You write a post for somebody else’s site.
My first guest post was very modest. It was called Freelance 101: How Proactive Are you? and it’s still up.
Why write a guest post? If you’ve got a blog of your own
(like this one), why not focus your energies there? Why go somewhere else?
Answer: more exposure– getting seen by more people.
Last month (April, 2022), this blog attracted 387 visitors. I once wrote a guest post for the Content Marketing Institute whose monthly traffic is about 360,000 people.
You get the idea.
Is writing a guest post as easy as it sounds?
No, for three reasons.
1. There’s a lot of competition for the top sites– everybody wants to write for the big guys.
2. Most of the sites which accept guest posts want original material– you can’t just recycle your own blog posts.
3. Many sites require a minimum of 1000 words or more–
you can’t just dash off a short post.
For a couple of years, I had great guest blogging success with the Business 2 Community platform. Their post minimum was only 300 words, and they accepted previously published material.
A few months ago the platform was acquired by a company that specializes in cryptocurrency and online trading. They no longer accept guest posts. You can still see my old B2C posts, but I can no longer contribute to the site.
If you’d like to explore guest posting, I can recommend this overview by Ann Gynn.
And here’s a list of 350 blogs that accept guest posts, along with contact links. Subjects range from marketing to politics, to food, pets, health, and many more. Scroll down to get to the topic sections.
FWIW, I’ve stepped away from guest posting. Instead, I’m trying a couple of different things to get my posts seen by more people.
The first: I’m posting more on LinkedIn. Not what LinkedIn calls “articles” or “long-form posts,” which get squirreled away in a separate part of your profile, but the “status updates” you can post on your individual LinkedIn account (as opposed to your Company Page). They can be up to 3000 characters long, which is roughly 500-600 words.
I try to post things that might be helpful to my connections, while demonstrating my expertise as a visual communicator.
Another part of this same LinkedIn strategy: I use the LI search function to look for posts (status updates) with hashtags like #marketing, #advertising, #creative, etc. I figure these are more likely to have been posted by people who might need illustration.
I make it a point to leave comments on these posts (including appropriate hashtags) to show my interest and hopefully get on the person’s radar. Early days yet, but I’ve been getting more connection requests since adopting this strategy.
The second thing: I’m republishing my best blog posts on
the Medium platform.
Like this one: How To Get Prospects To Lower Their Shields.
Here on my blog, I try to “keep it professional” and write about design, marketing, and visual communication. I’m trying to demonstrate my expertise and get assignments.
On Medium I can expand my scope a bit, and also write humor pieces for a different audience– like this one about the phony origins of certain Beatle songs.