If you are a blogger, you must guest post at some point. That’s not a generic statement. I say that from my experience.
There are so many benefits of guest blogging apart from bringing in extra traffic. More importantly guest blogging hones your writing, and if you guest post on a regular basis, let me tell you how you become a better writer.
Different styles
When you guest post on a different blog, you write for a totally different group of people. The niche might be the same and you may also write on a similar topic as the host blogger. However, the readers of the host blog are used to a completely different style of writing. Your guest post should fit in there.
For this purpose, you need not change your own voice and style, though. However your style has to be compatible with that of the host blog.
I’ve experienced this to be challenging when I write for really big blogs like Problogger, Search Engine Journal etc. But once I get past 2 or 3 guest blog posts where I push myself beyond my limits and limitations, I find a great improvement in my writing style.
I see a lot of flexibility with myself. I can see this difference quite obviously when I write for my own blogs.
Grammar
You surely do check grammar when you write a blog post for your blog. But how do you check for grammar when you write a guest post? Well, I have a tab with Cambridge Dictionaries Online open when I write a guest post. I mean, I am more cautious about grammar mistakes when writing a guest post when compared to writing on my own blog.
I am not saying that you can publish crap on your blog, but you see with extra-careful eyes for grammatical errors when you write for others. It is like how you behave at your own house and how you behave when you are a guest at someone’s house.
Writing to suite guidelines
When you write guest posts you are normally given guidelines - A set of rules provided by the host blogger. Your article should be written in such a way that it complies with those guidelines, in order to be accepted.
This means that you are writing with some constraints on hand. And, sometimes the rules can influence your writing pattern, style, the length and the quality of the post (the information in it).
Guidelines give you an idea about the styles and the quality, thus you are not left hand-cuffed in a forest. You are free to write out your ideas and thoughts, but still you have to follow a guideline; the important point is that the guideline is not set by you but by someone else. Trust me, this is great for your writing.
More accountability
Again, just like grammar checking, you are extra careful about the information you share in the guest post. Things like the information you share, the images you use, the ideas and everything in that guest post have to be unique, original and have to be written by you. You cannot do a copyright infringement of the information and the items in use.
Further you cannot use the information anywhere else; the guest article is only for that particular website to which you wrote it for. If you intend to use it, you can quote a part of the idea with appropriate reference to the original content.
Extensive research
Guest posts are usually longer than the average posts you write on your blog. For the extra length you just cannot blabber space filling words or sentences.
You have to provide in-depth information. You therefore do an extensive research for writing a guest post. You take extra time and provide as much information as possible.
And you make it really great in quality because you cannot afford to lose the opportunity to set up a fan base outside your blog!
Longer posts
As I just said, your guest posts are usually longer than the posts you write on your blog. You can also write short articles; it is not a strong rule that you write longer articles. However it is because you normally guest post at a blog which is either an A-listed blog or at least a blog which has audience size quite larger than your blog or of the same size as your blog.
Again, as I said, extensive research is required to write longer posts. At the same time you have to be extra careful about grammar, guidelines and the quality. This is a challenge to some extent and if you continue writing such posts in the long run, your writing will get improved every day.
In summary, apart from the numerous benefits of guest posts, your writing improves a lot when you write guest posts regularly. It is like putting you on a hard training mode where you learn at the same time, you cannot afford to make mistakes; because your post goes online on a blog which is already famous and has large number of audience. Further, your guest post is very important for your own blog or website, so you cannot compromise on the quality.
Given all the restrictions your writing gets a great shape. Try guest posting, it is a cool thing.
PS: Don’t forget to check out my guest posts.
A nice article Jane. Guest blogging is the best way to get exposure and have people know your style.
People often keep their best articles for their own blog and post not-so-best articles as Guest Blogger. However, this is the worst thing you can do. While you’re guest posting, you have thousands of readers scanning your post for the first time. If your article doesn’t interest them, you just lost the whole point of guest posting.
Ah the link works now, thanks
Reading other peoples articles and blog posts is really helping. Not necessarily for content but for writing styles etc. Interesting point about making your style compatible depending on the site you post on and its demographic.
Thanks, this was a very valuable post. And I agree with Nishant that submit your best posts as a guest post.
agreed with all these point but guest bloggers now a days try to submit only their average , no researched, non seo optimized articles, only to acquire a do-follow link.
As Rakesh told, most of the newbie bloggers are contributing guest posts just to build back links.
I disgust this concept and I never submit low quality guest post. I used to research first and write the post with my own voice with good post length.
Hope this blog post would help me to perform better as a guest blogger.
Thanks Jane for presenting this!
Just tell me one thing, is am eligible to submit guest post in Probloggingsuccess? coz my blog is new with PR0.
hi Jane,
I agree with you that guest blogging makes you feel less comfortable and you have to enhance your writing and double check your grammar like never before… however, I see a tendency… people love writing lengthy posts… just to spread their knowledge and sometimes readers are info overload with these
I expect guest bloggers shift their attitude and think how to say more with less… because the success of a guest post does not reside in its length, nor in its social media shares and number of comments, but in the end results it generates… for the end reader.
Does he or she learns something new which he or she implements into his or her life/business?
If not, then both the effort of writing the post and the time spent reading/skimming through it is pretty much in vain…
I write articles and blog comments to bring new info that will make a visible impact, not sit into one’s brain like data bites of info in a hard drive…
Does it make sense?
Great tips for those of us who don’t consider ourselves to be professional writers, even though it is what we get paid to do.
This is very informative. I never tried doing a guest post before. I will definitely do this to improve my writing skills as a blogger. Thanks for sharing.
great tips for doing guest blogging, and yeah guest blogging teaches you loads of different things like different styles of writing, writing for different audience, where we have to take care of the tone too, as with some audience tone used is different in comparision to others.
Hi Jane -
Very useful information here, so thank you for that. My question in regards to changing your style to suit another blog, or be compatible, is this: Isn’t the idea behind guest blogging to have a different audience get to know you? So in that respect shouldn’t you write how you write?
Taking that into account you certainly have to stick by their guidelines to be sure. And for goodness sake what you write should ALWAYS be your best. Either on your blog or anyone’s, it does not matter. When ever I write something, I always tell myself that this will be the best thing I have ever written…(doesn’t always work out that way, but that is the attitude I think that you should have when you start to write something)
What are your thoughts on taking a piece of plr post, rewriting it, making it your own and then using that? I have heard two schools of thought on that. What is yours?
Thanks Jane,
Donald
I completely agree with you. The first point is exactly the actual reason why i guest post, it would embed new style of writing to us.
Spot on! I am a frequent guest blogger and I think you are absolutely right! I pretty much do everything you mention here… I think the most important thing is to pay attention to quality of content.
I’ve been blogging for little over a year and haven’t written a guest post yet. I’m a non-niche blogger, so I haven’t really found a blog where I think my posts would “fit”. Great info.
True points jane sheeba, I don’t proofread when writing for my blog, but I do it definitely when writing guest post for others. We care our english when contributing to other people.
I definitely agree that writing guest posts are a challenging and unique opportunity to improve one’s writing. I’ve noticed that it can be difficult to write a longer post on a topic that you have become used to writing shorter posts about.
Hi,
Usually in Guest Blogging we brand ourself in front of others. So if there any mistake in the article, then it will eventually show our talent and writing skills. So we put in our best writing to show off ourself as one of the best writer and blogger.
But the same we don’t show if it is for our blog. So there has to be an equal care for post as even your blog is a representation of yourself online. So we should be equal revision for both the post written for guest blog and also to our blog.
Great post, thanks. I have to agree completely, as well as improving your writing skills guest blogging is great for networking with other bloggers and really useful for SEO.
That is good suggestion. Thank you. I’m sure that my blog can stand out following those steps.