Lessons

Lesson Info

Steps How to Guest Blog

So welcome back, everyone can believe it's day three it all seems to have gone by so quickly, and before we get started today, I wanted to mention there's, a lot of great information that I'm sharing with everyone today. But your success is going toe on lee, come when you take action, so keep in line all of this take notes, and then as soon as you go back, start taking action. If you really want to see the results that will be talking about here today. So the first part of the day, we're going to talk about how to become a guest blogger, and this up applies a lot, tio entrepreneurs that have a service, or maybe a nap, and not necessarily to entrepreneurs that have a product, although it can. But for entrepreneurs that have a product, we're going to talk about how to work with bloggers and do product reviews, as opposed to being a guest blogger on their block so let's, go ahead and get started. So, first of all, the definition of guest blogging is pretty straightforward is basically whe...

n you post an article on a block that's, not your own. We talked a lot yesterday about having your own blogged, but guess blogging is where you write an article for someone else's, blogged and it's really? The main incentive here is to get back links to your website, and we're not going to talk about seo today and how the back links could work. But it's really a great way to get more people coming back to your site in the hopes of growing your email is growing her influence and a couple of other things. So here are some of the benefits that I wanted to outline for you today in terms of being a guest blogger. So the first one, and this is one of the most important ones if you're going to be using yourself as an expert to really get publicity for your product, so writing a post on another block is such a great way, I've done it when I launched my pinterest course, I write about marketing a product and automatically just by having the authority on those other blondes. Everyone sees me as an ex spurt, and those topics that I'm writing about so we're all experts in whatever it is that we're doing, and just go ahead and get it out there and shared with people. The other great thing about guest blogging is that it could really help you to get a ton of traffic back to your website, and this is so important, especially if you are trying to grow your block and just starting out and if you get if you have, if you're able to get your article on a block that has a huge readership, you're going to see a constant stream of traffic coming in as soon as your block post goes live. So it's a great way to really get out there, get links back to your site and in turn, get a lot of traffic back to your site. So this is definitely a great way to get more traffic back. We talked about getting links back to your website, but it really is great because what happens is when you would guess blogging. Maybe there might not be a link back to your site from the article because the article is not going to be about you borrow happens is at the end of the article, they post your bio and in your bio you khun right, your you are earl and the company name and that's where it's linked back to your website so it's a really great way. And imagine if you had ten links back to your website or one hundred links back to your website. What happens is when someone types saying a relevant keyword and google they're going to see that you have one hundred links as opposed to someone that has ten and they're more likely to show your website on the first page of the search engine so guest blogging is really great for that and obviously really great for publicity to but there's a lot of other reasons why it really is beneficial to you and your business the other great thing and I loved this one is that it couldn't really increase your social media following so any time I do a guest blogged and they link back to my site people come to my side sometimes they sign up for my newsletter but a lot of times they end up following me on twitter and facebook and instagram and that's great for me because even though they're not necessarily buying something right then the first time they're going to follow me on facebook and when I give them relevant content that might come back to my site maybe sign up for my newsletter and again the seven times rule that we talked about so much over the last two days so I don't think necessarily if you're doing against block post and there's no purchases yet those purchases khun translate or can come as a relationship well as a result of your forming relationships with those are following you on social media and lastly you could really network with others and build relationships there's many times when I've written again guess block post and someone wrote back to me who was wasn't necessarily my customer, but they go back and I said, hey, I love what you wrote about would you be interested in fighting for our block? I love your style, I love your topic and it's a really great way to grow your network, build relationships and again, it's sort of a side effect of all of the other things that come as a result of your guest blogging a couple more reasons that I wanted to share with you is that it really can increase your influence. So if someone goes to your site and they see that you've written twenty articles for twenty different blog's on a specific topic, they're more likely to book you as a speaker at their next event or their conference more likely to pay you to write an article for them and in return. So it really does have a huge impact on the influence you have in your industry, regardless of what industry you're in, and it could really increase other business opportunities as well. I know I have found quite a few bloggers that are now my partners in terms of marketing when they were blogging on other other sites I know that happened with robin we were talking yesterday about soo hoo. I was doing an interview on robin's blogged and I saw her and I was looking for someone to do an interview for my audience about instagram so I reached out to sue and that's all because robin was kind enough to feature sue on her block and this can happen to you as well depending on what block you are blogging for and lastly we all want an increasing sales and gets blogging khun definitely result in that although it's sometimes not direct it is a little bit more of an indirect sale where people come to you they sign up for newsletter they follow you on social media and then when they're ready to buy if you've done your job right and your marketing the right way you're probably going to get a sale from them so it's it's a longer process but it really does have a huge impact on that and lastly you couldn't really use it to increase your list I'm a huge fan of having your own email list I know we talked about that yesterday and about having an opt inform on your website and having this apparent where people could come to your site seed right away sign up for it is really a great way to grow your list and grow your business as well so I've convinced you why you need to be guest blogging especially if you are on author or speaker if you have a book I've seen a lot of authors do this as soon as they launch a book they're out all over the blog's writing about their experience, their book providing tips and it's really a great way to launch your book and get an audience right away. This is really great for coaches as well whether you're a health coach or maybe a life coach nutrition coach there's a marketing coach what there's so many of them out there and so many blocks that are looking for for content from coaches, so if here whatever kind of coach your make sure to look at guest blogging as a great way for you to get yourself out there and increase your influence it's also really great for app so if you've developed an app let's say it's a wellness app, maybe my want to approach a wellness blogged and provide some content for them and again in your bio at the end of the article there's going to be a link back to your app and sometimes you can't even talk about how your app is going to help people in your actual article. So it's a great way to get marketing and the best part of it is that it's free so it's not they're not going to charge you to be blogging on their site, but you obviously do have to put in the time to write the actual article it's also I mentioned books before but it's great if even if you have an e book I know when I launched my pen pinterest e book part of my strategy and launching was to write a lot of guests blog's and it works really, really great and also if you have info products I know robin just launched the course and part of her marketing was to put a guest log post on my blog's, so she shared a tips for jewelry designers. I shared it on my blogged people who came to my blogged went back to her side and hopefully they sign up for the course. So this is really great if you have info products as well or really any other kind of service that you might be providing. So now let's talk about this seven steps that you need to take to become a guest blogging pro, and I have to say I'm personally not a huge fan of writing all of the time, but this is if this is part of my strategy, maybe once a month or once every two months and sometimes even more when I'm launching something it's totally manageable you don't have to do this on a daily basis even on a weekly basis just figure out whatever schedule works for you and do it according to that schedule so let's talk about the first step and we've talked about goals a lot before, but this is really important here as you are planning your guest blogging strategy and trying to figure out or you need to be to be putting your content out there. So what's your goal for a specific block and again, it couldn't really change based on where you are in your business and what you're trying to do at that time. So the first one might be to get traffic to your site, and I think all of our goals when we won we guest blogging should be to get traffic back to your site by the on ly way to do that is if you're really providing great content, because if you are sharing a guest post that's really not that great than people are probably not going to come back to your site because they decide that they're not interested and finding out more from you, so you really do have to provide a lot of great content here. We talked a lot about building back links and it's great for a ceo and again, this should be part of any blogging that you do on a guest log. And next this to position yourself as an expert, so I know I mentioned that before, but it really does help to position you as an expert, for example, than you're the online tech guy, if you go on a blogger for where your audience is reading and you provide them with actionable tips or videos of things that they could do right now, next time they have that problem, they're going to come to you because you're the expert at helping them make technology easy for them. So this applies to every type of service, or or entrepreneur out there who has something to provide and then their expertise, and we talked about increasing your list, increasing your influence or launching a product. So sometimes my goal tio be guest blogging is to increase my list. Maybe I feel like my list isn't growing quite as quickly as I would like it to be, so I look for a block that has a huge audience look at the content that they wrote about see how I could fit in there and how my expertise can fit in there and I'll propose a guest block post for them. So it's a really great way to just give us a little increase and a little jump in your list numbers so you can build, build your list and hopefully build your business as well. So now that you've defined your goals for a particular block post, the second step is to do your reese search. So what do I mean by doing your research? And I know we've talked about research when we were pitching magazines, but you have to do your research when it comes to bloggers as well. So you have to find relevant sites in your niche that except guest contributors, and this is the huge difference, because just because there's a block out there doesn't mean that they allow other people to fight for it. So you have to look through the blawg, make sure that there are post by people other than the blogger who owns the blawg, and if that's the case, then you know that's ah blogged that actually accept guest contributors, and you usually see that because they might have ah, byline that says by guest or by author's name. So that's how you know if there is a if they accept guests block posts so here's how you could do research so let's say you are a wellness coach, you can actually type in your subject or your expertise and google submit a guest post because those are probably words that that web site has on there. On their site when they're looking for a blogger. So you'll see here that just by doing that there's already four blog's that are accepting guests, posts and a wall in this category and you could really do this, whether it's technology or social media or marketing the jewelry, whatever it is that you have to offer, you can find a couple, at least a couple of blog's that except the's guest posts, and these are some other key words that you can look for. I'm not going to read all of them here, but you'll see these are just different variations on what people might be posting on their site when they are looking for guest contributor. So if the first one doesn't work, maybe try cement an article or try bloggers wanted play around with it, you'll see what's going to come up with the most relevant search results for you. But the great thing is that sometimes you have all of the work cut out for you if you look at some of your competitors. So if I have a competitor out there and they look on my site, I have all of the guests block post that I've written for every other site ever, so if someone's doing what I'm doing and they wanna be blogging for some blog's, they could easily come to my site. Look to see what I've written for and contact those places again and I totally think that's fine, I know a lot of people are a little wary of competitors and putting everything that they do out there but my belief is that really there's room for everyone and you have your own story that no one else has so even though someone's offering maybe a really similar service to what you're offering that's totally fine because the reason people come to you is because they want to work with you personally and now with that other person so don't be afraid of competition you can really use your competitors to your advantage I just really going to their site and saying give to have any guest block post listed up there and lastly there are a couple of websites that have made it really easy for us to become guest blogger so sites like guests crew or my block guest or bloggers required and there's a lot of other ones out there too and basically the way these work is that you go in there you set up your profile you tell them the topics you're interested in and they send you blog's that are relevant that are looking for these topics or you can also see aa lot of blocks that are already listening the types of articles they're looking for so you can search through there look to see if there's a fed and a lot of times they even give you the requirements that they need in order for you to be submitting your your block post and I think a lot of these are free I don't think you have to pay for any of these but again it creates so much less work for you because they give you everything right there in one place and I view some of these and they've been really really great at finding opportunities and I've also posted my own needs on those blog's and had other people approach me teo right from my own block as well yes then did you have a great andrea when you're looking for blog's that you might guess post on do you put into consideration at all how popular those blog's are you could find a block that has the best topic and sort of the best thing for you but maybe they don't have that many visitors so do you still guess post maybe because it might be easy to get on their block and then you get those back links are you always trying to get sort of the heavy traffic I think you're always trying to get the more substantial traffic which brings me to my next point with you making sure that it's a good fit so what does that mean? So thank you for asking that question then because you do have to make sure it's a good fit and it's worth your time so what does a good fit mean? It means that it's a blogging unit and it's relevant so again just to go back to the biking and golf by examples that I was giving before just because it's a fitness blogger doesn't mean they're going to be talking about biking or just because it's a block that talks about sports doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be talking about golfing. So you have to really make sure that it's a block that your audience would read in addition to being relevant tias well and sometimes again listening to the feedback from your customers when you do the survey aa lot of times I'll ask them what other sides do you read and that's such great inside? Because aa lot of times they list my competitors that maybe I might not ever know about and a lot of times are sites that maybe are bigger that I might not have thought about. So listening to that feedback and doing that annual survey is super important here because you're going to get a lot of great ideas for where you should be blogging and then you were talking about the traffic so yes it's really, really important so you do want to make sure that the bloc has somewhat of a high number of unique monthly visitors and high is definitely a subjective number because what high what some what might be high to you by not behind to you but I like to say they should have at least ten thousand month the unique monthly visitors if not more now there is an exception there if you're just starting out and you're trying to build your portfolio of guests blog's and you try to reach out to the larger blog's and you're not really getting anywhere then you probably should start somewhere with a block that has smaller circulation but obviously still in your niche and your area of expertise right? A couple of articles for those blobs and then when you approach the larger blog's you khun you already have some experience and you khun sometimes maybe even refer back to the those blog's and you can say I've been guest blogging for a couple of months or I've been featured and six other blog's and again that built gives you a little more credibility then if you were just starting god with let's say social media examiner right as you're launching your business because they have a huge audience they're always getting gets bloggers but you do have to be a little bit established so you could definitely be a little more flexible with the number of unique visitors if you are just starting out so I know I did when I first started I would block for anyone who would say yes but as demand grew and as I realized that I couldn't block all the time I started to become a little more picky on dh sometimes if it's a block that I really want to be on that I think is totally right up my alley and they're doing exactly what I'm doing and they have less than that I'll be okay with that, so just see what feels writes to you as you are picking it the blocks that you're goingto be approaching. The other thing that's really important is to have a lot of engaged readers, so by engaged readers, I mean, if you go to a blogged and you see that there's one comment or two comments that's not really an engaged readership, but if you see two hundred comments or even fifty comments, you know that that block is being read people are engaging with it, they're listening to the information they're reading through they're taking the time to leave a comment and what that means is that the blogger owner has really done a great job of building a community and you want to go to the blog's that have a community already built in so that way a lot of the work is cut out for you, and if that blood is trusting you, then their community is going to be trusting you as well, so it's really important to make sure that there's quite a few comments on there and look, maybe through let's say, like the last month of posts, or maybe their last ten or fifteen posts, because sometimes I know in my block personally tio, I'll have ah block post that hardly has any engagement and that's usually because I haven't done a good job of promoting it, but you'll get a good idea if you look at their last let's say, look their last ten posts and there's no comments whatsoever probably if you're kind of be writing a post for them, you're going to get no feedback at all, but if some of them have common some of them don't, then it's probably just a result of the block owner not promoting that block post as much as they should be to be getting the comments. So look for that balance there as well. Yes, yes, our blood coast we we post on tuesdays and fridays and tuesday is our information. We'll have a guest blogger, that type of thing and then friday's it's really a designer? We feature our designer spotlight on that tuesday we do ask questions at the end of our blawg so people would leave comments, but we also offer the fact are we sent out an email to our community that takes them tio our blawg as well, and a lot of times we get feedback where they will reply to the email saying, oh, that was a great block post it was asked questions that way or make comments and not necessarily post on the block so it's making me think we need to somehow get them more engaged actually on the comments below the blogged trying to figure out how we can do that more because we certainly get comments but it's not always directly on the bottom of the blonde yeah, and I've experienced that as well like I and I think marie for leo, I know you're familiar with their stuff, but I think she does a great job of getting people to go to her block and in her video in her actual video and in her email she'll say head on over to the block where the conversation continues so I think that's such a great way because if you're thinking I want to write back but you're seeing the last thing before you sign off you're seeing had on over to the block to continue the conversation I think again that's just telling people exactly what it is you want them to dio and you see I mean yes, she has a huge readership but she also really gets people to engage and head on over to the blogged and even I think in her videos she tells people to head on over to the block as opposed to leaving a comment on youtube, under her videos, I do think she says, or give a thumbs up or something like that if you like it on youtube. But she's always directing people directly to go back to her block and she's yes, oh tried that and see what happens sometimes I've had people write back and leave a comment and I'll say, oh, I think, you know, our community would love to hear that as well. Would you mind taking the second heading over to the blogged and leaving the comment there, and a lot of times they will do that as well. So yeah, so sometimes just asking them to do what it is you want them to do goes a long way to yes, then along that, too, is that I think a lot of bloggers forget that once they do get some comments below, a post that as an author, you should respond and create a conversation. A lot of times I see you know, a few comments down below, but I never see the author respond to those comments and a great way to keep that conversation rolling this toe even, you know, keep on commenting down below in answer questions and that sort of thing, yes, absolutely, and you should always as much as you can. Reply, tio almost every comment that you leave on their, you know, for some of my block posts, there's a ton of comments and I'm just not able to reply to all of them, but really, if I could, I would, but as much as you can make that a practice to always reply, because if think about it, maybe you've done this to I know I've done it if I go to a site and I take the time to leave a comment and there's nothing and reply or in return, I'm probably not going to go back to that site again. So again, it's that a way of building your community interacting with them? And it really should be a two way conversation everything you're doing nowadays, especially if you're going to be putting yourself out there online should be a two way conversation as much as you can, so I'm glad you brought that up, then I think it's very important. Tio be mindful of people that are leaving comments and reply back to them, even if it just says something like thank you so much for sharing your opinion or that was great or what great insight, so it really takes a second or so to do so. Um, and then the last thing that you should be looking for is deceived are active on social media. So what do you want to do is if you find off a block that you think is a good fit, go to their facebook page, go to their twitter account, maybe if they have a pinterest account and see how many followers do they have? Are those followers actually engaging with them? Do they like their post? Do they share that they leave comments? And I have to say, sometimes some bloggers will focus on facebook, but not on twitter, so you'll see maybe twenty thousand followers on facebook and one hundred, people under twitter account, so just make sure you're looking at a couple of their social media profiles, not just one, because I know for me personally I used twitter, but not to engage with my community. I use it for other reasons, but I use facebook mostly to engage with my community, so look at a couple of their social media profiles, make sure that at least one of those has an engaged audience now, there's no, I couldn't tell you they have to have at least five hundred, visitors or twenty thousand visitors, it really, really depends, because sometimes I feel like if they're audiences really engaged. And they're always leaving comments again. The quality is more important than the quantity, but obviously, a. Sometimes it would be great to blogged for a block that has twenty thousand likes, as opposed to one that has three hundred. So see how you feel about that, but do check out their social media profiles to make sure that if you do, take the time and invest your time and writing a post for them, that you're going to get some sort of of return back in terms ofthe engaging with their community as well. So now let's talk about more research, which is to become familiar with their content. So once you have found some blocks that you think you might be interested in writing for, you really want to become familiar with what they're writing about, to see if it's a good fit for you as well. So think about who are they writing for? And is that audience very similar to your own audience and what's their style? Do they write really long post maybe like fifteen hundred were post or do they should write three hundred war posts and that's going to help you figure out this thought that they're looking for so when you're pitching to them if you pitch to them a list of top twenty things you khun dio and all of their block posts are the top three things or the one thing you can do right now then obviously you're going tohave tio think about your pitch a little bit and make sure that it does reflect their own style as well and then also the type of content do they usually do how to do they write about people that they're interviewing or their clients? What kind of content are they writing about and how can your expertise fit into that content and again this is really going to help you when you're pitching because just like with the magazines the more you study them and the more you get to know them the more likely you are to be featured in themselves it really goes the same way with bloggers as well so now let's talk about how do you break the ice with the blogger so a great way to do that is to start engaging with them so by engaging I mean tio leave thoughtful comments on their posts if you like something that they've right and if you're planning on writing for that block, you probably should like what they're writing good just to make sure that it's a good fit for you if you read one of their block post and it's something that you completely disagree with or doesn't sit right with you it's probably not going to be a good fit for you, so just once you find a block post that they write or once you like a block post that they're writing, leave a comment and do that for a couple of weeks before you approach them. So that way you can sort of start getting on the radar. And I know I was mentioning this yesterday, robin, but I remember the first time tracy retweeted one of my posts, and then she left a comment on my block and I thought that's a really great comment it's really thoughtful, I'm curious to see who this person is, so I went to your block checked it out, I thought, wow, this is awesome! I'm so glad she stopped by, you know, let's see what can happen? And then I kept on seeing her name, you know, in my comments and in my tweets, and I thought, this is really great. This is someone who really appreciates what I'm doing, you know, and wants to engage with me let's see where this goes so the more you do that and you have to be genuine and sincere about it, I don't recommend doing it just to get on someone's radar I think that's a little misleading and I know people that have done it and I don't recommend that I think you should on lee do it on ly fit sincere on leaf it's genuine and on lee if you really want to give back by providing value not if you're just because you want to get on their radar so they know who you are when you're sending the email so just make sure it's honest and you've relief feel what you're writing about and don't say I love this block post and then inside you think that was horrible post, but I hope they pick me, you know, so don't do that just really be honest with yourself and with them and if you really don't like them, you probably shouldn't be blogging for them. Um and then yeah interact with them on social media, so go to their facebook page, share their their posts, leave a comment but make sure it's thoughtful if you just write something like thanks that was a great post that's probably not going to go very far but if you get more specific and you say I love the point you made about x y z, my clients are struggling with this, too, and I love helping them. So thank you so much for sharing this if you take it's a little bit of time to be thoughtful with your comments and again provide value, right? Because if someone just says, thanks that's definitely valuable in its feedback, but it's not as valuable as you're saying. Thanks, here's, why I'm saying, thanks so again be mindful of that, be honest and sure, sure, what it is that you want to share more than just saying thank you to them, and again, they're gonna notice that because they're going to take the time to read it more than if you just wrote thank you or this is great or what a great post, so you do have to spend a little bit of time here and invest your time into building that relationship on their social media following and then also share their posts on social media. So what I do a lot of times if I find a great post from robin or someone else whose work I really like, I'll go ahead and share it on my social media profile if my thing, my audience would benefit from from it as well. I don't charge us for the shake of sharing it because I like it I sure because I think my audience would like it as well so keep your audience in mind again if you know them, you're going to know what they would like to hear from you about so sure the posts on social media and do that for a couple of weeks and then hopefully you'll start to get on the radar a little bit you're giving back to them providing value because you're sharing their stuff with other people who would find it irrelevant has also you're helping them before they're even helping you by bringing you onto their block so again it's all about giving first and not necessarily expecting something back in return but a lot of times when you give you do receive a lot back yes, those air such strong it's such a wonderful kind of relationship that gets to be built because your community gets familiar with our community and our community gets familiar with your community and it's really it's really amazing when that happens. Yeah it is it is and I think you know, I've noticed a lot of people are hesitant to do that because they're thinking, well, I don't want to send my clients are my list or my people to someone else that could take business away from me but again there's room for everyone everyone could be successful everyone can have an amazing following and if people like you and if you're doing your things right they're going to stick with you and maybe someone else might be providing them value as well I know for me I work with the jewelry designers but I've never had a jewelry business I don't know what it's like so it's fine with me a jewelry designer buys my course then goes to you for your expertise because you have so much more than I know about growing the jewelry business so that's totally fine because that client is getting so much value from both of us and really there's just think an abundance there's room for everyone here know needs tio be shying away from your competitors and I think that they're stealing your clients just be generous and provide value and keep giving with whatever it is that you're doing so now let's talk about once you've done your research you've gone on the radar a little bit how do you I started to approach them so the first thing is that you want to read their guest posting guidelines and if this is a blogger that accept guess posts aa lot of times they'll tell you exactly what they're looking for so they'll tell you things like what format do you prefer the article and do they want you to submit it as an outline first and then do all the old both work through it do they want to get the whole article and word format? Do they want you to upload it to drop box? Whatever the requirements are, they're going to tell you right here, and they're also going to tell you how long the article should be and you'll see some articles are crazy long some are really short some are just one tip some are twenty tips, so get familiar with the format and see how long they really want the articles to be. And then also what topics do they want you to write about? Sometimes sometimes they'll say we're on ly looking for guest post on social media, so if you're going to be talking about publicity that's not going to be a great fit, but if you approach them with of writing a post about facebook or pinterest or how social media can get the publicity and then that's going to be a good fit right there and I wanted tio sure there's, this is from hop spot. I know a lot of we are probably already familiar with it, but they're a great site and they have a huge following and if you go to their site they're always accepting guests, bloggers and they have really great content, but they tell you exactly what you need to do in order to get on their site so it tells you on I didn't have the room to put all of it in here but right down here they tell you all of the things they're looking for, what things you can write about how long it should be, what format they wanted and so go to the block that you want to be on and see if they have this now there are sometimes for example, on my block I accept guests contributors, but I just have never gotten around to doing a page that outlines all of my my requirements so a lot of times if you don't see that on a block, you couldn't quickly email them and say, hey, I'd love to write a post for you I have really enjoyed your article on x y z topic I have a really great topic to do you accept guest posts and if so, can you quickly tell me your requirements and a lot of times I love right back and I'll I mean I don't have that many requirements in terms of how long it should because I like all sorts of different things, so I'll just ride back and tell them what I'm looking for so if you find a site that has guest bloggers and you can find their requirements, just send them an email and asked them what that is and they will answer but a lot of times you will see this exact thing here that they have with their traffic there's number of subscribers and who wouldn't want to write a guest post right for a block that has two hundred thousand subscribers and one and a half million monthly viewer. So, um, probably that should be on my list of loggers to contact neck, so yeah, just keep looking, dig around their side, you definitely will find us. And if you can find it, just hyping the site name and guess blogger or b a blogged or be a guest author or any of the other terms that I was sharing with you guys before. So now let's talk about you, then all of the research you've done your work, how do you actually paid your post? And we talked about pitches yesterday in terms of magazines, and this is really similar as well, it's a little different, but so many things are the same because you still have to do all of the leg work. You have to be a research and you have to personalize your email just like we did with magazine. So a lot of times you'll be able to know their name or the name of the person who's in charge of guest blogging because they'll tell you who you should, we should contact and if he usually has the person's name, so if you can find their name write their name if you can't then you can always just right through the main person that's running the blawg sometimes it's one person sometimes a few and say hi and then your name don't just say hi there or high ma'am hi sir that for me that automatically is a red flag that they don't know me they haven't read my blawg because I sure my name everywhere it's on top of my website so if they just went to my home page or any page of my side they would get my name right there so make sure you know their name it's so important and not only when you're writing an email but we know from daily interactions as well if someone says hi in your name that goes such a long way as opposed to just saying hey how's it going so names are so important here is well and then tell them your topic and I'm going to give you a really great example right after this often actual email that has worked now it's not my email but I really love this example so once you do that again, tell them your topic approaching it from the point of what's in it for them why should their care why should they care? Why should their readers care and if you answer that question then you can go ahead and tell them about you so don't start off with I'm an expert in this I have a ton of experience I've written twenty block post already I have an e book and I want to write for you because by that point you're just making it all about them and not about you oh are all about you and not about them so let's look at a specific email here and I think this is going to be really helpful for you guys about how what to actually say and again you can use this in your own voice I don't recommend copping this exactly as it is here but this is from a web cycle be a freelance blogher dot com so she starts off with a little bit about herself, which I wouldn't necessarily say to start off with that but it totally works for this too because right after that you're saying you may have seen me hanging are so again it's saying you you've done this you may have seen me and she's also saying by the way, thanks for creating such a wonderful writing group I'm really happy I found your community so you can see if she had left out that apart all of that first paragraph would have been pretty much about her but she's saying you know thank you so much for doing what you're doing I love what you're doing so don't be shy about sharing that if you really love a site if it it's helped you if your community has found it helpful, let them know that they love to hear that they're making a difference with what they're doing, and I think we all love to hear that. So I mentioned that right off the bat and whether it's an article that they road or a community that they built or aa book that they wrote that has inspired you it's totally fine as long as you letting them know that you're somewhat familiar with the work that they're putting out there and again it's going to go such a long way and then necks and you'll see this is super short it's not a twenty paragraph email, but next she is showing that she's familiar that the site except guess post so you're saying I've done my research, I know you already do this, so I wanted to reach out because I think I can provide something of value to your audience. And then she goes on to say, I'm planning on writing an article here's a quick outline we talked about this yesterday, then to you send them the whole thing. Do you send them an outline? Sometimes they'll tell you to send the whole thing most of the time it's just an outline simply because they don't really have time to read the whole thing to begin with um so then you can share your outline and after you do that, if you already have a couple of guest posts under your boat, you can share those as well, because again, it establishes he has an authority, it shows that you've done this before, so that they don't have to teach you how to do it the right way, because you've already been doing this and you're a pro at this by now and then lastly, you're asking them, you know, is this going to be okay for you? Does it work with you? And if so, get started one thing that sometimes I like to write back if they write back and say, ok, I'll definitely ask them for a deadline, so that way I know when to expect to write the article, they know when to expect that for me and everyone's happy and then lastly, just a really simple thank you it doesn't need to be formal. I know a lot of times people say thank you so much for your consideration. I really look for within its this really long formal closing, and it really doesn't have to be formal. I think with the internet and in this then age, you can call them by their first name, you can be a little informal but still be professional, obviously always about being professional. But again, just short and sweet, you don't need to write sincerely unless you're comfortable with that. I personally hate writing it because it just seems so formal. And it already seems like you're you're starting on a lower ground, so to speak, than they are so just right, thanks or cheers, or talk to you soon or something like that. But again, if that's not your style, do what's comfortable for you.