s important to take your time to craft a near-perfect pitch. The key elements to address when crafting a guest posting pitch are,
- The flow & structure of your pitch email
- Spelling, grammar, as well the tone of voice used
- Link(s) to previous work
- Suggested topic with adequate research
2. Continuous Follow-up Is a Recipe For Disaster
According to research by PointVisible, 20% of 86 interviewed editors don’t read guest post pitches. Therefore, inbound marketers might wonder, “is guest posting worth it?”
Guest posting is still pretty solid. It’s the continuous follow-up emails that might fail your pitch. According to Sarah Mitchell, founder of Global copywriting, following up more than once is a bad idea. It only irritates guest posting sites to a point they don’t bother replying.
The ideal time for follow-ups is one week after you have sent your pitch. But you can cut this time to 3 days if you have a strong relationship with the publishing site.
3. Sending a Final Draft In Your Initial Pitch Isn’t Encouraged
Most outreachers and guest bloggers rush to get their content published on reputable sites. As a result, they may send their final draft attached with their pitch. According to the stats mentioned above, 20% of editors don’t read guest posting pitches.
And even then, a good website will almost always have things to add to the “suggested article” or even request a completely new direction. Therefore, it’s best to communicate with the editor before throwing your article in the first email.
Ideally, you should review the guest posting site’s content and build an understanding of their readership. Next, you can send your topic along with keywords. Once you get a positive response, share the first draft of your guest post.
While a higher word count may help you improve search engine friendliness, having more authors increases your readership, or rather, endears your content to more people. According to statistics, more than 62% of readers prefer content under multiple authors.
A guest post written by multiple authors is a great way to show that you have done longitudinal research. Moreover, it adds more depth and credibility to your guest posting plan. However, it’s best to run it by your publishing site.
Some editors aren’t fond of reading the content under multiple authors. But others welcome a well-researched post with multiple contributors.
5. Quality Content is Rare. Especially at Scale!
According to a survey of marketers and guest bloggers, there were almost 2 outreachers and prospectors for every 1 writer. Of course, there are those who can do it all; outreaching, prospecting, writing, etc. But that is not the norm.
In order to keep the guest posting machine running, companies separate the aforementioned tasks in the interest of scalability. If you’re an on-off guest poster, then fine. But if you wish to do it at scale, you should get specialists for each phase or hire a reputable guest posting company.
Case in Point: Some Guest Posting Insights
The facts above highlight the importance of sending a well-thought guest posting pitch. If you lost track of what we have shared above, here are the important parts.
- Rejections are a part of guest posting. Work on your pitch.
- Keep follow-up emails to a minimum. A lot of editors find it annoying.
- Don’t rush in with your 1st Build a rapport first.
- Find additional contributors to co-author your post. It helps increase credibility and authority.
- To ensure quality content at scale, divide your guest blogging team, especially the writers.
